“They’ve hurt you.” His voice was low. “Deeply.” Without dropping his hand, he turned toward Robert. “How could this have been allowed to happen?”
Robert pulled on Matthew’s arm. “Let go.”
I immediately missed the warmth. Was there something wrong with me that I’d liked the feeling, even though it had come with pain? I was so confused.
The two men stared at each other, some sort of silent communication going on that I couldn’t hear but was fully aware was happening.
Scott approached me, not touching me as Matthew had, but getting as close as possible without contact. “How did you get here tonight if you have been a prisoner?”
I wouldn’t have used that word. Or maybe I would have. I had been a prisoner, but only because I had fought back with the police. That had been a huge mistake. If I had behaved and just been docile, I doubt they could have gotten away with what had been done since then.
“I escaped. It took a long time to plan, but I did it.” In fact, they might even have noticed by now. “They could be coming for me. They’ll discover I’m gone. Contact my family and they’ll likely know right where I am, since it’s Halloween and this was the start of the trouble to begin with.” I ran a hand over my face. My head was slightly clearer since Matthew had touched me. But I was still not quite myself. Sweat covered me. My body had definitely noticed that I’d missed my last dose.
“If that is true, then we need to leave here.” Matthew looked around. “I’ve never cared for this theater as a meeting place. Too many ghosts here, but all theaters have them. And the energy is not helpful.”
Ignoring most of what he said, I focused on the first part of his declaration. “You can leave here?”
“Certainly.” Scott nodded. “We never have much time, so transportation seemed a waste of it.”
Through gritted teeth, Matthew spoke to Robert. “It should never have happened.”
Robert frowned. “I agree, and believe me, heads will be removed from bodies, but for now, he’s right. Let’s get her out of here.”
Still, Matthew didn’t move. “To what end? If we continue to leave her here, they will get her when we are not here. Nothing has gone as it was supposed to. I say it’s time.”
“Maybe. But…we can’t decide that in this instance. We have to go back and get the means to take her with us.”
With them? I sucked a breath. “Into the masks?”
Scott smiled at me. It was a relief to see it. I’d only visited with them three total times in my life, but I felt as though I knew them. There were elements to their personalities that stayed the same, even if their clothes didn’t. Last time, they had worn much more colorful clothing, but today, they were all in black. From top to bottom. Did they change clothes in the masks?
“Not in the masks. No. I know we keep information from you, but that is for your safety, and since you’ve been taken by the authorities for speaking truth, I feel we were right to do so. Come. We’ll go somewhere else.”
That worked for me. I didn’t love the inside of this rundown place any more than they did, but there really was nowhere to go. “I have no place to take you. I have no home. I’m afraid we’re stuck here until they get here.”
Robert shook his head. “There are places. Safe houses for our people. This was the easiest spot for us to come through, but if we need to move, we need to move.”
“Barbaric time.” Matthew put out his hand like he wanted me to take it and then dropped it again. “I keep forgetting. Robert.” He seemed to choke on the name. “Do you know where we’re going?”
“I do. Follow me.”
I’d not been wrong when I’d said the other two deferred to him. With his direction, we walked through the dilapidated theater together, back out the door I’d come in. Fireworks lit up the sky, and as I turned to look at them, Robert threw me behind him. I stumbled, but Scott steadied me before he abruptly let go of me. Once again, the painful yet not painful feeling came and went with their embrace.
“Why does it hurt but not hurt when you touch me?” All three of them still stared at the skies. Oh, the fireworks. Did they not know what that was? I shook my head, trying to clear it. “Halloween celebration. We’re not far from the best party in town.”
Robert let out a visible breath. “Explosions in the sky that are meant to be celebratory. Yes, I’d forgotten. We will have to go through the crowd to get to our destination.”
Scott’s smile was infectious. “I’ve always wanted to see it.”
“You would.” Matthew rolled his eyes, but it was with a smirk. “I don’t mind the crowd. Easier to get lost in. And they won’t be looking for her there.”
“Agreed.” Robert nodded. “So toward the noise, and then we’ll make a sharp left and head to the safe house.”
Safe house? I quit walking. This was too much. The years and a compulsion I couldn’t justify made me find them every Halloween. But safe houses? And their reaction to things? “Who are you three? I…I’m not this person in the rest of my life. I don’t follow directions like a sheep. Even in the inpatient facility, I fought for my opinion to be heard. I can’t follow you to some place I don’t know like I’m some doormat. I don’t know. My head isn’t all that clear right now, but I think you understand me. I mean, you come out of masks and…”
Robert held up his hand. “I do understand you. And you do need some answers. When you first came, you were so young. Sixteen was much younger than we anticipated you contacting us. It wasn’t time or appropriate for us to explain things to you. We’ve been waiting. I might have liked a few more years for you to have experienced more life. But they’ve locked you up, and we can’t have that. Twenty will have to do.”
Matthew shrugged. “I would have taken you at sixteen and just kept you with us in a completely appropriate manner until you were eighteen. But that’s me.”
Scott pointed at Robert. “That’s why he’s in charge.”
