He whimpers again, and I motion for him to stay quiet.
“Stay, Sammy, stay,” I whisper, knowing he can’t understand.
All he understands is that I’m not going to him. That I’m leaving him there to die.
Time is running out. Hating myself, I keep moving.
The shed is now ten feet away. I reach the door. Locked.
Panic rises. I roll into the shadows and fumble in my front pocket for Dad’s extra set of keys, the ones I used this morning to get into the shop. The ring holds four brass-colored Yales, the truck and Range Rover keys, and one with a black plastic fob. The Yale marked with yellow tape is for the store. I try another. Too big. The second one slides home. Using both hands, I shove on the accordion door. It opens sideways, making plastic grinding, grunting noises as I pull it wide.
Musty air spills out. A dusty-winged brown moth lies dead on the floor, its lustrous eyes still shining. Shovels and rakes all clotted with earth stand erect along the far wall. If I were a hero in a film, I’d use one as a weapon and free us all. But I’m not a hero. I’m just a person.
In the middle, hunched under a camouflage tarp, lies the daunting form of Dad’s mean, four-wheel ATV.
Hyperaware of any sound from outside, I slide the tarp off and scrunch it into one corner. The wicked machine with its four huge tires is something a futuristic droid should drive. Sanded steel bars everywhere, a leather seat high up in the middle. can-am outlander max xt in block letters stenciled down its tail.
Dad told me once he took the limiter off and it goes eighty or ninety miles per hour. I have no clue what a limiter is, but I told him he was crazy to even think of driving it half that fast.
Who’s the crazy one now?
From outside comes the medium-pitched hum of an engine. Past the house, a section of road is visible. I catch sight of Iron-fist’s SUV driving along it. The engine grows louder. I know it’s in the driveway. I hear it slow to an idle.
Time is up.
He’s come for Dad.
A helmet dangles from a hook. I grab it and wrench it on. My fingers are trembling so hard I can hardly fasten the strap. It’s too big, slipping forward over my eyes. I shove it back and climb onto the ATV, straddling the leather seat. The key with the plastic fob fits the ignition. A thrill of panic shoots through me at the sound of the engine. I aim the front wheels toward the lawn and twist the right accelerator handle. The ATV leaps forward, almost throwing me off. Instantly I let off the gas.
I jolt to a halt. Right there, outside. Right in the middle of the back lawn.
I know I’m in naked view to anyone who glances out the window. The ATV is loud. Seriously loud.
My heart slams and I’ve barely gone five feet. I shoot a glance at the kitchen door. It’s opening. I have to get around the house. Past the SUV in the drive. Oh god, I can’t do it. I can’t do this!
Don’t think, Aeris! Just drive!
My legs are shaking as hard as the thrumming monster under me. I give the accelerator a twist. One of Iron-fist’s men comes out the back door. Military. Navy SEAL or special ops. Except there’s no visible insignia. No marks of office at all. What he does have is a gun.
He plants his feet wide, points his arms straight, and aims.
“STOP YOUR VEHICLE!”
I force my terror down and rocket forward.
The gun explodes. I’m around the side of the house. I’m numb. Am I hit? No, I’d know. I’m sure I’d know, and I’m still driving, still moving. Sliding around to the front. Onto the driveway. Oh god, there he is. The man from the SUV. The man in charge. Iron-fist himself. He’s snaking around his vehicle’s front grill to face me; his powerful prosthetic hand is drawing a weapon.
It’s the tourist man from Dad’s store. The one with the buckskin gloves and too-crisp flannel shirt. The one who claimed his wife was dying. The one with the creepy, pale-gray android eyes.
“Hello again,” he shouts. Then he laughs.
A jolt of recognition from somewhere deep inside floods my consciousness. A childish, primal fear grips me. I’ve heard that awful snicker before. In my nightmares. In a place that smells of blood and burning steel. I thought it lived only in my imagination. But his laugh is real. A sound that has lingered like a fingerprint in my mind.
His shaved jaw juts out a little, jaunty almost. There’s a glint in his eye, a hint of delight at my unexpected attack. It’s obvious he sees me as a challenge easily taken down and toyed with. He thinks I’ll falter, ease off the gas to avoid hitting him.
