“Destroy everything in that room.”
Veronique turned to the office. The walls rippled and the metal inside zipped around. Then the ceiling caved in. I juxtaposed this with the time I had tried to destroy the surveillance data at the hotel in East Haven.
Veronique’s method was much easier.
We were back on the highway just a minute or so later.
The station wagon we’d acquired before Dorian showed up smelled musty on the inside. The owner was a cigarette smoker, something I should have looked out for in the beginning. Ash was everywhere, scratch-off lottery tickets littered the floor, and there were burn marks on the plastic door handle.
As soon as we were far enough away for me to think we hadn’t been followed, I eased up a bit on the speed and started in on the questioning.
“Tell me everything,” I said, looking from Veronique through the rearview mirror over to where Grace sat beside me. She was still in her base form, but now she wore a tight black turtleneck sweater and black jean shorts over a pair of fishnet black leggings. It seemed she frequented three forms: the Asian one inspired by the geisha on the wall of my basement apartment; her Scandinavian supermodel shape that may or may not be what she actually looked like; and her ponytailed brunette in yoga pants.
All were equally hot.
“Did you get your current clothing idea from Dorian?” I asked, noticing the fishnet tights under her shorts.
I recalled the buxom woman with jet black hair and crimson lips. An image of her placing her paintbrush between her lips flashed in my mind’s eye, followed by an image of the gas station attendant exploding.
And all I had wanted was a fucking cup of coffee.
“I thought you’d like the outfit,” Grace said, her hair darkening and the color of her lips deepening.
Stop reading my thoughts.
Sorry, bad habit! She said in my skull.
“To answer your request,” Veronique said, “Dorian Gray was stationed at our facility from 2025 to 2028. I trained with her. You didn’t see it, and it no longer exists, but one of the stops of the hyperloop pod beneath the Rose-Lyle facility was an above-ground training space outside of Hamden.”
“Ah, you trained with her; that’s how you knew.”
Veronique nodded. “And I’ve taken down one of her energy dinosaurs before. The things she creates can be stopped – either by time, by reaching their target, or by tossing as many solid objects at them as you can.”
“And they could have killed you if they touched you?”
“That’s right.”
I shook my head. “I can’t believe they trained you like that. They probably spent millions of dollars to create you, then they trained you in a way that could have ended your life prematurely if you’d made just one mistake.”
“Is there a better way to train?” Veronique asked. “Knowing one’s life is on the line changes the way they fight.”
Two faster vehicles appeared behind me, and once I passed an eighteen-wheeler, I transitioned to the slow lane and let them go around, not interested in a dick-measuring contest, especially in a station wagon.
“You two know who Dorian Gray is, right?”
“Yes, that woman,” Veronique said.
“Oh, she’s named after a book,” Grace said before I could explain.
“That’s right, um, The Picture of Dorian Gray is about this guy who wishes a portrait of himself would age rather than his physical body. As time passes and Dorian becomes more and more evil, the picture becomes hideous. There’s a lot of philosophical undertones, or whatever.”
“Interesting,” Grace said. “I’d love to read one of your books. How Heavy This Axe? That looks intriguing.”
I grinned. She was patronizing me; in an instant, Grace would know the ending of How Heavy This Axe? and how it was about a transgender dwarf abandoned by his people and how, rather than run away, the dwarf killed them all and ended up alone, until a dragon showed up and they became friends with benefits who lived happily ever after.
Who doesn’t love a happy ending?
“I can’t figure out how Dorian found us,” I said, back to the subject at hand. “I mean, of all the gas stations. How did she know to go to that one? How is that even possible? And how did she get away so fast?”
Veronique thought for a moment, the lights of the highway cutting horizontal arcs across her face as I observed her through the rearview mirror. I yawned. Adrenaline and drowsiness were a strange combo; I was alert but tired, ready to sleep as much as I was ready to run.
“She never moved that fast before,” Veronique finally said. “I don’t know how she left. Maybe she thought I would kill her. It wouldn’t be hard to do so; I almost did before.”
“We shouldn’t kill her,” Grace said, clearly reading my thoughts. “Not if we can help it.”
Veronique sat back and pulled her knees to her chest. She wasn’t wearing her seatbelt. “You’re suggesting we make friends with her and ask her to join us?”
I took over from there. “We’ll figure that out later. First, we need to come to grips with how she found our location so quickly. If she can do that, so can the rest of the people who are after us.”
“So, we’re supposed to kidnap and ask her?” Veronique laughed. “You two share a delusion. An inspiring delusion but a delusion nonetheless.”
“We’ve already agreed that we are going across the country to destroy these facilities,” I replied. “What if there are more like you two who want to join us? What if more want to be part of our movement?”
“If we could weaken her,” Grace said, “I could wipe her mind. Then she’d be our slave.”
I gulped.
I’d never heard Grace refer to the people whose minds she took over as ‘slaves.’ I recalled Chip Parker, the guy who helped us back in New Haven. The taxi driver too. And a host of others who played a smaller role in our narrative. I hesitated to call them ‘slaves’ because of the negative connotation of the word, but that’s really what they were.
