I leaned my head against the side of the tub. How had he known they’d come to get me at all? I had so many unanswered questions, and instead of information gathering, I was lying in this tub.
I used the washcloth to scrub the sore parts of my body that had been so wonderfully used, and maybe slightly consensually abused, by the three clones out there. My guys. My masks. I smiled at the thought.
Time had a way of slipping away when I was in hot water. Had I been in the tub an hour? A minute? A week? Did I care?
When the bath cooled, I pulled myself out of it and grabbed a towel to wrap myself in. I had no other clothes, so it looked like I was coming out in my towel. My hand shook a little as I wrapped myself in the cloth. Was I nervous? No, maybe it was just a consequence of time travel. Or not eating. When was the last time I’d done that?
Oh, the apple. So it wasn’t the eating thing.
I had no idea what was going on with me. Maybe I never had.
Opening the door, I got a whiff of food cooking, and my stomach growled. Even though I’d had the apple, it seemed I was still hungry.
“Hey,” Robert called out from the stove. They’d put the kitchen back together, but it looked homier this time. Probably because Matthew had his shoes kicked off and he was drinking something from a green glass while Scott chopped something on the counter. It seemed almost real and not something out of a science fiction movie I’d fallen asleep watching in the rec room of the hospital.
“Hi.” I answered with a smile. “Can I borrow something to wear?”
Matthew jumped up, his shirt coming up just a little when he did to show his impressive abs. I forced myself to look away. If I started dwelling on how good looking these guys were again, I was going to end up doing things that weren’t conducive to getting answers to my questions. I couldn’t be the kind of girl who fucked instead of talking. Even though that had been a serious amount of fun. My body might not have been able to handle it in any case. I was a little sore.
“Nope.” Matthew nudged me as he walked by. “You can’t borrow something when we got you clothes.”
They did? “How did you do that? No. Don’t tell me. The same way you somehow use tech to create rooms?”
Scott looked over his shoulder. “Nothing so cool, unfortunately. We bought them from the women’s clothing tent in the central market. We hoped you might want to come with us the next time you touched the orbs.”
That’s right. It hadn’t been years here between my visits from them. It had been weeks. They hadn’t even known that I’d missed a year. “Do I want to know how time travel actually works?”
“If you want the long explanation, I’ll give it to you.” Robert put a lid on a pot and walked over to me. “But it might be a lot for right this second.”
Matthew came out of the bedroom I hadn’t seen yet, and handed me a box with clothes in it. With one hand holding up my towel—I’d never been the kind of girl who could figure out how to keep my towel up without holding it—and the other on the box, I awkwardly made my way to my room.
I nearly dropped it when I entered. One of them had taken a lot of time making it nice for me. There were yellow curtains on the windows that made the box-shaped room look bright and cheery. The bed was white with soft yellow roses on it. The dresser looked old and well-crafted in wood, and the closet had hangers. I sucked in a breath. I loved it.
“This okay?” Matthew followed me in. “We weren’t sure what you would like, but we looked at photos from the time in the heritage hall that holds such things. And we talked to others who had come here from around the same time. Then we went to the market and saw what looked like it might be familiar for you.”
That was so sweet. “Thank you for caring that much.”
“There’s nothing we wouldn’t do for you.” He took the box from me and set it on the bed. “Maybe tomorrow we can introduce you to others who have made the time shift like you. It would help. Or that’s what I hear.”
I yawned. “I think I’d like that. After I eat and sleep. I feel tired and starving.”
He walked over to where he’d placed the box and grabbed clothes out of it—a shirt and a pair of soft-looking pants. “That’s totally normal. Here put these on. We’ll feed you and then you can go to sleep.”
That sounded exactly like what I should do. Eat. Sleep. Tomorrow, I could face what living in this tomorrow-land was going to be like for me. That seemed like fast enough to learn anything else. “I’m really happy you were real. That the three of you weren’t made up in my mind. Even if this is a lot.”