Not today, mister.
Not ever.
I wrap my fingers tighter around the knobby, soft rubber grips. My whole body clenches with a need to attack him. Worse. To destroy him.
I twist the accelerator all the way.
The ATV bucks. It lurches up on two wheels, nearly tipping me into the dirt. Then the front end slams down, and it takes off like a bat. Flying. He shouts and dives clear.
I skid out of the driveway and onto the slick road. The front door to the house opens. Three guys built like tanks spill onto the walk.
Some insane, reckless part of me, one I had no idea existed, slows the beast enough to dig out the Phoenix Research Lab key card. I wave it high.
“Come and get it!” I shout.
Then I bust across the road.
Iron-fist barks, “GET IN THE CAR, GET IN THE CAR, GET IN THE CAR!”
Like some military sergeant on training day.
They want to go to the PRL? I’ll take them there. Just let them try to get through. I’d like to see it. But no one said I had to make the trip easy on them.
I turn into the abandoned field, praying to God they’ve left Dad alone. I fly past the orchard, sending rotten apples falling. I fishtail through a puddle and mud sloshes up my legs. I keep moving, keep going, willing Dad and Sammy to be okay. Oh please, let them be okay.
I weld my gaze to the bumpy ground, my fingers to the handlebars. Towering stalks rear up out of the gloomy rain. A boulder. I swerve. I’m moving way too fast to be safe. Stupid tears blur my vision and I scream.
Why is this happening? I’m supposed to be here on vacation, visiting Dad, trying out his smoked fish, playing music, and composing.
This has to be a joke. This isn’t me. My life is predictable and safe.
Stop it, I tell myself.
I’m nearly across the field. Less than fifty feet of pine and scrub separate me from the winding road. Too late, I spot the tree root.
I clamp the brakes and nearly tumble over the handlebars. The Outlander slams into the root and goes airborne. Then, with a grinding crunch, it touches down and snakes sideways. Branches tear at me. Frantic, I try to touch my foot to the ground. Big mistake—my shoe is ripped away.
Brakes locked, engine whining, I skid between the towering pines that border the field.
I’m still sliding. Across the narrow road.
I hear the roar of a tractor-trailer. Then the driver blares his air horn in alarm. Halfway across the far lane, I skate to a stop, the ATV stalling. The eighteen-wheeler careens past, spraying me with grit while I stare wild-eyed, imagining the soft, sickening crunch of my skull.
My breath is ragged as I frantically restart the Outlander. I can’t seem to get enough air. I’m shaking so hard I think I might pass out. Rain gusts around me. My sweatshirt is sticking high on my back. I feel exposed but don’t bother to yank it down.
My grand plan to drive to the research lab and toss the keycard over the gates seems suddenly ludicrous. Stupid beyond all reason. I should have gone the other way. To a police station. Even though I’ve never seen one. Who do they call when there’s trouble? It’s a pointless question. I have to keep going.
Driving is easier on the road. The wet forest whips past.
At least two miles to go.
No one will be there. Hunter won’t be waiting. No one’s going to come out to defend me with guns blazing. They have no idea what’s headed their way. There are cameras, though.
Iron-fist and his men won’t shoot me in plain sight, not in front of all those security devices. Would they?
The stalled store truck is exactly where I left it. I blow past. Spot Gage’s mailbox, closing in fast.
Please be there! Please come driving out, Gage!
Deserted.
What could he do, even if he had miraculously appeared? I keep going. Fully committed now. Unbidden, thoughts of how the whole town is suspicious of Hunter bubble wild and fast into my mind. Winding left, the trees open up. What if there’s a basis to their fears? What if there is something horrible going on up at the lab? What if the men chasing me are the good guys, and I’ve got it wrong?
No. If they were the good guys, they wouldn’t hurt Dad. Or Mr. Creedy. Or Sammy.
Another sob threatens to choke me.
I slide through a turn, almost losing control. Hunter said it was dangerous for me to be at the PRL. Why did Dad warn me off Hunter like he was trying to protect me? Crushed pine needles send tingling air into my lungs. The odometer reads 55 mph. Rain pricks my cheeks, and I’m terrified and alive all at once.
