by Hope Anika
She watched him, unblinking. Unmoving.
“Let me see your wound,” he growled.
For a moment they only stared at one another; Eva eyed them worriedly.
“I can help,” she said softly.
“Get the first aid kit,” Wylie told her brusquely. “It’s in the back.”
“But I can help,” she protested.
“That will help,” he retorted. She gave him a put-upon look and climbed out to retrieve the kit. He held a hand out to Wanda. “Come on, baby. Let me help you.”
“No,” she said shortly.
The heat washing over his back was simmering and intense; around them the sounds of trucks idling mingled with the ever-present flow of traffic on the freeway. A dog barked, unseen, and far in the distance, clouds had appeared, a dark blue-gray smudge on the western horizon that made the dense mass of regret and shame sitting in his chest turn to stone.
“Nisha,” he said, his voice low.
She recoiled. “Don’t call me that. Ever.”
Her voice shook on the last word, and the sound of that waver made him reach out and snag her, his hands closing around her arms to lift her toward him.
“Damn you,” she hissed. She struggled, but only a little. Weak from blood loss, exhausted from her fight with the men in black. Wylie’s hands tightened on her. “Let me go. I don’t want your help.”
Her voice was harsh; her eyes were daggers that thrust into his heart and twisted for good measure. He said the only thing he could, knowing it wasn’t enough.
It would never be enough.
“I’m sorry.” His hands flexed around her arms; her skin was ice cold beneath the thin lace of the shirt she wore, and her pulse fluttered unsteadily in the hollow of her throat. “I should have never left you.”
“Let go,” she repeated, stiff in his hold. “Eva can help me.”
“No. She isn’t trained; I am.”
“She needs no training to put a bandage on me,” Wanda argued. “I don’t want your help, Wylie. Just leave me alone.”
He stared at her, unable—unwilling—to let go. His heart beat with painful intensity. Instead of releasing her, he pulled her closer, until he could smell the mixture of her spicy scent and the coppery blood that painted her; until her breath fanned his chin and her heat pressed against his skin.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, a man drowning in a flood of his own making.
“Easy words,” she muttered. “Perhaps you should simply tattoo them onto your forehead so people will know from the outset that you’ll fail them.”
He flinched. “Ouch.”
Her eyes glittered. “The truth always hurts.”
It was no less than he deserved. He’d spent his life avoiding ties and obligations and promises he had no desire to keep. And he’d succeeded. No one relied on him or waited for him or trusted him to follow through; hell, no one expected anything at all.
Except that he would fail.
Because he’d never made it a point to succeed at anything other than a winning hand.
Such a fucking dickhead. Had he always been a dickhead?
Judging by the look in Wanda’s eyes, that answer to that question was yes.
“It won’t happen again,” he said, his gaze holding hers. “You have my word.”
She snorted. “A worthless commodity.”
And to think he’d thought her weak. He was a fucking dickhead.
“That sounds like a dare, baby.” He made himself release her. “Lay back.”
“A dare?” She blinked at him. “How have I dared you?”
“You doubt me,” he said, hating that it was true. Hating that he, too, was uncertain.
Could he be anything other than a fucking dickhead?
Even if he wanted to?
“Now I have to prove you different,” he told her and nudged her back. “Lie down, sweetheart.”
“You’ve already proven all I need to know,” she said, resisting. But she was weak with blood loss, and Wylie could tell she was dizzy. Probably nauseous as well. A small, fruitless protest and she surrendered, falling back atop the seat with a heavy, shuddering sigh. “I won’t rely on you again, no matter what you tell me.”
Anger lanced through him, but he just concentrated on her wound. Blood continued to seep through her pants, and he saw that a thick wedge of flesh had been carved from the curve of her hip leaving a deep, broad, ugly gash. He tore at the hole the bullet had left in her pants and underwear, revealing the sweeping curve of her hip, a lush, honey-gold expanse of skin that was silky under his hands. Wanda inhaled sharply, her eyes flying to his.