He stroked his finger down the side of my face. “Not as happy as we are that you exist, Chaney. I promise you that. You’re like a fucking miracle, and I don’t believe in those things.”
Eight
I fell asleep with Matthew’s sweet words drifting through my mind. The way these guys made me feel so special was both overwhelming and unfamiliar.
I woke up, my heart pounding and a cold sweat making me shiver in inky darkness. My breath billowed out of me, the sound filling the room.
“Shh.” Scott sat up next to me and pulled me into his arms. “You’re safe. You’re here with me and Robert and Matthew.”
It took a moment for me to orient myself. Something had woken me up—I could almost sense what it was on the edge of my awareness. Listening hard, I tried to locate what it was.
In the hospital, I’d slept hard—a result of medication. Now that Scott was weaning me off all the medicines that had been numbing me and keeping me compliant, I felt hyperaware and alert in a way I hadn’t been in years.
“You didn’t hear anything?” I tried to keep my voice low, but the edge of panic seeped into it, and it cracked.
“Chaney.” He drew me against his chest so my head rested above his heart. The steady thump eased the knot of anxiety inside me, but still I listened, all senses straining. “There’s nothing. We would—” He moved suddenly, holding me so close his arms crushed me, and rolled. Bright light filled the room, making it daylight for a second, and leaving me blinking to clear my vision. A sound like a bomb blast or rocket shook the entire house, so loud my ears rang, leaving me deaf and blind.
Scott lifted me. Despite my disorientation, I could tell he held me close and was moving across the house. He shifted, setting me on my feet, but I wobbled. My ears hurt like I dove too deep in the water and the pressure popped my eardrums. Lifting my hands to my ears, I swept them over my skin. It was wet, but without my vision and in the dark, I couldn’t make out anything.
I pressed my fingers to my eyes, rubbing hard. I couldn’t protect myself—couldn’t protect my masks—in this state.
Someone grabbed me, like I was at a dance and swept from one partner to another. I couldn’t focus and couldn’t be any help, except to go along and trust that I was going where I needed to go.
Every so often, things came into focus, giving me snapshots of the world.
It was on fire.
The house, the trees. Robert held my hand, long hair tied back from his face, revealing skin turned orange in the glow of the flames.
All around us, people ran. Vehicles like the one we’d traveled in rumbled by, shaking the ground under my feet. Robert had to steady me. Anytime we stopped, I stumbled, my equilibrium totally shot.
Matthew strode in front of us—gaze narrowed as he led us through the chaos.
Squinting, I tried to find Scott. He’d just held me in his arms. Where was he? Squeezing Robert’s hand, I forced him to look over at me. “Scott?” I yelled. My voice sounded small and far away, but my throat hurt, so I knew I’d put some effort behind speaking.
Robert’s lips moved. I stared. Goddammit. What was he trying to say?
He said it again, and again, and finally I made it out. “Fight.”
He was fighting?
Whipping my head around, I tried to locate him, but all I managed to do was make myself so dizzy, I fell against him. Without giving me time to argue, Robert lifted me
into his arms.
Ahead of us, Matthew gestured frantically. Lips moving, “Run. Run.”
There was another explosion, this one so close. Dirt and rocks and grass covered me, as the force tore me from Robert.
Smoke covered everything, and I couldn’t breathe. Blind and deaf, and something was wrong with my legs. I couldn’t move. Feeling down my legs, I felt a muscular form. Robert. I grabbed him, pulling him toward me, but I was suddenly ripped away.
The smoke had a funny taste, bitter, not like the itchy, woodsiness I expected. This was wrong. I caught a flash of someone wearing a mask, and for a moment, I thought it was Scott.
“Scott?” Opening my mouth filled my lungs with the smoke, and that was all it took. I fell into darkness.
“Robert!” I sat up, gasping, and reaching toward my legs, but the person sitting there wasn’t Robert. It was Bas, the man who had accompanied my father. Meeting my eyes, he smiled.
“I’m glad you’re awake.”
