She slumped down in her seat. Really, she had the worst luck with men.
He continued without acknowledging the way she’d checked out. “My wife was a squeaky wheel to them, and I was a useless, absent bastard. I wasn’t there when she died, but I’m certain they killed her.”
A chill knifed its way down Ash’s spine and right into her spirit. She’d been jealous of a woman whose life was cut short.
Because of Merc.
She looked at him, wanting to apologize, knowing there was more to his story. “Tell me the rest of it.”
“I was on a mission near Valle de Lágrimas for the Legion shortly after they died.”
Ash covered her mouth with one hand, feeling the horror of what he said. They. “You had kids.”
“They were together when they were run off the road, over a cliff. I’m told they died instantly. But I’d left them to their hell.”
“Merc, I’m sorry about your family. That’s horrible.” Ash folded her legs and bent her forehead to her knees. She tilted her head and looked at him. “But just once, just for a moment, could you step out of the game and say stuff that meshes with reality?”
He met her anguished gaze, but kept quiet.
“I’m in danger too, aren’t I?”
He nodded. “You are. And to be honest, your survival depends on you. I’ll do my damnedest to protect you, but I’ve learned I can’t anticipate every possible danger. And beyond that, the Matchmaker’s Curse says that if we bond and you come into my world, you’ll die. And if we don’t bond, having given you up, I’ll die.”
“So we’re fucked.” For sure. Because of the goddamned game he couldn’t leave.
He nodded.
“I don’t accept that.”
“I proved in Valle de Lágrimas that curses are real.”
No. He’d proved hypnosis was real. “And yet a bad guy was able to get around your curse. With some creative thinking, we could circumvent the curse.”
She sat up and shifted in her seat. That was it! There were some wonderful counselors in their area back home. She could stage an intervention. This game was a like a cult he was stuck inside.
He was worth fighting for. She could get him out.
“Maybe.”
God, had he heard her thought again? “Maybe what?”
“Circumventing the curse.”
“Do you think the curse applies to Summer and Sam too?”
“Yeah.”
“No one’s survived the curse from this Matchmaker?”
“It’s early days yet. The modification program is still young. We’re still discovering things about ourselves. The Matchmaker was just an urban legend for a while. You see, most of us had our libido programmed out of us. The mutation designers thought it weakened soldiers. When we first heard about the Matchmaker, about the promise of a real love—along with the return of our sexual appetites—we were happy. There was hope that at least a part of ourselves would return to us. Mostly, however, we began to believe it was an empty promise floated by the researchers who changed us. And then it happened to Liege and Summer. Then Bastion and Selena. Now you and me.”
“None of them have died because of love, Merc.”
“It happened to Lautaro. The Matchmaker brought him his true love—and took her away, too.”
“That’s awful. I’m sorry for him.”
Merc looked at her. “We’re him, Ash. That’s why I said I didn’t want you. I don’t want you to die for me.”
“But if I don’t, then you’ll die for me.”
“You can still walk away from this.”
Ash didn’t answer. She turned and watched the dark jungle pass. The thought of leaving him made her chest hurt. An intervention had to be possible. “I’m sorry you lost your family, Merc.”
An awful thought occurred to her: had he sacrificed them to the game?
He didn’t answer, but she hadn’t expected him to. When the silence stretched on, he said, “Sleep for a while. We have a few hours yet.”
Sleep. As if she could. They were driving deep into the heart of a jungle filled with people who thought they were werewolves. In the middle of the night—the creatures’ preferred hunting time. Shadowed by a curse that would see one or the other of them dead. In a reality that wasn’t real.
She was never going to shut her eyes again.
She yawned and leaned her head against the back of her seat as the world went black.
25
The Jeep wasn’t moving. Greenish light filled the car as though filtered through lush foliage. Ash straightened in her seat. Merc wasn’t with her, but she didn’t feel alarmed. She stretched, realizing how stiff she was—she must have crashed despite her best intentions.
The Jeep was parked in a wide clearing under a covering of tall trees bordered by thick bush. A cacophony of insects and birds slammed into her senses when she opened the Jeep door. Merc was leaning against the front fender. Odd—she hadn’t seen him a moment ago when she did her quick look around.
He straightened. “Have a good sleep?”
“I did. You should have awakened me hours ago. I could have taken a turn driving.”
“Not exactly a regular road trip we’re on. Besides, being a mutant, my body doesn’t need to unplug in order to reset and heal like a regular human’s does.”
“Oh.” It hit her in a bit of a rush that she needed to use the bathroom. Of course, out here in the middle of nowhere, there were no facilities to be had.
Merc grinned at her. “Go over there. No insects. No wild beasts.”
“No werewolves?” she asked with a nervous chuckle.
“None that I’ve seen.” He went to the back of the Jeep and handed her a roll of toilet paper and a plastic bag. “Pack out your TP.”
“Right. Thanks.” Ash finished her business in quick order. Back at the Jeep, she took her toiletries bag from her backpack and set it on the cargo area. She spread a squirt of disinfectant on her palm and rubbed it over hands. Next she brushed her teeth. Merc leaned against the taillight, watching her the whole time.
