Things cooled off the rest of the night. The three watched TV downstairs while I went through Butler’s papers. Remembering that Grace could touch objects and know something about their history, I called her up to the room after an hour of going through things, and she started helping me.
“How are you doing?” I asked her. She was in my clothing again, her hair braided over to one side.
“I’m good,” she said as she looked through a stack of papers. “We were watching a show about a home in Santa Fe. I really want to visit there.”
Pictures of Santa Fe appeared in my head and I immediately recognized them as being transplanted. They were just too fresh for me to have seen or generated them on my own.
“Cool, we’ll try to stop there then,” I told her.
“Thanks. Maybe there will be cherry blossoms.”
“Probably not, but there will be cacti.”
Grace approached me and placed a hand on my cheek. “Your beard is getting too crazy,” she said sweetly.
“I’ll see what I can do about that,” I told her with a chuckle. “But writers and beards go hand in hand.”
“It looks like a broken bird’s nest.”
“I guess that’s one way to describe it.”
She touched the computer table and her eyes flashed white. “I think we’ll find something if we keep looking. I have a very good feeling about that.”
I sighed as I took her in, admiring her Scandinavian model form, and the way my pants and low-cut top clung to her curves. “You are so interesting to me.”
“I think you’re interesting too,” she said and turned to me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders and leaning in to kiss me. “Want to do it right now?”
“Shit yes I do, but …” I took a deep breath. “We’ve got to keep searching.”
“Fine.” As if she’d never initiated the offer in the first place, she returned to her papers. “Have you checked your sales for today?”
“Not yet. Well, I mean this morning I did, but not since. I’ve been a little preoccupied. I’d also like to talk to Luke and catch him up on what’s happened.” I’d put my phone on silent and hadn’t looked at it in a while.
It took us at least another thirty minutes of going through piles of paper and flirting with each other whenever we got close, but we eventually found something beneath a removable floorboard in the closet: a suitcase sealed with a chain.
“That’s an archaic way to seal something, especially for someone who uses databases.”
But maybe he was on to something, I thought as I brought the case downstairs to Veronique.
“Think you can open this?”
The chains fell off and I thanked her. Veronique and Dorian were still watching something about rebuilding a home in Santa Fe. Dorian sat with her hand covering her mouth as she awaited the final reveal with rapt attention.
I couldn’t help but probe.
“You actually like this, Dorian?”
“What’s not to like?” she said without taking her eyes off the television. “I would love to build a house and have the room that I want and everything my way.”
“Yes,” Veronique said, nodding, “everything your way. Everything everyone’s way. That’s what all this is about. The only people who won’t get their way when we’re finished are them.”
Dorian nodded in agreement. “Gideon told me everything. I still need to think about some things, but I know what you guys are doing is … It’s the right thing to do. I remember the others.”
“I remember the others too,” Veronique said in a low voice.
“Great,” I said and headed back upstairs. I secretly wanted them to bond, especially for Veronique’s sake, so rather than butt in, I felt it best to leave them alone and go see what Butler was hiding.
Today was proof that things could change very fast if we got sloppy. And there might not be a Dorian in the car next time. Hell, if there hadn’t been a Dorian this time, our little narrative would have ended.
I couldn’t forget that; I really needed to keep my head down and not do any more stupid shit.
Famous last words.
As soon as I got back to the study, I set the suitcase on the table and opened it to find a single manila envelope that read, ‘Facilities.’ Inside the envelope were several folders, a treasure trove of information.
There were five main locations, each with their own folder, including the one we had destroyed in New Haven. There was another in New Mexico, two in California, and one in Washington state. Each folder had a series of schematics of the facility, known contractors and food vendors, documents with the acronym AEFL stamped on them, as well as other details such as estimated staff numbers.
“Can you look through all these and save their images to your memory?” I asked Grace.
“Definitely,” she said as I handed her the papers.
“We’ll go to New Mexico tomorrow – to Santa Fe – and plan our next assault from there. Now that there are three of you, this will be a lot easier.”
Boy, did I turn out to be wrong about that.
Of course, there were some sexcapades that night.
Grace and I had to celebrate the fact that we were still alive, and what started out as a cuddle session quickly morphed into both of us pleasuring each other and then going at it, Grace switching her forms as we changed positions.
At one point, we were doing it doggy style and black lines began to stretch across her skin.
“Zebra stripes?” I asked, breathless and losing steam fast.
“Is it okay?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at me. Her face now belonged to that of a famous pop musician.
“It’s … different,” I said as I slid in and out of her, watching the zebra pattern on her ass change color.
She got back on top and morphed into Halle Lawrence, considered one of the hottest actresses around. Even odder, she had been in some of the newest X-Men movies playing Jubilee.
I didn’t know if Grace had pulled this from my psyche, but I was definitely into it.
“You like that?” she asked, her voice now that of the famous actress. “You want it harder?”
“Sure?”
She started gyrating vigorously, like she was trying to screw in a giant bolt with her hips.
No pun intended.