“It’s just a flesh wound,” she said and blushed. “Eva can help me.”
“No,” he said, gently probing at the bloody gash to make certain nothing of the bullet remained. It needed stitches, but they had no time for that. He would bind it tight with butterfly bandages and then stitch her up once they got to Charlie’s cabin.
She swore softly. “That hurts!”
Eva appeared beside Wylie, first aid box in hand, a mulish expression on her face. “This isn’t necessary.”
Wylie took the kit. “You would prefer she bleed to death?”
Eva only stared at him, and her expression—a serious, unsmiling kind of brevity that made trepidation tighten his chest—darkened. She looked at Wanda, then back at him, then around at the trailers they were hidden between. When her gaze returned to his, Wylie saw something he hadn’t yet seen in her: fear.
“What is it?” he asked, digging into the plastic box for a small bottle of saline. “Did you see someone?”
“No.” She folded her arms over her chest. “I can help,” she said again.
“You are helping,” he pointed out, confused.
“No.” She shook her head, clearly frustrated. “I can help.”
Wylie didn’t know what that meant. He looked at Wanda, but she only shook her head, as confused as he.
“I...” The girl faltered, her gaze moving between them.
“It’s okay, Eva.” Wanda reached for her with bloodstained fingers. “Don’t worry. It’s not serious—”
“No,” Eva said sharply. “You don’t understand. I can help you. I can...”
Wylie poured the saline on Wanda’s wound. She cursed again. “You can what?”
Eva said nothing, staring at them. Wylie pulled a handful of butterfly bandages from the kit. “I’m going to close this up with these, but I’ll have to stitch it when we get to the cabin.”
“No,” Eva protested, that stubborn look again creeping across her features.
“Yes,” Wylie said, growing annoyed. “It’s deep. It needs stitches.”
The girl made a snorting sound. Wanda blinked at her. Wylie scowled.
“What the hell is your problem?” he demanded.
“My problem is this,” the girl yelled. She lifted her hand and shoved it in his face.
He saw nothing.
“Explain,” he demanded and could have kicked himself.
Just like Spock.
“I can’t explain!” she cried. “I can only do.”
She elbowed him rudely aside, slapped her hand over Wanda’s wound and pressed.
“Ow!” Wanda cried, and Wylie growled and grabbed Eva’s arm, but current shot through him as soon as he touched her, a fierce, shocking, white-hot jolt that fired across his nerve endings and singed the palm of his hand. He leapt away like a scalded cat. A brilliant white light flared from the place where Eva touched Wanda, a pearlescent blaze of muted pink and gold, licking the hot air like flame.
“What are you doing?” he snarled.
“Hush,” she told him. “I need to concentrate.”
A faint frown drew her brows low, and her eyes began to glow, unnaturally bright, their amber color shimmering like orange fire, as if lit from within. An aura of static electricity surrounded her, raising the hair along his arms and crackling against his skin.
Wanda shuddered; her eyes closed
, and a murmur broke from her lips, words Wylie didn’t know, didn’t understand, and he stared at them, terrified and angry and not certain what the hell to do.
None of which he was familiar or comfortable with.
What the hell was happening?
He took a step closer, careful not to touch Eva, and reached out to claim Wanda’s hand, wrapping it securely in his own. His heart smacked his ribs painfully when her small fingers squeezed his. He could feel a steady, warm unnatural current flow from her palm into his; it hummed along his bloodstream, vibrated in his bones, and made a violent tremor move through him. A strange sound filled his ears, an almost electrical buzzing, like the sound a florescent bulb made right before it blew. Goosebumps pebbled his skin.
Eva made a deep, low sound; her eyes had grown unfocused, still glowing with an unearthly inner light. The bright flare around her hand grew almost blinding, and Wanda inhaled sharply. Her eyes flew open and slammed into his.
Wylie saw his own haggard, tense reflection and froze in place.