“What?” she asked, the toothbrush muffling her words.
He shrugged. The man had no sense of personal space.
When she finished, she sent him a sideways glare as she put everything away. “I’m not sharing my toothbrush.”
“No need. I completed my toilet while you slept.” He grinned.
“That’s disappointing. I would have thought your mutations automatically cleaned your teeth.”
Merc laughed, and the rich, masculine sound cleared the latent threads of anxiety she’d been feeling.
She looked away from him, terrified of how deep her feelings for him ran. So much was riding on the decision he wanted her to make: become a mutant or stay a human.
Hopefully, she’d be able to stage her intervention before his little game got to that point.
“Where are we?” she asked.
He stepped away from the car and looked at the wide, dead area before them. “This is where we were held after we were changed. Our training grounds.”
There was nothing left but dozens and dozens of square concrete pads, some with bars protruding a couple of feet high. Odd that the jungle had done little to reclaim the area.
Merc took her hand and led her down a line of concrete islands. There were rows and rows of them. Tension made his face bleak. She didn’t ask questions, though she was filled with them. This place had tremendous meaning for him. It was like the videos she’d seen of Holocaust survivors returning to the prison camp where they’d suffered torture and loss.
She pulled her hand from his and stopped walking. “I don’t want to be here.”
He frowned as he studied her. She was almost certain he was probing around in her mind…as if that was even possible.
“I should have asked you how your psychometry worked,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“How is it you sense the world? Is it through the air of a place?
Through the feel of the ground? Do you actually need to touch it with your hands or your skin?”
“I never gave it much thought. Until recently, until you, I never believed it was real. In fact, it had all but faded until I came to Valle de Lágrimas. I thought I was always making up stories.”
“Think about it now. Close your eyes. Tell me what you sense.”
She hesitated. Her abilities, though she’d had them her whole life, were something she was still sensitive about. She feared that acknowledging them now, with him, was somehow moving her into his game world. There was no humor in his eyes. He was dead serious. And waiting patiently. She closed her eyes. Merc was silent, but the jungle wasn’t.
The place had a feel about it, a mood, a lingering energy that was toxic to the jungle, creating an herbicide—natural or unnatural—that kept vegetation from creeping closer to the remains of the pens.
Pens. Merc had never mentioned that. She went over to one that still had remnants of bars. She didn’t look at Merc, and he didn’t stop her from touching them. She felt a blast of emotion as a vision formed around her. The people in the cages were scared, angry, confused. Some were resigned to their fate. Others raged against it. Most were very sick. She looked around and realized the inhabitants were all male.
When she let go of the rusty bars of one pad and moved to the next, she realized the vision was staying with her. The half bars she’d seen before were now full height, enclosing each cube on all sides and over the top. The heat was oppressive. Occupants with fever weren’t being tended. The men were all young—mid-twenties to mid-forties. They spoke several different languages.
Small groups of men and women in white coats stood outside the cells. They held clipboards and made notations here and there. They were observing the caged men as if they were test subjects.
The stink of the place was horrendous, human waste and fear blending into a noxious odor. Ash sent a panicked look around for Merc, breaking the spell of the vision. Back in her current reality, she drew several shaky breaths.
“What is this place?” she asked. “Why were people in cells?”
“This is where we were brought after we were genetically modified. The watchers you saw were not allowed to interfere with us in any way. We were allowed out of our cells to eat and train, but that was only a few hours each day.”
Ash stared in horror at him. “How did you survive?”
“Bastion and I had succumbed to our belief in our new situation. We couldn’t find a way out. No help was coming. We were all dying. And then Liege was put with us. He was the first to resist and the first to figure out that there were no bars on the top half of our cells.”
“But there were. I saw them.”
“You saw what we saw. But Liege realized they were formed in our minds and weren’t real.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. He told us later that he heard a phrase coming over a loudspeaker: ‘You can leave anytime you wish. Just release your chains and open the gate.’ It was driving him crazy—he was the only one hearing it.”
“You guys were chained too?”
“We thought we were.” They walked down the line of cubes. “This was our cell.”
Ash looked at him, then reached down to touch the closest metal bar. Instantly, she was taken to that time and place, seeing Sam, Bastion, and Merc in the cell—with Flynn. She gasped and pulled back. “Flynn was with you?”
“Yeah. He made a bad experience really delightful.”
“He was sick. But Sam cared for him.”
“Liege cared for all of us. It’s why we chose him to lead us when we formed the Legion.”
“What happened next?”
“Bastion carried Flynn to the mess hall. Guerre was dishing out slop. Liege asked if there was a medic who could treat Flynn. The Omnis didn’t care who lived or died. They felt only the ones who survived the change were worthy of being mutants, so the staggering numbers of deaths were of no interest to them. Guerre, who is a natural healer, wasn’t allowed to help in any significant way. I think Santo was protecting him. He did suggest that we get the ones with fevers out to the creek nearby to let the water cool them.