I decided to let the comment pass.
“And what's with the paintbrush? Did she use that when you two trained together?”
Veronique nodded. “It’s what she uses to activate her ability. It’s kind of like the … What do wizards use again?”
“Wands?” I asked.
“It’s like her wand; her power is activated by her spit.”
“I noticed that. It would definitely make it hard for her to kiss someone.”
Grace laughed. “You’re thinking of kissing her?”
“Is that what my mind says?”
Her eyes flashed white. “No, you’re just being geeky as always.”
“I believe the word is cheeky.”
“From what I remember, any of her bodily fluids carry this ability. Her blood too. So, doing other things with her would also be a bad idea,” Veronique said.
Other things with her? Time to change the subject.
“Charged spit or not, it looks like we need to always be on high alert. We can’t even get gas in the middle of nowhere without getting assaulted. And if she was able to find us …”
I kept expecting to see a helicopter appear in the rearview mirror, its spotlight trained on us. This triggered the memory of our escape from Stamford and the multiple helicopters that Veronique brought down.
Talk about a rough afternoon.
“Let’s trade cars soon,” Grace said suddenly. “This car has too many memories.”
“Yeah, and it’s stuffy back here,” Veronique added.
“We can roll down the windows,” I suggested.
“No,” Veronique said. “It’d be smarter to change vehicles, just in case Dorian saw what we drove away in.”
Chapter Five: Mother is Watching
One more gas station later, somewhere near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and we had a new ride. We’d planned to be quick at this one, simply pulling up to the nearest car, trading out, and hitting the highway.
“M
uch better, huh?” I said as I started up a fairly new Toyota Camry.
It had a lot of room inside, and a ton of bells and whistles. I turned it to auto drive almost immediately, not feeling like navigating the eighteen-wheelers on the road.
“Definitely,” Veronique said as she got comfortable in the back.
“Grace?”
“Memories still,” she said, touching the glove box. “But not as bad. Nice. Comfortable. It’s fine, Writer Gideon.”
We arrived in Jackson, Mississippi, a few hours later; I was surprised I’d made it through without coffee. Veronique was asleep in the back, and Grace was even dozing off.
“Not yet,” I told her, as I pulled into a hotel parking spot. “I need your help.”
We had a ton of cash on us, but I still needed her to stop the front desk clerk from taking our information.
She yawned and got out of the car, morphing into her brunette form, this time with her hair braided over to one side. The car door opening startled Veronique awake, and she jolted up, ready to fight.
“Relax,” I told her, “we’re just checking into a hotel.”
The clerk, a middle-aged woman with glasses and odd warts along her neck, was reading a book about the Bible when we entered. She had just managed to give us a dirty look when Grace took over her mind.
We were getting better at this now. I no longer even needed to speak to the hotel receptionists; we simply entered, and Grace did the rest.
With her eyes focused on the computer screen, the woman typed some information, probably something about Edward and Jill King and Cherry Blossom Girls, Inc., which Grace had instructed her to delete later.
We were given a room, and as if we’d never existed, the woman turned her attention back to her Bible book.
This wasn’t as nice as what we were used to staying in; it was a typical roadside motel, and we were lucky to get two double beds.
Veronique claimed one, Grace and I claimed the other.
There was an unspoken thing about Grace and me sleeping together, and I got the hint that she didn’t care where I slept. Something at the back of my mind told me this, but I didn’t act on it. Not yet anyway.
I would have time to act on my feelings for her in the future.
And as it would turn out, that future came even sooner than I expected.
As soon as Grace went to take a quick shower, Veronique called me over to her bed.
“Would you prefer to sleep here?” she asked in a robotic, yet playful way. She’d lightened up some, but there was always a harshness about her.
I was tired, but not tired enough to say no to a request like that.
“We really should have gotten a room with three beds,” I said half-jokingly.
She sat down on her bed. “Or just a room with one.”
Damn, if Veronique didn’t know how to shut me up with one simple statement. It could mean anything, but I was a man – a man who had grown up in the twenty-first century and had seen a lot of porn – so I got the feeling it meant something else.
But it could have been innocent.
Her statement could have also meant that she’d kill us both and get a room alone.
“You know what, sure, I’ll sleep over there tonight. I slept in Grace’s bed the last two nights.”
“Three nights, four nights, you always sleep in her bed.”
I changed into my American flag shirt and got into Veronique’s bed.
She was still in the country clothes we’d gotten from WalMacy’s, a pearl snap collar shirt and tight jeans. She unbuttoned her shirt and let it drop.
Just as she was about to unhook her bra, the shower flicked off in the other room, the pipes in the walls creaking as the water pressure let up.
I swallowed hard as her hand fell onto my stomach and then moved to the space just below my belly button. My insides were melting, and it wasn’t because she was using her power on me. No, it only took a light touch from her to turn me on, and as much as I wanted to resist, I felt like it was impossible.
But I didn’t want to piss off a telepath, at least not tonight, especially after what we’d been through.
“I think I’ll just sleep over there tonight.”
