“What about him?” Chogan said, motioning to the soldier, Romero, who remained in the middle tank.
“He’s coming with us,” said Autumn.
“But he’s one of them.”
“Not anymore, he isn’t. He’s one of us now. He comes, too.”
Chogan nodded and motioned for a couple of the other shifters to help carry the man. Like Tala, he was mid-shift, his back legs now the hind legs of a wolf, and covered in thick gray fur. A bushy tail swung beneath his legs as he was lifted.
“Help me,” he said.”You have to help me. I have a daughter …”
He caught sight of Autumn and his eyes widened with recognition. “You? You’re the one who did this to me!” He began to struggle.
“No, I’m not. Vivian Winters did this to you.”
“You make monsters!”
“Listen to me. If you want to stand any chance of ever being a man again, of ever being able to hold your daughter without sending her screaming from the room, I suggest you stop fighting us. We are the only people who are ever going to help you. Do you understand?” She hoped and prayed Lakota would have an answer to either reverse or complete their change.
The man stopped his struggles and nodded miserably.
“Good,” she said and turned to the others. “Now let’s get out of here.”
Because so many of them were human again, she worried about what would happen if they met with more armed soldiers. The weapon she held couldn’t have many more bullets, and carrying Blake, Tala, and Romero put them at a disadvantage.
She gave the room of horrors one final glance, the bodies of the deformed creatures dead in their glass coffins.
Autumn prayed she would never have to see this place again.
Chapter Sixteen
MIA HURRIED HER brother toward the multitude of waiting people and vehicles. As they approached, Marcus’s footsteps began to drag and she felt him pulling back, even as she tried to push him forward. She turned to him to ask what was wrong, but a commotion near the crowd caught her attention.
The first girl they’d rescued was curled into a ball, crying, her arms over her head as if trying to protect herself from someone beating on her. If someone tried to reach out to her, her screams grew louder.
Mia glanced at her brother, at his face—already pale from lack of sunlight, but now so pale his skin almost seemed translucent. While she didn’t want to leave his side for a second, she had to find out what was wrong with the girl. Autumn had put her in charge of this part of the mission. She couldn’t let Autumn down just because she’d found her brother. Autumn wouldn’t give up on everyone else if she found Blake.
Mia touched her brother’s arm lightly in reassurance and then jogged over to the girl and the numerous people standing around her.
“What’s going on?”
David answered, his expression worried, completely out of his depth in dealing with a hysterical girl. “I don’t know. She was fine when Nadie got her out of there. She was a bit nervous stepping out of the building, but as soon as she saw everyone, she flipped out.”
“Get away from her,” Mia said, pushing at everyone standing over the girl. “Give her some space. She’s only seen a handful of people for God-knows how many years. She’s probably having a panic attack.”
Everyone edged farther and farther away, until they were far enough away to allow Mia to speak without being overheard. She quickly glanced up to make sure Marcus was still where she’d left him. She felt like if she took her eyes off him for too long, he would disappear again and she’d be left thinking she imagined the whole thing. But he hadn’t moved. He still stood, his hands clutched in front of him, his shoulders hunched, his whole body tense. He looked as if he wasn’t sure if he wanted to cry or run.
This is what the girl had been going through, she thought. Only Marcus has me here to ground him. The girl has no one, and she’s just been faced by the biggest group of people, and yes, Mia saw a couple of large animals prowling around, and a huge owl flutter between the branches of some trees, shifters too. No wonder she had freaked out.
“Go away, all of you,” she warned those still lurking nearby. “She needs some space.”
The girl trembled violently on the ground.
Mia crouched to bring herself down to the girl’s level. She kept her voice soft and even. “I know this is frightening for you. It’s okay to be scared. No one here is going to do you any harm. We’re here to help you. To take you back to your family. How you are feeling will pass. No one is going to hurt you.” Her words took on a hypnotic tone, and she repeated the same mantra over and over—it’s okay to be scared, it won’t last, no one is going to hurt you—until the girl’s trembling began to subside and slowly she unfolded herself like a flower blooming.
She blinked at Mia with large, innocent eyes.
Mia smiled. “Do you have a name?”
Her narrow shoulders shrugged.
A male voice came from beside Mia, making her jump. “She doesn’t talk.”
She looked up to find Marcus standing over them. He crouched on his heels next to Mia and gave a sad, half smile at the girl. “We don’t know her name because she’s never spoken to us.”
“But she can write, can’t she?”
Marcus shrugged. “No idea. We weren’t exactly supplied with stationery in there.”
Mia focused her attention back on the girl. “Do you know your name?”
She pursed her lips and then shook her head.
Mia’s heart broke. The poor thing. How could you go through life—whatever modicum of life she’d been allowed in the facility—not even knowing what your name was?
“They called her Subject Twenty-Three,” added Marcus.
“Jesus.”
That wouldn’t do. They couldn’t refer to her as Subject Twenty-Three.
Someone else approached. She glanced up to see a young boy about four years old, with blond hair and startlingly green eyes run up, a woman—the boy’s mother, she guessed by the matching eyes—chasing behind him.
“Hi,” the boy said.