Beyond the ragged cliff edge, sheer walls drop to the churning ocean far below. Gusts fling up salt-tinged billows. Sensing something behind me, I glance back.
Big, high headlights. A wide, glossy front grill. Iron-fist and his men. They’ve caught up.
I crank the engine until the odometer reads 60 mph. 65. Then 72. The curve comes up too fast. Wheels thumping, I careen off the road. Hover along the edge. Sliding. I wrench hard and somehow the wheels grip, yanking me back to safety. Pulling me along a short straightaway.
My pursuer’s high beams light up the misting rain. Grow brighter. Closer. From a hundred feet back comes a loud pop. The next instant, my earlobe flares. I’ve been shot.
I duck and open the throttle all the way.
“Almost there, almost there,” I gasp, seeing the final bend, and then the gates coming up. My eyes are so wide, the whites are burning.
“Hunter,” I scream at the cameras, even though there’s no way he can hear me. “Hunter!”
From behind, a bullet makes contact with my leg.
Thwack-thwacks ring out as more gunshots strike the Outlander. The stench of exploding rubber floods my nostrils. Shredded tire parts hail past. Still holding on to the handlebars, I’m toppling, spinning, careening through the air. The ATV is head-over-heels. I’m grappling with an eight-hundred-pound monster, kicking myself free, aware of it flipping around me and the sharp moving parts underneath, of the searing exhaust, and thinking of the skin on my face—please don’t let it touch my face—and then I see the forged steel gates. Oh god, not the gates. Not like that.
Hands grind dirt. Body still airborne. From somewhere behind me, the engine screams.
I slam into the barrier first. Shoulder blades, ribs, ankles.
The brick-shaped ATV sails at me in slow motion.
Mom.
You protected me once, but nothing could stop this.
Not today.
Maybe it’s been coming for me ever since.
Bringing me back to you.
The crack of my bones is deafening.
Fourteen
Someone is touching my face.
Gently.
Large, rough fingers. They trace my cheekbone with such yearning tenderness that my soul aches to respond. The touch ends, launching me into blackness.
I feel nothing but the fragmentary trail of sparks left behind by that strong hand.
My body is featureless. A cloud, fuzzy and floating.
No arms, no legs, no fingers, no toes. Just that cheek. I drift away from the sparks, unable to hold on, desperate to hold on, slowly falling, grasping at the sensation, knowing that was my anchor and I’ve come loose.
I see it then, emerging in the fog. Snapping and winging out of reach. A man with arms that could lift a vehicle full of men and guns. A man who ripped the doors off a monstrous SUV. A man with flashing catlike eyes, reflected in a pair of headlights bent on destruction, who tore my pursuers in two. A man who gathered me into him and bore me away.
Terror. I’m terrified of his strength even as I claw to stay in the warmth of his grasp.
I tumble down from the vision, a feather in the current.
Submerged until I’m all gone.
The presence is there again. Pulling me back, calling me back, around me like a force field. Male and powerful, warm and steady.
It’s no use, though.
I’m slipping.
There’s not enough of me to hold on.
“Aeris!”
The voice explodes in colors. White and purple and red.
Human heat surges close by, swirling inward. A cheek touches mine. Rough skin. Stubble. That’s what it is, stubble.
“Aeris.” His voice is a hoarse whisper.
So sweet. Oh, so sweet to hear him call me. I ache with the pleasure of his voice. Liquid warmth rolling through me, swelling my heart.
“I’m not letting you go,” he says. “Hear me? Not letting you go.”
I want to reply. Where’s my mouth? How do I reach my mouth?
“You were right about Poppy,” he whispers.
He’s gone then and I spin around his words, puzzling over their message. Poppy. There was a mare. Dakota? No, not Dakota. Soft brown eyes. Pleading for my help. Something happened to her, though. A joyous moment gone wrong. There was a shoulder, too. His shoulder, and I pressed my face into it.
A lurching sensation rolls through my being. A sob, maybe. I watch it like waves on a stormy ocean, rolling and smashing, wet and dangerous.