I could hear him. Touching my ears, I didn’t answer right away.
“Your tympanic membranes were ruptured from the blast. But we’ve healed you. I suppose you’re wondering why we went to all this trouble?”
I didn’t want to give him anything, so instead, I asked, “Where is my father?”
“Not here,” he answered, gaze narrowing before he fixed a smile on his face again. “We decided once he got you back, his work was finished.”
Oh my god. “He’s dead?”
“What?” He laughed like it was crazy I’d jumped to that conclusion. “No. No. We just thought it wasn’t worth involving him. He’s a thinker, your father, not a fighter. Let the king sit on his throne while the rest of us go to war.” Patting my leg, he stood. “It’s an interesting family line we have.”
Okay. So if I let the man monologue, I’d figure out what was going on. Alex—my father—probably had no idea that this was happening. Whatever this was.
Bas held his hand out to me, waiting. I stared at it. There was no way in hell I’d touch—
Sick of waiting, he grabbed my wrist and yanked me to my feet. “I think you’ll find I’m mostly an easy-going guy, Chaney, but sometimes, there are limits even to my patience. I don’t enjoy going into rogue territory and blowing shit up, as fun as it might be for fifteen minutes, and I don’t enjoy rude little bitches refusing to fall into line.”
For some reason, his tirade made me smile. There. There was the man Bas truly was. I’d sensed that lurking beneath the surface of his quick smile. Now I knew what I was working with.
“I’m not likely to change, so you probably should have left me where I was.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.” His hand tightened on my wrist, and I ground my teeth together rather than make any sound of discomfort. “I can’t let the fact of your existence destroy all we’ve worked for.”
“Again, and with consideration to your distaste for rudeness, but you should have left me where I was. Whether it was with Robert, Matthew, and Scott, or in my own time.”
He stopped, shoes squeaking on the floor. I took a moment to study our surroundings. A knot formed in my stomach. The place was sterile. White walls. Long tiled hallways. It reminded me of Canyon Cove.
“Is this a hospital?” The question left my lips before I could stop it. Shit. From Bas’s grin, I’d given something away with that question.
“Sure is. But not like the barbaric units you’re used to. This place is at the forefront of genetic technology.” He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Hence, your presence.”
Genetic technology.
“Your father was actually the first to undergo this procedure—not that he remembers, and neither will you, by the way, in case you were wondering—which was designed specifically for our family. Not one of the things we like to broadcast. But there it is.”
Having already been committed against my will, it was easy for me to make the leap to all sorts of horrific things. An icepick lobotomy. Electro-shock therapy. I’d escaped Canyon Cove with my mind intact, only to come to a supposedly more advanced time and lose it. All my bravado washed away in the face of losing a part of myself.
“What do you mean?”
A set of double doors opened, held by two men dressed similarly to Bas. “Rogues serve a purpose. They are workers. That’s it. There are two categories of individuals in this world, and they don’t mix.”
I didn’t understand. I’d been here twenty-four hours. The guys made it sound as if the rogues stayed to themselves. Everyone left everyone else alone. But this definitely wasn’t the picture Bas was painting. For the first time, I started to wonder if Matthew, Scott, and Robert had been honest with me.
Bas stared at me. “You’re starting to get it, aren’t you?”
“You don’t want me staying with Matthew, Scott, and Robert.”
One of the men holding the doors snickered. “They give themselves names now.”
“Genetic mutations are to be expected when cloning,” Bas said.
I eyed the room beyond the double doors. It seemed innocuous enough. A chair, like the sort in a dentist’s office, sat in the middle of the room. Along the sides were stainless steel tables. There were no instruments of torture that I could see. Still. I had no desire to go in there.
As if the men could sense my discomfort, they sprang into action. Both grabbed my arms, pulling me toward the chair. I barely had time to make myself a dead weight before I was slammed into the chair, cuffs erupting from the chair to secure my arms, torso, waist, and legs in place. As hard as I fought, and I did, I couldn’t get loose.