A glint of anger flashed in her eyes. I felt the energy suddenly leave my body. Her hand was still on me, and I knew she was draining my life force.
“Stop it,” I whispered. More energy left my body, and I pushed my ass out of her bed, hit the floor and nearly cracked my head on the nightstand. I scrambled into Grace’s bed.
Veronique laughed. “I’ll be here whenever you’re ready.”
Oddly enough, Veronique zapping a little of my energy made it easier for me to sleep.
I’d been having pretty terrible nightmares over the last few nights, anxiety-driven dreams in which I was being choked by Angel, or shot by the MercSecure men, or worse, watching Grace die and Veronique get split in half by some unseen force.
I didn’t want to lose them.
Hell, I still hardly knew them, but these two women had fundamentally changed my outlook on life and my perception of reality. I needed them, and I hoped to prove myself useful enough for them to feel the same about me one day.
But as I said, that night at the hotel in Jackson, Mississippi, was different.
I slept like a baby, or like a super baby, hardly remembering the moment between lying down and actually going to sleep. I knew Grace was next to me, and I sensed her whispering something in my head, but even then, I didn’t know what she was saying.
Six hours of sleep isn’t a lot, but six hours of solid sleep is worth its weight in tooth fairies.
“Anyone going to breakfast with me?” I asked the next morning.
The writing itch had come on strong, but I had nothing to write with aside from pen and paper, which meant we would need to visit an electronics store today.
Not surprisingly, Grace came with me to breakfast, and we shared two paper plates stacked with stale bread, plastic eggs, yesterday’s sausage, and coffee that tasted like goblin ass.
“We’ll get better food later too,” I said as we went back to our room, where I found Veronique sitting on the bed with her legs crossed.
Having no smartphone meant I had to do things the old-fashioned way, so I called up to the front desk and asked them where the nearest Okay Buy was located.
The lady at the front desk was pretty shocked I would ask such a dumb question, especially since everyone had a smartphone or access to the internet, but I explained my phone was broken, and I had no idea how to get there.
With the directions in hand, we left and got there at just about the time the store opened.
After I picked up several items – a laptop, three prepaid phones, and another smartphone – we were set.
Grace worked her magic, and while we got the phones activated (all of them registered to the sales guy), Veronique checked out the VR video game section. A company known as Proxima had come out of nowhere recently with some of the most innovative VR gaming ever created.
I’d tried it. It made me dizzy, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to get a piece of the VR pie.
GoogleFace maps fed me deets on my newly-activated smartphone, and I calculated that we could get to Austin today, but it would be late.
I preferred to get some rest and have a little more dialogue with this David Butler character before we arrived, and to do so, I’d need to get my emails encrypted.
I was so distracted by these thoughts that I didn’t see the words that had been burned into the front hood of our Camry.
“Gideon,” Grace said, grabbing my arm. My eyes dropped to the still smoldering phrase: Mother is watching.
I gasped.
Grace’s immediate reaction was to take over the minds of others who were leaving Okay Buy. She had them fan out, searching the parking lot for anyone who could have done this.
Veronique also scanned the perimeter, standing in front of me as we moved to the vehicle.
&
nbsp; “Do you think they put a bomb on the car?” I asked. It was a stupid question, but the way the two were acting had me on pins and needles.
“Stay close, Gideon,” said Veronique as we reached the Camry. I took another look at the phrase, Mother is watching, and noticed it had started to blacken around the edges. “Get your bag, and we’ll find a new car.”
“Got it.” I popped the trunk and grabbed my duffle bag, our backpack, and what was left of our snacks.
A black Ford Explorer pulled up, and the driver’s eyes turned white almost immediately. He got out of the vehicle, helped me load the stuff in the back, then switched keys with me while Veronique and Grace stood guard.
Ten minutes later, and a dozen miles or so down the highway, my hands were still shaking.
I tried to focus on the road; found it impossible. I turned on the Explorer’s auto drive feature, finally taking a deep breath to calm my nerves.
“Shit, this is intense,” I whispered.
“It was clearly Dorian.” Grace was still in the form she’d taken before we went to Okay Buy: a redhead with freckles and a tight plaid shirt. As I glanced at her, she kept the clothing but morphed back into her base form, the front of her plaid shirt pressing forward as her breasts grew.
“Definitely, Dorian,” said Veronique from the back seat. “She likes to fuck with people.”
“But how is she tracking us?” I asked. “How is it even possible? Do you think Dr. Kim would know?”
Grace considered that for a moment. “He may know more.”
“I’ll send him an email on the smartphone after I’ve installed encryption software,” I told them. “He can call me on one of the prepaid lines, and we’ll get rid of it right after. I think that should cover all our bases. Can you get the phones out, Veronique?”
Veronique reached over the back seat and got the Okay Buy bag. She fished out the phones and handed them to Grace, who placed them neatly on her lap.
Thank god for auto drive.
I took me a few minutes to get the device set up with my email information and the encryption software installed. Once that was done, I fired off an email to Ken with one of the prepaid phone numbers.
Cherry Blossom Girls Box Set Page 22