“It helped. But soon after that, Liege met Santo. He was very involved with our training. We didn’t know if he was friend or foe because he appeared to be with the Omnis. Really, we’re still not sure. But he was who clued Liege in to what was happening. He trained Liege, who trained us. We had to form teams. Seems all of the men in the camp at that time naturally split along a line that roughly equated to ethics. Flynn, who’d recovered by then, led the team in favor of pursuing power—at all costs. Liege led the team in favor of pursuing knowledge—not at all costs. The two sides were given the same training, then set against each other.”
“Why?”
“Because we were formed to fight. Trained to infiltrate and destroy. Only the strongest were worthy of joining the Omni forces. The prize of the conflict was Guerre.”
“But why?”
“Because both teams desperately needed his healing abilities. Our side won him. Liege let him pick his side, then fought and nearly died protecting him. By then, we’d broken out of the camp and were loose in the jungle, where we spent the next few years. None of us remembered who we were for a long while, but over time, our memories slowly returned to us. We made deals with various devils—cartels, guerrillas, gangs, whatever—to survive. We were lethal. Ruthless. We might as well have joined the Omnis, because we were as bad. The only defense I can offer was that we were in survival mode. We had nothing. No homeland, no families, no income, no past, no future. Nothing. That in itself was disorienting.
“Liege kept us together as a unit. Eventually, we came to the attention of a tycoon who’d recently purchased an illegal gold mine and wanted to turn it legit. He had contacts all the way to the top of the government. He hired us to protect the business, which we did. When he died, he left us the mine. We parlayed that wealth into the formation of the Legion. Five years in, our memories restored, the larger group split up, taking our mission of fighting the Omnis back to our own countries. The first four of us stayed together, however, and followed Liege to the U.S.”
“Wow. So are you guys legit or not?”
Merc grinned. “See, that’s a very regular concern. We can manipulate minds, so there’s no real defense there. We are what we are.”
“You can’t read minds.”
“I was with you many times when you thought you were alone in Valle de Lágrimas. I wrecked the village with my revenge and anger, but could anyone describe me the same way? No. Flynn hid his real face from you. Seriously, we can convince anyone of anything with our ability to bend minds. We’re no longer beholden to any law. We can manipulate locks, so physical restraints can’t contain us. We can move about in astral form, uncovering all the secrets we want. We are a danger to humanity. And that’s coming from someone who will give his life to protect regulars. So no, we’re not legit. We’re fucked as hell. And we’re the only thing standing between regulars and the Omnis coming for them. For you.”
Ash’s mind was reeling. Merc sounded so earnest. He was drawing her in to his game. She had to keep herself separate from him, at least until they got back to Colorado, where she could seek professional help.
But for now, the best she could do was keep one foot in her world and one in his.
“I don’t see how I can be of service to your cause, Merc. I’m not a fighter. I’m not as strong as you are. I wouldn’t have survived what happened here.”
“I don’t need you to be a fighter, Ash. I need you to be my woman. I need you to be who I come home to. I need you to keep me tethered to a reality that’s worth fighting for. I need you to live the life of your dreams.”
“I don’t know anything about these Omnis you mentioned.”
“Flynn’s one of their golden sons. And if you don’t think he’d happily use you to get to us, to Guerre, think again.”
“Flynn sa
id the robe was valuable, that he needed it to make an exchange. Do you think he wanted to trade it for Guerre?”
“Probably.”
Ash folded her arms. “I don’t want to be involved with this. I want you, for a fact, but I also want my old reality. I want this to all be just a bad dream.”
“I am a bad dream. I am my own nightmare. But I will respect your choice. I can wipe all of this from your mind as soon as we get back to Colorado. I can give you back your world.”
Ash sighed. Merc was so tangled up in his game that he couldn’t separate himself from it. He still believed he could manipulate her mind. “My world, but without you in it.”
“This nightmare and I are a package deal.” He shrugged. “All or nothing.”
26
They’d spent the whole day waiting for Merc’s mysterious friend to show himself. It was dark in the cover of the trees, but bright where moonlight broke through. He didn’t light a lantern because he wanted to spare Ash the bugs it would attract.
The silence between them became as loud as the jungle. “Tell me about your family,” Ash said, “if it’s not too painful…”
“It is painful. Tina and I were high-school sweethearts. We got married the summer we graduated.”
Ash smiled. “Were you crazy in love?”
“I was crazy in lust. I think I had the maturity of a twelve-year-old boy. Honestly, I don’t think I grew up until I was here, in the camps. She deserved better than me. I loved her, sure, but was it the kind of love that carried through an entire life? I don’t think so. I joined the Army—to support us and because I wanted the adventure it offered. I wasn’t very good at domestic life. I was faithful to her in only one sense—I didn’t take up with other women, but my heart was never in the home she built for us.”
“So being a mutant is your dream job?” She frowned. “Is this game your job?”
“Maybe. I don’t know where I end and the game starts, Ash. A lot of things aren’t making sense to me and haven’t for a while.”
“I can understand that. I feel the same way. When you came along, you felt like the answer to the restlessness I’d been feeling.”
O-Men: Liege's Legion - Merc Page 25