The fire around Eva’s hand suddenly flickered out, like a doused flame. She took a stumbling step back, blinking, as if she’d just awakened.
Wylie looked down and saw only a thin line of raised pink scar tissue where Wanda’s wound had been. He stared at the mark in disbelief, then reached out and stroked it with his thumb. The scar was soft, delicate, the skin around it unblemished. Whole.
“No,” he said, unable to grasp what he was seeing. He stroked the scar again. “That’s not...no.”
Wanda squeezed his hand, hard. Wylie looked up at her, startled by the tears that streamed down her cheeks.
“Does it hurt?” he demanded.
She only shook her head; the bones in his hand groaned beneath her hold.
“Easy, baby,” he told her. “You’re okay.”
And she was. Holy hell, she was. Her wound appeared to be fading even more, the tissue morphing from pale pink to the rich gold tone of her skin, narrowing until it was only the faintest scratch. Not even a blood stain marred her.
Her mouth opened, but no words escaped.
“Talk to me,” he ordered. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
Her eyes were wet, wide. Wild. “Devi!” she whispered, her voice hoarse.
Wylie didn’t know what that meant, but she was staring up at him, her gaze full of wonder and fear and disbelief.
“No,” Eva said, her voice dull. “Not Devi. I’m sorry. It was the only way.”
He turned and looked at her; the girl was ashen, swaying on her feet, her slender form seeming even tinier, as if she’d somehow shrunk. He didn’t want to let Wanda go, but the kid looked like hell, like she was going to take a header—
He caught her as she fell, forgetting about the shock she’d given him earlier, but there was nothing now, just her collapsing into his arms, her body cold, little more than skin and bones. She shook in his hold; her teeth chattered. Wylie lifted her into his arms; she weighed next to nothing. It was like cradling a fragile bird to his chest.
“What’s wrong with you?” he demanded.
“’s okay,” she muttered. “Just need a nap.”
He stared down at her; so young. So vulnerable. A goddamn miracle worker.
Just a kid.
He glanced at Wanda, who sat up and stared back at him with glittering eyes and rosy cheeks; she looked vibrant, vital, as fresh and perfect as a spring bud. She was more alive than anyone he’d ever seen.
“Is this real?” he asked. Fucking stupid question. But he couldn’t help it.
“Yes,” Wanda whispered. Her gaze moved to Eva, who she watched with both wonder and fear.
Wylie pulled the girl closer and strode toward the passenger side of the SUV. Wanda slid out and opened the door, and he sat Eva carefully down on the seat. Her head lolled back against the headrest; her eyes were dull and flat when they met his.
“Now you know,” she said.
He went still. “Know what?”
“Why they want me.”
Dread wrapped icy fingers around his spine and squeezed. “Because you can heal?”
“Because they’re death. And I’m life.”
CHAPTER
-15-
Be honest, Ruslan. If not with me, then at least with yourself.
For a man who considered himself to be brutally honest, Ruslan found Ash’s words both ironic and unsettling. Ironic, because he’d been accused on more than one occasion of being too honest, and unsettling because he was not a man who lied, not to others, and never to himself.
And yet...she had not been wrong.
Confronting himself was harder than confronting another, and recognizing what drove him—pinpointing the source of those unnerving, alien emotions—was not something with which he had experience. To feel anything was baffling enough; to determine where those feelings had come from was akin to walking around in a pitch-black room while searching for a light switch.
He wasn’t a man used to fumbling. He was precise, almost surgical in nature, and being inexact was a weakness he did not permit himself. So this entire situation was incredibly...vexing.
I did not expect to find answers.
Does it scare you that you might?
Nothing scares me.
A statement that was not—at least with regard to the possibility of being a Primary—wholly true. Fear was not an emotion he’d felt since he was a child, powerless and battered by a brutal fate. But the idea that he might be nothing more than someone’s creation...that was a violent blow. He was not a sentimental man; that his parents had not wanted him was disappointing, but not something he’d ever dwelled upon or allowed to define him. That he might be the result of science rather than passion should not change that fact, but somehow...it did.