My proof of writerdom was by no means giant – hell, it was average at best – but the way she was grinding into me made me feel like it was larger, like I was the Dirk Diggler instead of the John Hodgman of sci-fi writers.
Once I finished, I rolled to my side, breathing heavily.
She placed her hand on my chest and curled up next to me. It was a proper ending to a potentially horrendous day.
I was suddenly thirsty, so I put on my shorts and went to the kitchen to get some juice.
Veronique and Dorian were still watching television, the light from the screen casting blue arcs over their faces. They both stared at me as I entered the living room.
“He’s thinner than I thought,” Dorian finally said, as if I wasn’t there at all.
“His clothing is a little bulky. I think he used to be a bit heavier but lost some weight and still has the same clothing from before.” Veronique offered me a rare smirk. “You have time for more?”
“More what?” I asked, assuming she couldn’t possibly mean what I thought she meant.
Veronique returned her focus to the television, acting as if she hadn’t said anything. Dorian simply laughed as she waved me away.
Chapter Twenty: The First Grenade
I decided to cook breakfast the next morning. Butler had plenty of food, so I was able to make a pretty good spread of eggs, bacon, toast, English muffins, and grilled potatoes. I was no Chef Boyardee, but it didn’t take much to whip up a decent breakfast, and judging by Grace and Dorian’s response, they liked it too.
Veronique, as usual, didn’t eat anything. She did, however, enjoy her coffee.
We all sat around the kitchen table, an
d I showed them my sales for the previous day. Damn, did I like seeing that sales dashboard. I also discovered I’d been selling other books as well, most notably How Heavy This Axe? which gave me the impression it may experience a comeback.
By the mercy of the gods, fuck yeah!
Naturally, having an open laptop led to us watching some funny TwitchTubeRed videos that involved cats.
“It would be so nice to own a cat,” Grace said. “I would train it to speak.”
“Train it to speak?” Dorian considered that for a moment. “I mean, I suppose you could do something like that.”
“I never tried communicating with an animal,” the telepath said, “but I believe it is possible. Maybe we can walk around the neighborhood later and find an animal. I would love to try this.”
“Sounds like that would be a pretty funny trip to go on,” I said. “What about you, Veronique, you into it?”
Veronique reached for a single piece of bacon, examined it, and took a bite. Her eyebrows rose, and she nodded. “It would be nice to get out,” she said and reached for a second piece.
I went to the kitchen and brought back more grilled potatoes, dishing them out on their plates, listening as Grace played a video of a baby pug getting tickled.
The window shattered as a grenade sailed into the living room, spewing smoke as it bounced off the sofa.
A trained soldier, Veronique’s first response was to strip every bit of metal she could from any object in the room and fling it toward the back windows, blasting out a ton of glass and letting in more air from outside.
Then I heard the helicopter.
“Get Gideon!” Veronique shouted to Grace as she focused on the attack point, waiting for whoever had struck to make their next move.
The next move came in a wave of bullets, all of which were stopped in midair.
“Now!” she yelled.
I was just starting to duck when Grace grabbed my hand and pushed me toward the garage. One glance over my shoulder and I saw Dorian teleport away just as more bullets cut into the living room.
“We can’t leave Veronique,” I said stupidly to Grace, my voice partially muffled by the noise around us. Just as she had done at the hotel in Stamford, Veronique turned the floating bullets back toward the helicopter, but she didn’t release them yet.
More smoke grenades soared into the living room and were quickly tossed out by Veronique. She had the look of a mad conductor on her face, waiting for the helicopter to get into position so she could unleash her metal orchestra.
And release it she did. As the bird finally got into view, she hurled all the waiting bullets – hundreds of them – at its windows. They plinked ineffectively off the glass, doing nothing to stop the chopper.
A determined look on her face, Veronique pulled the railings off the windows and spun them toward the helicopter blades. Upon impact, the machine tilted sideways. The pilot tried to right it, which only tilted it in the other direction before it finally spun down.
Just as the helicopter crashed into the back yard, the front door of the home exploded open.
“Gideon, listen to me, you have to get down and get away!” Grace grabbed the sides of my head and looked me in the eye. “Do not make me take over your mind! Just take cover, and let us try to handle this,” she said, speaking fast. Her grip around my skull tightened, her thumbs digging into my temples. “I’ll be here, always.”
“Got it, got it, got it,” I said as she led me down the hallway and into the garage, where I found a place to hide. I could hear Veronique tearing metal off walls and ripping apart anything else that had metal in it in an effort to stop the onslaught. This was followed by the sound of more bullets.
The garage was large, and there were a couple motorcycles in the right carport. As Grace left me, two men in black body armor burst inside, their guns trained on her.
And then they became our men.
Their eyes flashed white, and they returned to the melee, now fighting on our side.
Flip as many as you can, I thought to Grace.
I felt like a coward for hiding in the garage; this seemed to be the perennial problem for me regarding our little association. I had no powers, aside from the fact I could write quickly, which was anything but a power.
Can you imagine a superhero whose power it was to write quickly? That one wouldn’t even have made it to the desk of Stan Lee’s assistant’s assistant.
