Messiah

by J. E. Taylor

  “What have you done?” she gasped.

  “Rid the world of one sick bastard,” he answered after a moment’s hesitation. “And gotten us a ride that no one will report missing until long after we’re in Chicago.”

  “Stop,” Katrina yelled. “Stop the craft!”

  “Kat, he was going to kill us. Do you know what he did for a living?” André asked and continued before she could answer, “He sold body parts and he had no problem killing healthy runaways to get those parts.” André shuddered, his adrenaline fading. “Hitchhiking probably wasn’t such a good idea.”

  “How do you know what he intended to do?” she asked and the high pitch of her voice matched the tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “He put a laser gun to my forehead and pulled the trigger. If I had been human, I’d be dead right now,” he said and reality settled into his bones, hitting him with its full force. The shakes started in his hands and worked their way up his arms and into his shoulders just about the time his stomach decided to roll. He pulled the craft down to the side of the road and threw the door open, shooting vomit onto the pavement below. Spasms racked his body and the knowledge he just killed someone slammed into his conscience hard.

  He spit and then closed the door again, leaning back in the seat. Tears stung his eyes, blurring his vision and the tremors continued with the tears. “Holy shit,” he whispered and looked into the rearview mirror, wiping his face and shaking the bloody tears from his hand.

  Kat’s eyes went wide. “You’re bleeding.”

  “I’m fine,” he answered when the shakes subsided. “Do you have any gum?” he asked, still tasting the bile in his throat.

  “No, but I’ve got a mint.” She pulled one out of her pocketbook, handing it to him as she climbed into the passenger seat. He swiped the bloody tears from his cheeks, wiping his hands on his jeans, leaving a maroon stain on the blue fabric, and pulled the hovercraft back into the stream of traffic.

  “You bleed when you cry?”

  He nodded without looking at her. Emergency lights blinked in the rearview mirror and he focused on the lane in front of him.

  “He was going to kill us?” she finally asked after the silence had wrapped itself around them.

  “Yes.” André glanced at his watch. “What time do you usually get up in the morning?”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s almost five.”

  “I must have slept.”

  “You did for a while.”

  “Did you?”

  “Hell no.” He raised his eyebrows at her. “I wasn’t giving him an opening like that.”

  Katrina took a deep breath and glanced out the window.

  The hovercraft sprung forward into the last tunnel and he pushed the controls beyond eight hundred miles per hour, creating another sonic boom in their wake. Thirty minutes later, they entered the Chicago dome with the sun rising over the horizon.

  “Now I need some sleep,” André said and slowed the hovercraft down. He cruised at street level and punched “Nearest Hotel” into the tracking system. A few minutes later, they pulled into the Millennium hotel chain. André pulled out his wallet and flipped through the bills he had stashed. He glanced over at Katrina. “I don’t know if I have enough.”

  “I do,” Katrina answered. “Come on.”

  André took the keys and grabbed the bags out of the back. He hesitated and glanced at her before activating the security controls. He hoped that all it took to deactivate was just a push of the button.

  “We’d like a room,” André said, approaching the counter. His eyelids drooped and he imagined he looked every bit as tired as he felt. Twenty-four hours without sleep, along with the emotional rollercoaster of the last twelve hours, was finally taking its toll.

  The concierge looked up at him.

  André heard his train of thought and closed his eyes, sighing. “You will rent us a room,” he said softly, pushing the concierge mentally.

  “And how would you like to pay for that?” The concierge smiled at him.

  “Cash.”

  “Certainly.” He nodded and punched a few keys in the panel. “That will be three hundred and fifty dollars.”

  André glanced at Katrina and then back at the concierge. “Don’t you mean thirty-five dollars?”

  The concierge’s smile faltered. He looked down at the paperwork and scribbled the fee. “Thirty-five dollars.”

  André handed him the money and took the room key, leaving the concierge smiling and clueless that he had just been hustled.

  Katrina didn’t say a word until they were in the room. “What did you do to the desk guy?”

  “Influence,” André said and flopped down on the bed. The minute his head hit the fabric, blackness overtook him.

  ANDRÉ WOKE HOURS LATER, disoriented until he glanced her way. The prior evening came flooding back and he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against him and burying his face into her hair. He dozed again with the smell of her cascading into his nostrils.

  Knocking on the door roused him from sleep.

  He pulled himself free and opened the hotel room door.

  The manager stood with the concierge. “I’m sorry, sir, but there seems to be a problem with your bill.”

  André smiled. “You had a special and I qualified.” He pushed the influence on the manager and concierge and watched them blink, look around and then down at the bill the manager held and back up at him.

  “Thank you again for staying at our hotel.” The manager smiled, folding up the bill and pocketing it. “I hope you have a pleasant stay.” They wandered away.

  André closed the door and glanced at the clock. They had been sleeping for six hours, long enough for his parents to know he was gone. He wondered how relieved they were to finally have him out of their hair. He couldn’t imagine them being upset by his disappearance; angry at the disobedience was probably more accurate.