Mia smiled. “Hello.”
The mother caught up. “I’m so sorry. I took my eye off him for a second and he ran off.” She crouched down to him. “Don’t do that, Billy. You scared Mommy running off.”
“Sorry, Mommy. I wanted to see the lady. She looked sad.”
Yes, she does look sad, thought Mia.
“She’s sad because she doesn’t have a name,” she said.
The boy’s eyes widened in amazement. “She doesn’t have a name? Did her mommy forget to give her one?”
“No, I’m sure her mommy gave her one, but she can’t remember, that’s all.”
“That’s real sad.”
Inspiration hit. “Maybe you could help give her a name?”
Despite the obvious age difference, this little boy seemed more like the girl than anyone else. It was as if the moment they’d snatched her, whether it was from the streets or her bed, they’d kept her the same age. Was that what happened with no outside influence while you grew up? Did you just stay the same age, frozen in time? Or they had done something to her to make her like this, or perhaps she was mentally impaired and she’d have stayed a child in her mind even if she’d never been taken.
The boy chewed his bottom lip, his eyes lifted skyward as he thought. His little face lit up. “I had a pet guinea pig called Daisy. We could call her Daisy.” Then he remembered something and his expression darkened. “But Daisy died.”
“Billy!” his mother exclaimed. She gathered her son toward her. “I’m so sorry.”
Mia smiled. “Don’t be silly. I think Daisy is a lovely name.” She had to admit, it could have been worse. The guinea pig could have been called Nibbles or something similar.
She risked reaching out and touching the girl’s arm. She flinched, but didn’t jerk away or start screaming again. “What do you think of the name Daisy?”
For the first time, the girl smi
led and nodded.
“Daisy it is then, at least until we find your family and they can fill in the blanks, okay?”
The girl—Daisy—smiled.
Mia offered her hand and the girl took it. They all got to their feet, Marcus on one side of Mia, the newly christened Daisy on the other. The third person they’d released seemed less shell-shocked than the other two. She sat in the footwell of Lakota’s truck, her feet hanging from the side, eating something Lakota had given her.
She saw Mia coming and held out her vending machine candy bar like it was something that should be worshipped. She spoke with her mouth glued together with sticky chocolate. “Oh, my God. I can’t tell you how good it is to eat chocolate again.”
“You haven’t been in as long as the others,” Mia said, hazarding a guess.
“Just a couple of years, but that was long enough.”
“Do you have family we can call for you?”
She shook her head. “Nah. My mom didn’t give a shit about me anyway. Probably hasn’t even noticed I’m missing. Everyone else in my life was just quick hookups and acquaintances rather than friends.”
How sad, Mia thought, not to be missed by anyone.
A shout came from the group of shifters. Someone pointed. The others were back.
Thank God! Peter! A wave of relief that he was back swept over her. Whenever they were separated she carried this intense fear that she would never get to see him again. What Autumn had gone through with Blake only intensified her worries.
Peter walked, carrying someone, or something in his arms. The others marched along behind him, several of them carrying people, or perhaps animals, she couldn’t quite tell. But then she saw Autumn hurrying along beside Chogan. The man was weighted down, thighs bowed by the weight, back bent. Mia saw the reason why. In his arms, he held the cousin he’d believed dead. Despite the obvious struggle, Chogan’s expression was so determined, Mia thought he would die himself before he put Blake down.
Her first reaction was for her heart to leap for joy at seeing Blake. Autumn must be overjoyed. But then she frowned. What’s wrong with Blake? Why wasn’t he walking himself?
She resisted running toward them, not wanting to leave her new charges to fend for themselves. She was just relieved to see them. She’d heard the distant pop of gunfire and had worried that Autumn, Peter, and the others had been on the receiving end of the bullets.
Someone was missing. Calvin Thorne hadn’t returned with them. Had the turncoat gone back to his own team?
She couldn’t worry about that now. She was glad to see Autumn back with Blake and Tala, and they also had another man she didn’t recognize.
Autumn had Blake back. But then why didn’t she seem happier?
Lakota came running, his hands at his mouth. “Oh, my son! My daughter! You’re alive.” He reached them and placed his hands on either side of Blake’s face and kissed his forehead, and then reached out for Tala.
“She’s not easy to carry, Lakota,” said Peter. “I’ll keep hold of her until we reach your truck.”
Peter gave Mia a smile, and her heart flipped with happiness. He was safe and he was back. In many ways that was all that mattered to her now. She watched Peter’s strong back as he carried Tala to Lakota’s truck and lifted her onto the passenger seat. She wondered why all the men were wearing scrubs.
“What about him?” asked Mia, looking toward the strange man they’d brought with them. Like Tala, he seemed to be in a state of mid-shift.
“He’s the soldier I told you about,” said Autumn. “The one Vivian Winters injected with my blood.”
“And what of Ms. Winters?” Mia asked. “Did you get the bitch?”
Autumn shook her head. “She vanished. I don’t know how, but she got out of the building while we were distracted by… everything else.”
Autumn’s face had paled.
“What else did you see in there?”