So, like a coward, or possibly like anyone with no combat training and no weapon skills who was fully aware they were in the middle of an assault lead by people with real abilities, I hid behind the goddamn recycling container.
Whatever was going on outside sounded like an Iraq war movie. I was shocked that MercSecure and the FCG had brought this much firepower to a west Austin neighborhood.
Another helicopter announced itself and I heard more weapons being fired, the creak and crunch of metal, men yelling as their own team shot back at them.
The garage door caved in and I almost jumped out of my skin.
I tried to get as low as I could, and I even entertained the idea of putting the recycling container over my head, which was stupid in retrospect but seemed totally viable in the moment, but it worked in Metal Gear Solid!
As I peeked around the side of my hiding spot, I caught a glimpse of who had punched in the garage door.
Angel.
He looked nearly the same as before: well-built, brown hair tangled in his face, lantern jaw, and dark eyes. But there was something different about him too.
His skin looked bad, which I attributed to the explosion on the rooftop of the Rose-Lyle facility. He had survived it, he’d healed, but it had still left its mark.
Angel took a menacing step in my direction, his hands at his sides like he was going to wring my neck. And that was when one of the motorcycles lifted into the air and cracked him in the side of the head.
I looked back at the garage door to see Grace standing there, her eyes blazing white, almost as if they were on fire with white-hot energy. I’d never seen her look that way before, her power curling in wispy tendrils of energy off her face. It was eerie.
Angel pushed himself off the ground, turned to Grace, and flew at her like a torpedo.
“Grace!” I cried as they collided and tore through a wall.
Seconds later, Angel was tossed back into the room.
I’d had enough. As stupid as it was, I got to my feet, dusted my pants off, and turned to Angel, ready for anything. I wanted nothing more than to bash his face in for attacking Grace.
Of course, Angel was already standing by the time I reached him.
“So, we meet again, Gideon,” he said, his dark eyes locked on me.
“That’s right, motherfucker.” I realized cursing had no effect on him, but it did make me feel tougher. “Yeah, we meet again.”
My voice was shaky. I could barely feel my hands even though they were clenched into fists, and there was a weird sensation happening in my chest and stomach.
But I wasn’t going to let true fear stand in my way.
“Do I need to ask this?” Angel pushed his hair out of his face. “Do you really think a normal like you has any chance of stopping someone like me? Do you really think that? Because the way you’re standing, it seems like you’ve actually bought into that myth.”
Rather than answer, I ran toward him with my fist drawn, aiming for his chin.
A jolt of energy swept me to the side, and I turned just in time to see Grace standing behind the wall that had been blown away, her body framed by bits of pink insulation and wooden framework.
“No!” I shouted as Angel flew at her again. This time he didn’t tackle her; instead, he grabbed her and they both rocketed through the ceiling.
Oblivious to the action around me – and the fact that there were loads of security vehicles, two helicopters, men with guns, you name it – I ran out the garage door, my focus on Angel and Grace as they sailed higher into the sky.
&nb
sp; Like an airplane petering out, Grace would use her power to toss Angel off his trajectory, but he’d regain it and continue upward until they were hardly a spark on the horizon … until they disappeared completely.
I fell to my knees, and just as I did, three armed men approached me with their weapons drawn.
“Get on the ground! On the ground! Hands behind your head! We will engage! Get on the ground, now!”
I put my hands behind my head like the men told me to. Any courage or confidence I had was up in the sky right now, going god only knew how high.
I watched with utter anguish as Grace and Angel spiraled back down. Angel made a crater as he hit the ground, Grace slung over his shoulder. I didn’t know what he’d done to her up there, but she was completely out.
Looking left, I saw Dorian standing with her paintbrush in her mouth, blood streaked across her forehead and cheeks, Veronique at her feet. Dorian lifted Veronique by the hair to show me her blood-smeared face, eyes rolled into the back of her head.
“You fucking bitch!” I scrambled back to my feet. “You double-crossing dirty … fuck! Fuck!” I cried out as a black bag was placed over my head. My hands and legs were zip-tied and I was roughly pushed back down. Still in shock, I stumbled forward and tried to run.
Nope. A hand grabbed me and tossed me down again. I felt the muzzle of a gun press into the back of my neck.
“Stay still,” a man growled as the weapon dug into my flesh.
I was completely distraught. I felt like sobbing, I felt like raging, I felt like screaming and trying to wake from this terrible nightmare. I could barely stand when they pulled me up.
My knees buckled, but the men holding me made sure I could walk.
I had been so focused on my own shock and rage that I hadn’t even heard the helicopter land. Sure, I felt the wind beating against the black bag over my face, but I was hardly cognizant of the fact that the chopper was there until I was shoved inside it.
It would be my first helicopter ride, and it was taken completely blindfolded.
Chapter Twenty-One: Mother
Grace! I screamed inside my head as the helicopter lifted into the air. My chest constricted and I felt sobs welling up in my throat, but I suppressed them. Dorian had betrayed us; she’d led them straight to us and we had fallen into their trap, the second trap we’d fallen into over the last two days.
Cherry Blossom Girls Box Set Page 31
