With a Touch: The Guild Chronicles, Book 1

by Rhiannon Leith

  “Burgess sent in a report,” said Rafael. “I need to see him. I’m heading out to the rendezvous but I’ll try to join you for lunch.” He frowned at Aidan then, sensing at last the reluctance that was crystal clear to Eva. Of course, she had been deeply inside his mind more recently than Rafael, intent on locking him in his own private torment. “A problem?”

  “No, but I—perhaps you should—”

  “He’s scared,” Eva interrupted.

  “No, I’m not,” Aidan snapped before Rafael could reply. He grabbed Rafael by the arm and pulled him from the bed and towards the door, lowering his voice. As if she wouldn’t hear. “But this changes things. You said strong but I had no idea that was even possible. She could have—”

  “Yes. She could have.” The warning tone in his voice stilled Aidan’s protests. “But she didn’t.”

  “Because you stopped her.”

  Rafael shook his head. “She stopped herself. I would have been far too late. You scared her, you idiot. Don’t do it again. If it helps…” He met Eva’s eyes over Aidan’s shoulder. Rafael was fully aware that she could hear them. He found it amusing that Aidan didn’t know. And he understood. He’d felt her terror and he had dealt with it by turning its force upon himself, by using his own fears to counter it. Problem was, he’d felt Aidan’s fear too. Aidan, who he didn’t dare think of losing. “If it helps, think of her as a loaded weapon. And handle her with care. But don’t turn her away from you because of it.”

  “You shouldn’t go alone,” Aidan said, still arguing, still determined. “Even something as routine as meeting Burgess, it’s dangerous.”

  Rafael shrugged, his expression saying he accepted the concern but would not be swayed. “I’ll take Hugh with me. He could do with a break.”

  He leaned in close, whispered something in Aidan’s ear, his lips brushing against the lobe just as they had against hers.

  Aidan waited until he had gone to turn around. Shame marked him, a blush of embarrassment staining his cheeks. He bowed his head.

  “What did he say?” she asked.

  “Can’t you just reach into my mind and pick it out?”

  She bit against the inside of her lower lip. “Not if you don’t want me to. I’ll never do that again without your consent. I promise. I’m sorry, Aidan. Really I am.”

  He sighed and raked his hands through his shaggy blonde hair. “So am I. Let’s move past it, okay?”

  “And on to what?”

  “Come with me. Just to talk. Okay?” He looked up, though his head was still lowered, and she got the impression of a boy, a lost and uncomfortable boy who could articulate desires and lustful thoughts but didn’t appear to be able to express his feelings. She couldn’t figure him out, but she wanted to try.

  “To talk. Okay.”

  “And try to put it behind us.”

  She nodded, but she knew they were both lying. It would be there forever now. How could it not be?

  Chapter Six

  The clothes Aidan picked out of the wardrobe felt as sensuous to her as everything else she had encountered among the Hedonists. They thrived on pleasure alone, the Guild said, thought of nothing but pleasure, nothing but themselves. And yet, here among them she saw that the pursuit of pleasure was extended to everything, so that everything was pleasurable. They were not the wild and reckless creatures, the animalistic monsters the Guild would have everyone think. The realisation shook her to the core. Pleasure in everything. That was their secret. What they ate, what they wore, how they loved…

  The flowing cream skirt and loose, gypsy-type blouse felt strange and unfettered on her, the material tantalising her skin. So used to tying up her hair every morning, she almost did it again, but paused as she swept its length over her shoulder. There was no reason to. And she felt like a different person when it was down. So she left it there. Just to see what that person would do.

  Aidan wore black, as he always did, tight on his body like the Security uniform she had first seen on him. A disguise, she realised, as much a part of the façade he hid behind as the trappings of Guild Security.

  “What did I throw back at you, Aidan?” she asked, nervous to voice the question.

  He stiffened and tried to mask it by pushing the door open and holding it for her. “You didn’t see?” She shook her head and waited for him in the corridor outside. “I lost my family. When I was a kid. I was in the Guild compound during the purges and our neighbours were seized. Dad tried to stop them. So Security…”

  Eva winced, understanding instantly. “They killed him?”