Being abandoned and raised among strangers who’d interacted with him so little that he had grown into a being outside of the world he inhabited was enough. To know he might be even more ostracized by his origin—not conceived but manufactured—rattled him to his core.
Which was not something he cared to admit—to himself or anyone else.
But Ash knew. More, she was not without empathy, and she seemed to comprehend what he was feeling, and why. His irritation that she’d showed Masters his tattoo had been entirely unreasonable, and yet she’d understood his reaction even before he did. She had deliberately pushed him to admit his feelings, and she’d stepped between when his irrational response—that pulsing, illogical rage—had threatened to consume him.
Without judgment.
She had behaved like a friend.
Ruslan was not a man who had friends. He had associates. Men he’d fought beside; a network of mutually beneficial connections. But not friends.
Charlie was the closest he’d ever come to having a true friend, and that’d been nothing like this connection with Ash—both the baffling attachment the entity within him had formed to her and the partnership they had forged—one Ruslan did not care to use the word “friend” to describe. Not because he didn’t want to be her friend, but because that definition limited her place in his life, and he wanted no limits between them.
Not when she had seen the savage thing inside of him and refused to flinch. He knew she’d caught a glimpse during the confrontation with TJ, but when they’d sat before Reginald Kline, listening to him justify the act of genocide, the darkness had leached from Ruslan’s pores like blood from a fresh wound. Openly malevolent, eager for violence; he hadn’t bothered to mask it. The palpable wildness that pulsed in his veins and scraped his throat raw.
She had seen, and she hadn’t turned away. Ever after he’d pulled so sharply from her, she’d simply stayed at his side, unwavering and undaunted.
Well, in spite of your snark and overly emotional nature, I’m going to help you out. The answers exist. We just have to keep looking.
She couldn’t know what those words had done; Ruslan wasn’t certain he had the capacity to understand it himself. For the first time in his
entire life, he’d not felt alone. His singularity had been wrenched open, and she had entered, knowingly or not.
She was in him now.
A realization that left him agitated. He understood too late that this was the danger he hadn’t comprehended, the vulnerability of want. Of need. Because a sense of possession had sprung into being, and the darkness crouched in a constant state of alertness, as if ready to snatch her and run. The cold stillness that had existed within him for as long as he could remember had fractured, a deep, narrow fissure that threatened the integrity of the whole.
Combined with the very real possibility that he was a Primary, it shook the core of his foundation and left him deeply disturbed. He wanted answers.
Watching Bridger speak to Ash—look at her, touch her—had made him irrationally angry, just like he’d been with the guard at GenTek...but it had been a different kind of anger, and for a different reason. That she had been so obviously bemused—and flattered—by the boy’s attention did not escape Ruslan’s notice. Which he found odd, because Ash was a highly desirable woman. That she would be so flustered by an expression of interest was surprising, and it only added to the questions Ruslan had about her. Her history, her father. Her origin.
When he’d found her weeping in the boy’s shadow, Ruslan had seen her in a different light. Stripped of her sass and her edge and the shell she used as a shield, she’d looked lost and frightened and strikingly vulnerable. Stricken, tears turning her gaze liquid, staring at him as if someone had ripped out her heart and ground it underfoot.
A terrible, black fury had flooded through him at the sight. He’d never felt such anger on behalf of another, and he’d understood then, that whatever it was between them, it did not come without cost. To them both.
Risking his life had always been a necessity. By the time he’d had the luxury of choice, it had become second hand, and not something to be hesitated over. But the risk involved in pursuing whatever it was that existed between them was not something with which he was familiar. Death was a simple equation; emotion was not.
He knew nothing of love or hope, not since his earliest years. He did not miss them, and he did not particularly care to revisit them. But the sight of Ash’s tears had stirred embers he’d thought long dead, and now they smoldered within him, stubborn and hungry for flame.