They still hadn’t told me enough. I stood my ground. “Maybe I am crazy, maybe I should be in a place where I can’t hurt myself or others. The fact is that I am following you guys to some place I don’t know to do I-don’t-know-what. You came out of masks and—you could be anything. It’s Halloween. There are ten different types of devil costumes wandering the streets right now, but you could be the real things. Demons or something.”
“Demons?” Scott looked at Robert like he needed clarification.
“Comes from ancient religions. God of the underworld or some such thing. I need to refresh my knowledge. I think people get sent there for breaking religious rules, after they die. And maybe the devil comes to earth or something to screw with people?” Robert cleared his throat. “Is that right, Chaney? Am I close?”
My mouth fell open. Did they really not know what or who the devil was? “Yep. Pretty close. How do you not know that?”
“Let me ask you something.” A shriek of laughter sounded in the not too far distance. “You fought for the idea that we were real because you could see us. You can see us now. Do we look like devils to you?”
Scott looked between us. “What would they look like?”
“I don’t know exactly.” It seemed so surreal to be discussing this, even as I answered Scott. “Red, maybe. Horns. A tail.”
“Sounds awful.” Scott put his hands on his hips. “Why would…”
Matthew held up his hand. “Let her answer Robert.” Again with the nearly choking on the name.
I found my voice again. “You look human to me.”
“And that is what we are. Same as you. There are just some things you need to understand. So come with us. We won’t hurt you. In fact, if someone tries to take you, I’ll hurt them to stop it. I promise you that.”
He seemed very sincere. I wanted to believe him. “You’ll give me some answers? How three humans come out of three masks every Halloween? I need some answers. Even knowing you’re real…I feel crazy.”
Robert nodded, once. “Yes, as soon a
s you’re safe, I’ll tell you everything.”
“We all will,” Scott finished for him. “Just try to shut us up.”
I had a choice, but then again, I always had. I could have lied all of these years and not told people what I’d seen. I could run away now. But I wasn’t built like that. Truth was truth, and I wanted to hear theirs. It was beyond time.
Two
The safe house was two blocks off Frenchman’s on a street that my stepfather would have said was still turning over. It meant that it hadn’t been entirely fixed up yet. Some of the owners must have been holding out for more money. Or they had an emotional attachment that meant they were keeping the places for sentimental reasons. Those people drove my stepfather crazy.
But then again, he’d never really understood what it was to love something because of its quirks, because it didn’t quite fit.
New Orleans was an old city. Things were often breaking, even the roads, and that made me love it even more.
“Look.” Scott laughed. “Those people are all wearing costumes with wings.” He laughed again, and this time, Matthew smirked at his display.
“I see the wings. Funny you’re focused on that. I’m watching the ones who look like aliens.”
I followed where Matthew indicated, and a thought dawned on me. “Are you aliens?”
He shook his head, but didn’t take his gaze from where it stayed on the five men dressed up like Vulcans. Robert shot me a look as he pulled a key out of his pocket. It was shiny, gold and on a black key ring. “I thought we established we’re human.”
“I’m really confused.”
“That’s to be expected, considering how things have been.” Matthew nodded. “But aliens don’t look like those costumed people.”
My mouth fell open, even as my mind struggled to keep up with everything that was happening. Man, I really needed a nap. Maybe for weeks. “You’ve seen aliens?”
If they hadn’t come out of three masks, I might have suggested they join me in the joys of in-patient living. There were some people in there who thought they saw aliens, too.
He made a non-committal noise just as Robert got the door open, and I was ushered inside. Their size and bulk kind of herded me forward. Matthew was walking, and if I didn’t want to be run over, I had to do the same.
Still, as insane—and it was a lot for me to use that word, considering things—as this was, I was excited to be here with them. I could take a deep breath, as though the thing I waited for all year—and in this case, two years—had finally happened. My masks were here. They were my masks, but they were, in fact, flesh and blood men standing in front of me.
The safe house was very benign. From the outside, it looked like a place someone had turned over fast. There was paint on the wood outside, but it was sloppy. The roof was cheap material that would leak in five years. I never wanted to know so much about home building. It wasn’t even something that interested me. I’d been a history and theater kind of a student way back when. But all the time I was forced onto the job sites so I could be scorned by my stepfather—or at least, it felt that way—had taught me a few things, despite my lack of interest.
Give me Shakespeare or Churchill any day of the week. I was a bit of an Anglophile.
Not that I ever got to make a career or go to school. I’d screwed up in too big a way before that happened, and my stepfather had taken the chance to get what he wanted. And my mother? She was in la-la land with him. Whatever he said went. From the moment my father died, she’d lost her backbone. All she wanted was someone to take care of her. I might not know much, but what was the point of security if you lost yourself in the meantime?
Inside, the place was scarcely decorated. A bland couch. Three bland bedrooms. One bathroom with gray towels. I liked color in my life, and I wasn’t going to get any here. Not that I expected to stay here very long. It was some place we’d gone to avoid me being captured. And the guys would probably be gone in the morning. That was how it had always been. But what would they do if I never returned to their masks?