  “Not just him.” His eyes took on that fixed quality people wore when they were trying to report horrors they had seen. “My mother. My sister. And the neighbours, and their four children…”

  She wrapped her arm around him and schooled her mind to soothe his. The reverse of what she had done before. Somehow, she hoped she could win back his trust. She just didn’t know how. “But you survived?”

  “Barely. I was shot in four different places. But I lived. A ‘terrible misunderstanding’ the officials called it. They were looking for subversives and over-reacted. Ironic, huh? Someone took me to medical. I ended up in the military as a grunt. They taught me everything I needed to know. Moulded me into a perfect soldier. And then, one day, I had enough of hunting down runaways. Can we talk about something else, please?”

  “What else?”

  “Anything,” he replied coldly.

  They descended the stairs in silence and made their way outside. Evening was drawing in with the setting sun. The first thing she noticed was the sensation of the combined breeze and sunlight on her skin. Then the sunset, the western sky aflame. Nothing could have prepared her for it. She sucked in a breath.

  “Makes a change from the compound, doesn’t it?” Aidan’s fingers brushed her arm again. An apology, perhaps.

  God, she hoped so. She wanted that intimacy back, the closeness she had felt to him from the very beginning, from that first touch. If he was Rafael he would pick the thoughts out of her head and know at once. But Aidan couldn’t do that.

  She stopped, turned to face him, lifting her chin to do so. “May I show you something?”

  He would have winced, but he was too good at hiding his emotions on the surface to do that. But that didn’t help when it came to a psychic. Even without touching his mind, she could read those surface emotions he refused to show. They rolled off him, unmistakable. Aidan felt so very deeply, he could do nothing to hide it from someone like her, like Rafael. Emotions poured off him like so many exotic perfumes, tantalising and intoxicating. And that was a vital part of his attraction.

  His eyes studied hers and then, slowly, he nodded, his Adam’s apple moving in his throat as he swallowed down the uncertainty. Eva reached up to touch his face, keeping her fingertips light as a gossamer. She had one treasure, one thing of value in her memories, something that warmed her heart and formed a safe place to which she could retreat. Like Daisy with her flowers, somewhere to hide. So she showed him this.

  Light and a breeze, the whisper of foliage and the sound of running water. The flutter of colourful wings, bright blue, spotted, crimson, golden brown, and saffron. Whirling around her head, landing on her hands and taking flight once more. Butterflies. Exotic, beautiful, perfectly formed. To the Guild, useless. Pointless. What good were they. But to her father…

  “I was just a baby. I thought for years it was just a dream. But it didn’t fade or go away. They couldn’t dislodge it from my mind.”

  “Harmon—your father kept butterflies in the Guild compound?”

  She had no answer. In truth, she had no idea if it was real, how it could possibly be real. “It’s all I have of him. But I don’t know if it ever actually happened. This…talent, gift, ability…whatever you want to call it…it had to come from somewhere, didn’t it? I think it was his last gift to me.”

  Aidan stared at her for a moment, his brow tightening into a frown, but then his features relaxed
again and he sighed. “That sounds like the sort of thing he’d do.”

  Eva froze. Aidan had known him. Both he and Rafael had said so. She’d been so bewildered at the time, so afraid, that she’d forgotten.

  A thousand questions clamoured to the forefront of her mind—What was he like? Why had he left them and put her mother in the impossible situation of choosing between her children, of giving her daughter to the Guild? What had he done with his life?—but one drowned out all the others.

  “How did he die?”

  Aidan’s lips tightened and he led her over to the edge of the garden where a low bench nestled in the shade of an apple tree. Long shadows stretched across the furrows in the soil, filling them with darkness.

  “He was trying to get to you. He found out from Burgess where you were posted. Shocked us all.”

  “Burgess, my boss?”