Voices, low and urgent.
Two men, one woman.
Instruments, clicking metal objects. Beeping machines. A heartbeat echoes, sounding strange. Arrhythmic and staccato. Not good music at all. Don’t they know the tune? That beat will kill you.
“Jack wants in,” comes the woman.
“Jack can stay in his seat and keep giving blood,” the man who touched my cheek replies.
Hunter. That’s his name. Hunter.
The beeping heartbeat slows; the pings grow random. Have they stopped?
Ping.
That’s good. Pings are good.
A clock ticks against the wall. Click, click, click, click, click, click—
Ping.
“We’re losing her. One milligram atropine. Now!”
“Blood pressure dropping.”
Rushing sounds, people moving. Images, hazy at first, grow clearer. A big, bright room. So bright. A table in the middle, directly below me. I’m on the ceiling, staring at an operating theater. A body lies on the table, mangled arms and legs, bleeding everywhere. Shreds of checked fabric cover part of the body’s torso. I have a shirt made out of that fabric. I put that shirt on in Dad’s guest bedroom.
“Atropine, point five milligrams.”
I stare at the man below me, working to revive the body. I recognize the broad shoulders, the big hands, the way he stands protectively over the inert remains of a woman. Like a knight on the battlefield. Like an armed warrior trying to fight off death.
“Come back to me,” he whispers.
I want to. Oh, how I want to.
“Come back, little bird,” he begs.
A memory flits by, bittersweet and wistful and too ancient to grasp. I watch his powerful hands cover my chest, trying desperately to hold my life in. His words come to me then, words he spoke into my hair as I sobbed against his chest when we lost the mare. Death is the darkest of thieves.
Beeeeeeep.
The ominous sound pierces the room. Pierces me high above, and I fear now I’m never going back.
Hunter sags against the table. “This can’t be happening.” He slams the beeping machine, and it goes silent.
“We’re out of options,” says the man with red hair peeking from his cap.
“You’re wrong, Ian. It’s my job to save her, and I damn well intend to.”
Voices grow urgent. Gar
bled.
Dad’s in the room, shouting, trying to get near me. He’s alive, safe!
“Get out, Jack,” Hunter rages. “Do you want her to live? Then get out and let me do what I have to do.”
I’m fading.
It’s not painful. Just a sensation of dying light. Like a fire fading to embers and finally, softly, darkly, going cold.
Hunter.
If you’re coming for me, come soon. Oh god, please, come soon… .
Fifteen
A plunging force stabs the center of what’s left of me. It explodes in a sunburst of tendrils, rays shooting outward in all directions. Millions of arms and hands, grabbing, seizing, clutching.
My consciousness slows its outward drift, stops, frozen.
Then it all comes rushing inward. Pieces of my mind smash against one another, slam into place. Whirring and clicking, smelling of blood and electricity and disinfectant. The engine in my chest roars into action. Hammers in earnest, in joy, in celebration. My mouth opens, and air charges over my tongue, runs deep into me, forces my chest to rise as it conquers the farthest reaches of my lungs. Warm liquid sensations swirl into my shoulders, surge down my arms into my fingertips that curl with delicious pleasure.
It’s beautiful. Sensations and smells of this world. This wonderful world. Where Dad still exists, and Sammy, and music, exquisite music, and the dark-haired man I long to see.
My eyes fly wide.
He’s there. Right there.
“Hunter!” I gasp.
He nods and there’s a wobble to that normally strong mouth. It’s as though he doesn’t trust himself to speak.
From farther off, I hear a female voice say, “Shit.”
Victoria.
The operating table and its bright lights and beeping machines are a modern island in the beautiful old room. Oak-paneled walls are straight out of a study you’d see in a royal palace. A painting stretches across the ceiling overhead. Pale blue sky with fluffy clouds and butterflies. Thousands of butterflies in fiery shades of orange and yellow. Painted branches bloom in profusion along the ceiling’s borders. On the painted tree limbs are cocoons, some bursting open as winged creatures emerge, others being built by fuzzy caterpillars.
The Butterfly Code Page 12