  He sighed and stepped into the bathroom to clean up, letting the warm water wash away the sleep from his body. He leaned his hands on the front of the stall, closing his eyes and thinking about New York City.

  What if she was right and there was oxygen outside the domes?

  What if there wasn’t?

  At that thought, his eyes popped open and he straightened, running his hand through his drenched hair. “What am I doing?” No answers came. He shut off the water, towel dried before leaving the steam-filled bathroom and pulling out a pair of jeans.

  Katrina stirred and rolled, burying her head under her pillow, mumbling. After he slid his jeans on, he sat on the side of the bed and rubbed her back until she uncovered her head and opened her eyes.

  “Last night was real?”

  “As real as it gets,” he said. “Shower’s free if you want to clean up.”

  She nodded and he moved, watching her disappear into the bathroom before sitting down at the table to count the money they pooled together.

  Two hundred dollars.

  Not enough to fade into obscurity.

  He rubbed his face. “I didn’t think this through very well,” he muttered under his breath and swept the money off the table, stashing it away in his wallet. Instead of beating himself up for his piss-poor execution, he flipped the television on and settled back in the seat, hoping the droning of the news would keep his mind occupied away from their current situation, especially with the thought of Katrina naked in the shower just a few steps away.

  It was all he could do to not act on the building need pooling in his lap, and when Katrina stepped back in the room with the towel wrapped around her, still dripping, he smiled, scanning her with his eyes, captivated. He pointed the remote at the television to turn it off and paused at Katrina’s picture filling the screen.

  “Shit.” Instead of clicking the off button, he raised the volume. The reporter warned viewers that Katrina’s abductor had a violent history and should be approached with extreme caution and then his picture popped up on screen. “
Goddamn it!” He tossed the remote onto the table and shot a glance in Katrina’s direction.

  She wrung the water out of her hair, not looking concerned in the least by the news story or their pictures splashed across the airways. “My father is an asshole,” she said and crossed toward André.

  “Kat,” he said and scanned her, torn between the instant lust and the need to run. “We don’t have time for this now,” he added as she straddled his legs and leaned on the arms of the chair, her wet hair dripping on his jeans.

  She grinned and sat on his thighs. “What’s another half hour?”

  Heat radiated off her. “Kat,” he whispered, his hands drifting to her legs and his heart pounding against his ribcage.

  “André,” she whispered and seductively licked her lips. “Marry me. Today.”

  André stared at her. “Why?”

  “Because it will piss off my father.”

  He went to push her off his lap, annoyed by the answer. The idea of having her as his wife was a lifelong dream that started the moment he saw her in that infirmary and she just shot all his romantic notions to hell.

  She pushed him back against the chair. “I’m serious,” she said and ran her hands down his bare chest. Her thoughts were as jumbled as the nerves in his stomach.

  He leaned forward, kissing the soft flesh of her neck, wanting her with every fiber of his being, but afraid she just wanted him as a tool to make her father miserable. “Do you love me?”

  “Yes. I love you, André,” she said. “I always have.”

  He pulled away and met her gaze. “Why? Why do you love me, Kat?”

  She sighed and placed her palm on his cheek. “I don’t know. I just do.”

  “You sure it’s just not the curiosity speaking? Or a way to piss off your father?”

  She pulled her hand away. “Yes, I’m sure. I was curious when I walked into your hospital room, but the minute our eyes met, I don’t know, it was like I knew you were meant just for me.”

  “And then your father forbid you to see me,” André said and ran his hands through his hair, leaning his head back on the headrest.

  “Why the hell do you think I’ve been such a nightmare at home? I was frustrated and you... you slept with anything with a skirt and hardly looked at me anytime I passed. That pissed me off.”

  “I was trying to find a way to get you off my mind,” André said and a smirk found its way to his lips.

  Katrina slapped his chest.

  “Seriously, Kat. My father forbade me from seeing you too, so I didn’t have much of a choice. And you’re right. I screwed my fair share of girls, but not one of them came close to making me feel the way you do,” he said, turning serious. “You stole my heart in that hospital room and I haven’t been able to recover since.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You really want to marry me?”

  She studied him and her smile faltered.

  His smile disappeared, gone in the flash of her thought. He stood and pushed her away from him, gathering his clothes and shoving them into the bag. He glared over his shoulder. “You’re the one who crawled through my bedroom window. I didn’t coerce you into having sex; you wanted that just as much as I did. If you think for a minute I’d use the influence on you, you’re insane.” He zipped up his bag and threw it on the floor. He picked up hers and threw it in her direction. “Get dressed; we have to get out of here.”

  Katrina’s chin started to quiver and the tears spilled over. She rifled through her bag, looking for clothing to pull on. “You influenced the people here so easily...” She trailed off.

  “It kills a part of their brain every time I do that,” he said without looking at her. “I could end up making someone a vegetable if I’m not careful.”

  “I’m sorry.” She began to sob.