  “Yes. He knew your father of old. They were partners once, friends. He helped your father escape when Security found him helping others escape. He’s been good to us too, sends us news, leaves supplies at the drop point, even vaccines for the kids.”

  It was her turn to frown. “Vaccines? For what?”

  “Illnesses the Guild no longer have to concern themselves with. But out here, well…”

  “I had vaccinations as an infant, everyone does.”

  He shrugged and his hand brushed her thigh. It sent a shiver through her. “Come back to your room with me,” he murmured and inside her, something melted.

  “You haven’t told me what happened to him.”

  “Oh God, Eva…” He exhaled in a rush of air, exasperated. “They found him in the Guild Compound looking for you, cornered him. You’d been reassigned or something.”

  When? When had she been reassigned? She was about to ask a date, but he ploughed on.

  “They had shocksticks.” The word meant nothing to her. His narrowed eyes registered her blank expression. “Shocksticks. You have to have seen them?”

  “I have no idea what they are.”

  “Shocksticks,” he repeated, more urgently now. “Short, thick batons, about as long as your forearm. They emit an electromagnetic pulse. On me, they hurt like hell, but on a psychic, even one as strong as your father… The pulse not only electrocutes them like any other human being, it scrambles their abilities, renders them powerless. Guild Security have them. Standard issue. If you ever see someone coming at you with one, you do anything—do you understand? Anything!—to get away.”

  Icy claws dug into her lungs, tightening them until she could no longer breathe. “I’ve never…never heard of them.” And it made sense. Horrible, sickening sense. If you wanted to use someone, to make them cooperate willingly, why tell them you had something that would render them a gibbering heap of terror? Unless you needed to give them something to fear. And there were so many other things to fear. Being wiped. Being assigned unwillingly to a cell. Being cast out. Being left in the wilds for some errant group like the Hedonists to seize.

  “Are you okay?” His touch was a comfort, a balm.

  “Do you know that they teach about Hedonists?” she asked. “In the Guild?”

  “Yes.”

  Not the answer she expected. She kept forgetting that Aidan had lived undercover inside the compound, that he’d been born there. She closed her eyes, trying to compose herself again.

  “Eva?” He squeezed her shoulder. “Your father rescued me. He was assigned to me in medical, as a counsellor, and more probably I think they wanted him to get information out of me about my parents. Maybe he did, but he helped me. He got me out of the military when I needed to leave. He rescued Rafael from the Juvenile too. At great risk. They wanted to keep Rafe more than anyone—well, anyone before you, perhaps.”

  He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer. This time she didn’t panic. “But they didn’t keep me. You rescued me.”

  “Yes.”

  Eva rested her head on his shoulder, closed her eyes and let the sunlight play on her face and Aidan’s hand on her upper arm soothe her.

  “He brought us together here, you know. And when they called us Hedonists, he explained what the word actually meant. That it’s about pleasure in all things, not just sex or perversion or whatever they would have people believe. Although…” His lips brushed hers and she started a moment before succumbing. And it was oh so easy to succumb to Aidan. Just as it was to Rafael. Together they embodied all her fantasies. Together they were worth all the mornings of waking up alone, reaching for a friend, someone to touch and share with. And finding no one. Not until now.

  Aidan’s hand brushing against her arm had been the first rush of sensation in her life. He’d been so daring to go in undercover. And after the flurry of Rafael’s rescue, his first thought had been for the other man. Aidan was young, dynamic, a life force buffeting her carefully constructed cocoon. She was ready to rip it off and join him, dancing with her new wings.

  She returned his kiss until he withdrew, resting his forehead against hers. The action mirrored Rafael. Something learned from him perhaps, an intimacy that he wanted to share with her.

  “That side has its advantages,” he continued, his voice shaking a little more than he would like her to know, so she pretended not to notice. “I must admit. The Guild names us Hedonists as a slur, implying it is all about the moment, about debauchery and lack of responsibility. Harmon—your father explained that pleasure as an end isn’t wrong, that pleasure can be found in every aspect of our lives and that we should allow ourselves to experience the joy of it all in order to do it justice. I owed him a lot.”