Some days, when it was just me and my thoughts, I imagined another woman finding the masks. I imagined them appearing and falling in love with that woman. The idea haunted me. I obsessed about it.
Therapists had field days with my self-confidence, but there it was.
And look at these men! Matthew was so darkly handsome. Robert’s eyes stayed with me all the time even when he wasn’t there, and Scott could pose on the cover of romance novels. The next woman…they might like her better.
At twenty, I was pretty rough looking. They didn’t let me wash my blonde hair all that often or blow it dry when I could get clean, which meant that it had officially frizzed out beyond my ability to control it. I had nice enough gray-blue eyes when they weren’t glazed over from the meds they put me on. And I hadn’t been eating enough, because I was sick of the cafeteria and the medicine I was on made my taste buds worthless.
Once, I’d had a pretty nice set of boobs, but they’d shrunk with my waist.
As if because I’d been thinking about food, my stomach growled. Wow. I was actually hungry.
Matthew looked at Robert. “What do they use to store food? To keep it cold?”
“I’m not sure, honestly.” Robert walked toward the back of the house. “That’s a good question.”
Scott laughed, throwing his head back. “Well, seeing as Chaney lives in this time, we could ask her. Where would they keep food to keep it fresh?”
“The fridge.” I pointed at the item in the kitchen, even as what they asked me sunk in. “How do you guys not know that? Start talking, or I’m going to go check myself back in to the place I am starting to suspect we all belong.”
Matthew walked to where I’d pointed and opened it up. “There’s food. And I’m going to figure out how to fix it. Go ahead, Robert, tell her who we are.”
Scott nudged against me, careful to not touch me with his skin. “Can I get you anything?”
“I…I don’t think so.” I ran my hands through my hair. “Thank you, though.”
“You’re welcome.” He winked at me.
Robert sighed. “The thing is, Chaney, that we aren’t from here.”
That much I understood. “I get that.”
“From this time, I mean.” He put his hand over his heart as I tried to digest his words. Not from this time? How was that possible? I watched Doctor Who like everyone else, but this was pushing it. But then again, maybe not. They’d come out of masks. If that were possible, why wasn’t it also totally within the realm of possibility that they’d come from another time?
I opened and closed my mouth. I had no idea—none, whatsoever—how to answer that statement.
Scott elbowed me. “He’s not lying.”
“I’m not.” Robert nodded fast. “And Scott, Robert, Matthew…we’re not those names. Where we come from, the time that we come from, we have names, but they’re more like numbers. I’m R212. That has to do with where I was born and the number of children born in the area that year. He’s S512 and Matthew is…”
“M502. Lots of 2s in our name. That’s because even-number babies were more likely to survive. There are lots of theories about that, but it’s neither here nor there at the moment. We took names you’d know when we introduced ourselves.” Matthew set a plate in front of me. The chicken was completely not cooked.
I lifted my head to smile at him. “Can’t eat it like this.”
He nodded. “It’s raw, isn’t it? Damn it. Been such a long time since we had any kind of animal product.”
So they were vegetarians from the future. Or maybe they were vegans. The room spun slightly, and I forced myself to breathe. Okay. I had to think. That was easy enough. Think. Think. Think.
“You come from another time, and you’re time traveling, um, through the masks?”
Robert—I couldn’t deal with the numbers—picked up the plate in front of me and handed it back to Matthew. “Maybe we should buy some food. I ha
ve the currency.”
I tried to imagine the three of them purchasing anything out there right now. Tonight, they might get away with no one noticing anything strange. It was a drunken night on Frenchman Street. Still, maybe I should do it.
“We come from the masks.” Scott sat down across from me. “That is how we transport here. When you…well…” He shot Robert a look. “See, the thing is that you are not from this time either. I mean you are, but you aren’t.”
Now, that I knew wasn’t true. “I was born twenty years ago, here in New Orleans. Here, in this time. I’m not from the future.”
That much I knew. I could be sure about some things. I really wanted a drink, despite not being twenty-one. A beer, perhaps. Or a case of them. Now.
“Yes, you were.” Robert cleared his throat. “The thing is—and this is where most of the women who have been brought back fly off the handle—your mother volunteered to do this. To have you here. Our time, it’s problematic. As you can imagine from our having numbers for names. Things are getting better, but it’s slow and difficult. Every so often, someone wanting a better life might time travel, something we’re not technically supposed to do because it’s illegal, and have their children in other times.”
I laughed, throwing my head back. “Look, I barely remember my dad. He died. But I can assure you that my mother isn’t some time traveling rebel or whatever. She never misses a manicure and obsesses over choosing a pair of shoes.”
I knew I had issues with my mother, but up until I spoke the words, I didn’t realize how little respect I had for her.
“She did. Twenty years ago. She doesn’t remember, won’t remember. It was a deal she made when she and your father did this. And if you choose not to go back with us now, then you won’t remember either. We’re here to give you a choice. The masks, as you call them, are orbs. They’re here for you and others like you. Around the time you’re twenty, you might find one. Then, you can decide if you want to come back.”
Wicked Souls: A Limited Edition Reverse Harem Romance Collection Page 2