Unmoved by my increasingly desperate flailing, Bas approached a steel table. He withdrew from his pocket a device similar to Scott’s and pressed a button.
Shit.
Everything I’d expected to see appeared on a tray next to me. Like the little house I never had a chance to call home, things only materialized when they were needed.
I eyed the syringes, small metal discs, and scalpels before glaring at the man washing his hands in a sink.
“What is wrong with me?” I asked. “That you have to fix me?”
“Every so often, a clone is not as perfect as we hope. There are genetic mutations—like with any biological creature—that appear unexpectedly. Unfortunately for our family, we are susceptible to that mutation. Your father was the first, and you will be the second. Rogues bonding to rogues—” Bas laughed, a sound of true amusement. When he finished, he wiped tears from his eyes. “What the fuck do I care? The rogues are sterile.”
Something he said didn’t sit right. Why would they have needed to do whatever this procedure was to my father? Unless… “My mother was a clone, wasn’t she?”
Winking, he tapped the side of his nose. “Nailed it. Things were going pretty well, all things considering. Your father and mother went through time, their memories wiped. That wasn’t something that could stand, so my father went back, brought Alex through, kicking and screaming, wiped his memory, and everything seemed fine. You were there—the embarrassment was hidden. Until those fucking clones—” He took a breath and let it out, then shook his head. “They found you, and would have revealed everything. So with a little nudge, away you went. But the damage was done.”
“I’m interested to see what we find, Sebastian.” One of the men placed a mask over his face as he approached us. “The mother was supposed to be sterile. What does mixed clone DNA look like under the microscope? It might make sense to keep her around in case we need more samples.”
“That’s an idiotic idea,” he replied. “Her father will come looking for her, and it’s just a matter of time before the rogues do, too. We need to delete the mutation and break the bond. We’ll wipe her memory, and that will be that.”
“Or you can just leave me with Robert, Matthew, and Scott,” I offered. Not that I expected them to take me up on it. “Pretend you never saw me. I pretend I don’t know you. We just go on with our lives.”
“If only it
was that easy.”
I truly didn’t understand why it wasn’t. If I were an embarrassment, then just leave me be and pretend I didn’t exist. Why go to all this trouble?
A screen appeared in the corner of the room, flashing on. Bas stared at it and it began to cycle through images. His eyes tracked it, and I realized it was some kind of intuitive machine, using wherever his gaze landed to pull up the next slide.
With my—interrupted—high school education, I had only a minimal grasp of what I was looking at. My brain—maybe. DNA—perhaps.
“You’re a doctor?” If he were about to dive into my cells, he better have had a medical degree.
He shook his head. “There’s no need. Any info we need we just upload. I’m a doctor today, but perhaps I’ll be a mathematician tomorrow. Or a fly fisherman. It all depends on my mood.”
Fucking great.
The lights flickered, and I had a moment of hope. Maybe someone had come to help me, but no. It was merely the lights dimming, dropping from bright white down to a cool blue. A long metallic arm dropped from the ceiling, swung on a hinge, and affixed a mask to my face.
Immediately, a sweet tasting gas filled my nose. I tried to hold my breath, but it was too late. My eyes shut, and I fell asleep.
Nine
“Who is that?”
My mother frowned, two faint lines appearing by her pink lips. Momma was so pretty. Dark, wavy hair. Pink lips. Blue eyes. She was strong, too. Some days she would take me to the park and lift me onto the monkey bars, holding me aloft.
She studied the small narrow photos, a series of four images in black and white. A man kissed her cheek in one, then made a silly face in another. In the last two, Momma and the man stared at each other like nothing else in the world existed.
“Your father.” The frown never left her. That wasn’t a good sign. When Momma was confused, she’d get angry. Then she’d go quiet and forget I was around. She’d forget lots of things. “I think. It’s hard to remember, baby. Lots of boys thought I was pretty, and your daddy wasn’t around very long.”
Wicked Souls: A Limited Edition Reverse Harem Romance Collection Page 8