  André turned. “Don’t cry,” he said. “Don’t fucking cry,” he repeated and the emotions caught up to him. A rollercoaster was as accurate a description as anything he could put his finger on. The highs and lows of the last twenty-four hours were enough to send him spiraling out of control and he sat on the edge of the bed, watching her pull her clothing on between sobs.

  “You want to go back.”

  She nodded and then shook her head. “I don’t know.” She sniffled, getting control again. “Ever since we ran into each other yesterday, it feels like I jumped on a rollercoaster and can’t get off.” She wiped her face with her hands and looked at him.

  He blinked and stared at her. It was almost as if she read his mind. “Why did you use that example?”

  She shrugged. “It just popped in my head.”

  Her answer brought a low chuckle from his chest and he looked down at the floor. Maybe she did have a touch of ESP, just like his father and that was something he could work with.

  “What is so funny?”

  He glanced at her. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

  She opened her mouth and closed it and then just stared at him. “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “You can read minds too.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You are closer than you think, Kat. I can teach you if you let me.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “You can teach me? How?”

  “Let’s get out of here first. I don’t want to fry their brains any more than I already have, okay?” André said.

  “Okay,” Katrina said, pulling a shirt over her head and packing up her clothing. She glanced at the bed as they stood to leave. A sigh escaped and she looked back in his direction. “Where are we going?”

  “City Hall.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re getting married.”

  “We are?”

  André paused and looked at Kat, his hand on the doorknob. Doubt swarmed her mind and he dropped his hand, turning toward her. “Do you love me?”

  She bit her lip, and looked down at the carpet.

  The swirl of her thoughts kept him holding his breath, praying she felt the same and this all wasn’t just a ruse to get back at him for some unknown transgression. A small part of him wanted to push her into it, to make her do his bidding, but he couldn’t do that. He needed her to make the decision on her own without his influence. He needed to know she accepted him for who he was. A rush of air escaped when she nodded and met his gaze.

  “I know I asked, but...” She shifted and turned her back on him, looking out the window.

  “But what?”

  “I need to know what else you can do.”

  “I’m really not sure. I can read minds, I can influence minds, and I can control physical things around me.”

  “Can you kill?”

  André thought about Paul and sighed. “I’m capable if I’m pushed. But then I imagine everyone can kill if pushed to their limits.”

  She turned back toward him. “Can you kill with your mind?”

  André looked out the window, unable to meet her questioning stare. “Probably,” he said and met her gaze. “Do you still want to marry me?”

  A deep breath and a nod, and his fears dissipated. She wanted to marry him. A slow smile spread on his lips. “Let’s go.”

  In the parking lot, André took out the keys and pressed the button, unlocking the hovercraft and throwing their bags in back. The clock blinked on, flashing a little after two in the afternoon, and he punched in two destinations into the navigation system–one for a pawnshop and the second for City Hall.

  Twenty minutes later, they walked into a local pawnshop just around the corner from City Hall.

  “Hi, I’d like to see some wedding bands,” André said, draping his arm around Katrina’s shoulders, his Southern accent, thicker than usual because of the nerves jumping under his skin like Mexican jumping beans.

  “Sure thing.” The pawnshop owner pulled out a tray full of bands.

  André scanned the mishmash assortment and singled out a gold ring with diamonds embedded in the band and picked it up. “Let’s see if this fits,” he sai
d, glancing at Katrina, and she put her left hand out. The ring slid on her finger like it was made especially for her. “Do you like it?”

  She smiled and nodded. “What about yours?”

  “You pick.”

  After studying a few rings, she settled on a simple thick gold band with a solitary diamond chip and slid it on his left ring finger. The fit was perfect and they grinned at each other.

  “We’ll take these,” André said.

  “That’ll be a thousand dollars.”

  André inhaled and glanced at the video cameras, willing a glitch in the recording while he reached for his wallet. He pulled out a hundred dollars and put it on the counter, pushing with his mind as he slid the bills forward. “This ought to cover it.”

  The owner smiled and counted out the money with a nod before he slid it away in the cash box. “Thank you for doing business with us,” he said and wandered toward the back of the shop.

  André put his arm around Katrina’s waist and led her out of the building without another word. They slid into the hovercraft, glancing at each other as he flipped the tracking back on and the hovercraft headed for City Hall.

  “I really hate doing that,” he said and sighed.

  Katrina studied the ring on her hand and sent a smile in his direction. “Thank you.”

  “You really want to do this?” he asked as he parked in front of the building.

  “Yes, but only if you want to,” she said and he laughed.

  “Asking me if I want to marry you is like asking if I want to breathe, although sometimes when I’m around you, I find it impossible to catch my breath.”

  “Aw,” she said and put her hand over her heart. “That’s the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

  He rolled his eyes and smiled. “So you’re good?”

  “Yes.”

  They entered the grand atrium and scanned the directory, homing in on the justice of the peace located on the third floor. André led Katrina up the stairwell. “Can I have your ring?” he asked when they stood in front of the room.

  She peeled it off her finger and offered it to him in exchange for his.