She shook her head. “I can’t talk about it right now. We’ve got other things we need to concentrate on. Blake is paralyzed, and he doesn’t think he’s healing.”
Mia brought her hand to her mouth. “Oh, my God.”
Lakota had been listening. “Is this true?”
Autumn nodded. “I wouldn’t say something like that if it wasn’t. Is there a way we can help him heal, Lakota? Surely there must be something?”
Lakota frowned, his aged face creasing into a multitude of lines and gullies. “I’m not sure. I’ll have to think about it, maybe consult the spirits.”
“And what about Tala and the soldier, Romero? Are you able to help them complete their shifts?”
He nodded. “I believe I can. Their spirit guides must be welcomed and put to peace with their new hosts. It won’t be as straight forward as initially connecting a spirit to a new host, because I can guarantee you these spirits are going to be angry at what’s happened to them, but I should be able to calm them down.”
“That’s something.” Autumn gave a sad smile. “You’ll have your daughter back.”
“I have my son back, too,” Lakota insisted.
“Yes.” She lowered her voice. “But I’m worried about him. The way he was talking … It’s like he’s already given up.”
Lakota shook his head. “No, not my Blake. He never gives up.”
Autumn looked impossibly sad. “I hope you’re right.”
Mia couldn’t stand to see her friend look so defeated. She reached out and gave her a hug. “Don’t you give up on him either,” she said. “Blake will need your strength if he’s struggling for his own.”
Autumn wiped away a tear. “You’re right. I’ll put on a brave face, I promise. Honestly, I’m happy to have him alive. It’s not like I couldn’t care that he’s paralyzed—of course I care—but it doesn’t change the way I feel about him.”
Mia squeezed her hand. “Maybe he’s the one who needs to know that.”
She nodded. “Yes, you’re right. And how are you coping?”
Mia glanced over to Marcus, who stood talking with the other woman they had rescued. The newly named Daisy was playing with Billy, scraping shapes in the dirt with a couple of twigs. “It hasn’t quite sunk in yet. I keep thinking he’s going to disappear again, or that I’ll have been dreaming this whole thing.”
“He’s definitely real. You recognized him the moment you saw him. Even after all these years.”
“You know what’s strange? I saw him in every teenage boy I tried to find, I tried to help. Every time, I imagined it was Marcus I was bringing home, safe to be with his family. When I was walking around, in our home town, in the city, around the shops, even places I’d never been to with Marcus before, as soon as I saw a boy with dark hair who was about Marcus’s height, my heart and stomach would lurch, and I would be so certain it was him. But I’d run up to them, and as soon as I got close, I knew it wasn’t.” She gave a sad smile. “The strange thing is, even though I got older, I never imagined he would, too. I had him frozen in time in my head, still the same boy who left school that day and never came home. I kind of forgot he would be getting older, too.”
Chapter Seventeen
AUTUMN LEFT MIA with her brother and the other people they’d rescued and went to see Blake in Lakota’s truck. He was lying across the back seat, his useless legs dangling out of the open doorway.
She hesitated, feeling awkward. She didn’t want to speak while leaning over the top of him. Instead, she headed around to the other side of the car and opened the back door nearest Blake’s head. She wanted to cry and laugh, and kiss his big, handsome face all over, but he didn’t even acknowledge she was there.
Autumn squeezed her backside into the footwell, so her face was almost level with Blake’s. “Hey,” she said, softly. “How are you doing?”
“Why are you here, Autumn?” The cold tone of his voice shocked her.
“I’m here for you.”
“I don’t want you to be. My life is over. I don’t see why I should take you down with me
, too.”
She reached out and took his hand, squeezing it hard. “Don’t say that, Blake. Do you have any idea how happy I am to see you alive? I thought I’d lost you.”
“You have lost me. The man I was is gone.”
She made her voice as determined as possible. “The man I love is right in front of me.”
He shook his head, his nose wrinkled his lip curled in disdain. “How can you love me? I’m half a man.”
“Stop it!” Anger blazed through her and she snatched her hand away from his. “When I found out you were dead, my God-damned heart was broken, and now here you are, trying to break it again.”
“This isn’t about you. You’re not the one who’s going to have to live like this.”
The anger faded away to an all encompassing sadness and guilt. He was right. Was she being selfish to try and make him see another side of this, to make him shoulder her pain as well?
Chogan approached. He’d changed out of the scrubs and back into his usual wardrobe of a close-fitting t-shirt and jeans. “Hey, Cuz,” he said, his voice unnaturally bright. “You had us worried there for a while.”
Blake didn’t respond. He just stared at the back of the seat.
Chogan glanced to Autumn. She gave a slight shake of her head.
Chogan tried again. “You know, this might not be permanent. We heal. I thought I left you for dead, but here you are, talking and breathing. There’s every chance your legs will heal in time.”
Blake’s head snapped toward his cousin. “Shut it, Chogan. You have no idea what you’re talking about. This isn’t going to heal. I feel nothing. Can you understand that? Nothing. My legs and …” he turned away, his cheeks heating red. “Everything else down there … might as well not exist.”
Autumn's War (The Spirit Shifters Book 4) Page 11