  Eva nuzzled closer to him, lost in the moment, in the rise and fall of his voice. The cadence rocked her to relaxation. But it didn’t stop her from lifting her mouth to his again, from kissing him tenderly and waiting for him to continue.

  “Come back to my room with me,” she murmured. This time, there were no arguments. Not from either of them.

  Aidan brought her down to breakfast the following morning, where he introduced her to so many people that she couldn’t grasp all the names. They smiled politely, nodded to her, for his sake. No doubting the tensions that lurked in their eyes, that sizzled in the air around them. Fear, loathing in some cases, but so much distrust. Despite the change of clothes and the lightening of her spirit just walking into that room again, just facing them all reminded her palpably that she was Guild to them, and Guild could never be trusted.

  She followed Aidan, keeping her eyes averted, trying to be as small and unobtrusive as possible. She recalled, so many years ago, walking through a grey and featureless canteen, one of a line of children. Wanting to shrink in on herself. Disappear. A chill ran down her spine as this new memory reached the surface, a bubble long buried, slowly and inexorably breaking free now. And it was her memory. No chance of it being anyone else’s. It was too clear, far too vivid. But worst of all, it was new to her. Brand new.

  Eva swallowed hard on a suddenly tight throat and her stomach clenched in alarm.

  This isn’t possible. Memories don’t just appear. By their very nature…they’re memories. I’d have remembered this if it had happened to me. I should have remembered.

  But she did. And that was the problem.

  She just hadn’t remembered this memory before now.

  Her head throbbed and then her consciousness lurched inside her head, nauseating her. She stopped in her tracks, vaguely aware that Aidan turned, concern replacing his thoughts of food. But the world swirled in nauseating shades of grey, of brilliant light and shadows so dark they stained the soul.

  Abruptly, her head cleared again and Aidan caught her in his strong, sure hands. “Are you okay? What happened?”

  “I don’t…I don’t know…” Her voice grated on her throat and tears stung like acid in her mind.

  “She broke through a Guild block,” said a youthful voice. A teenage boy stepped closer, still eyeing her suspiciously. “It hurts when it happens all at once like that.”
<
br />   Guided by Aidan, she sank onto the nearest chair. The boy stood carefully out of reach, but he didn’t back away. Veiled fascination vied with his fear. Nothing else was clear. She couldn’t read him. Another psychic. God, how many of them were here?

  “You’re Guild,” he said at last.

  Was she? Still? Always? There seemed to be no escaping it. She hung her head. “What was that?”

  “A block. Your mind broke through one of the blocks they’ve put on you and you remembered something.”

  “A canteen, standing in a line… I was so young. There were so many of us.”

  “Juvie,” said the boy with a sneer.

  “Hugh.” Aidan’s voice held a warning.

  “Juvenile Hall. Where they keep us until they can work out who to reprogram and employ and who to wipe, lock up, drug and wring prophecies from. Some would say you were lucky.”

  Eva studied his face. His hair was so short she could see his scalp through the strands. And scars. Vicious-looking scars cutting into his scalp.

  Sensing her scrutiny, Hugh ran one hand over his head in self-conscious defence. It gave her a glimpse of his inner arm, riddled with smaller scars, like needle marks. Eva sucked in a breath and Hugh scowled.

  “I don’t understand,” she whispered. “I don’t remember anything else.”

  “That’s enough, Hugh,” Aidan growled, but Hugh didn’t move away.

  “You’re like me, but you must have been stronger. Or more easily used. So while the likes of you had their minds wiped and new memories put in, the likes of me were just drones. Shot up with smack so we babbled out every vision in our minds but couldn’t put one foot in front of the other. Hooked up to each other to make us stronger, a whole interconnected nest of parasites. Why do you think people fight to keep their kids away from the Guild? Why do you think there’s so many of us here? Rafael got us out, that’s why.”

  “And he got Eva out too. Do you think she suffered any less? At least you know who you are, who you were. Now back off.”