Crucible Zero

by Devon Monk

  “I doubt that.”

  “Why? You think the pain will keep you awake?”

  “No,” he said. “You will.”

  I shook my head. “Hobbies?” I plucked up a curved needle and a length of thread from Evelyn’s kit. I pulled the thread through the balm a few times, thinking. “I like to read. We never had a lot of books on the farm, but back . . . well, back when I came from, there was a book exchange through all the House Brown people, so I got my hands on a fair share of words. I’m also a crack computer hacker and can data-mine like a demon. That’s fun.”

  I threaded the needle and pressed my fingers gently alongside both edges of the wound.

  “You know computers?”

  “I knew them. They were pretty commonplace in my time. Everyone had one.”

  “That is a skill that could come in very handy, Matilda.”

  “If the programming is the same or similar to what I know,” I said, “maybe. Otherwise, it’s just another thing about me that doesn’t fit in with this world.”

  He didn’t say anything, and I was glad. I didn’t want to have to defend how much I felt like I was outside, looking in at my own life. I didn’t want to explain things to him I wasn’t even ready to face yet.

  “Food,” I continued. “I make a mad berry-pear jam that will win any contest in the country. Oh, and I am very good with knives.”

  “Cooking knives?”

  “Killing knives.”

  His eyebrows notched upward. “So that wasn’t beginner’s luck out there with the ferals.”

  “Not at all. They roamed the property edges at home, and every week or so, I’d have to take a few down and feed them to the lizard. Didn’t like to waste bullets or mess up the meat with tranquilizers. So it was sort of a hands-on proposition.”

  “Which is why you thought it was such a good idea to take those on bare-handed?”

  “I wasn’t bare-handed, and it was a good idea. They’re dead. We’re not. So . . .” I tugged on the thread a little and made eye contact. “Win.”

  “Are there any other unexpectedly dangerous things a man should know about you?”

  “I’m smart.” I stitched up the wound as gently and quickly as I could. “Some people have underestimated me, and that didn’t work out well for them. I’m deadly determined. When there’s a thing I know must be done, I see it through, no matter what. And I believe in the basic decency of people.”

  “Some would say that’s naive. The only thing people care about in this world is their own skin. Their own survival.”

  “Is that what you think?” I asked. “That even humans aren’t human?”

  “It seems to prove out time and time again.”

  “So, why are you coming with us to House Earth? You could walk away right now. Quinten can’t stop you. I wouldn’t. We can deal with our matters at House Earth alone. It seems like you’re doing this for the good of others.”

  “I made an agreement with your brother. That I would give him the information I know in exchange for what he knows,” he nodded, “and what you know about Slater. This is self-serving.”

  “Because you’re interested in killing Slater?”

  “Because I’m interested in you.”

  My hands stilled. Hell, everything in me stilled. There were two ways to take that. Either he meant it to be romantic and was telling me he’d fallen head over heels for me the moment he’d stepped into my kitchen—something I found very hard to believe—or he was doing what any good mercenary should do: say anything necessary to obtain the goal and get paid for it.

  “Why?” I asked, finishing up the last stitches and setting an knot.

  I turned, my hand hovering over Evelyn’s medical kit. She had plenty of sharp scalpels in that kit. Things I could use to hurt him if I needed to. Things I could use to defend myself. I picked up the small scissors instead to cut the thread.

  “You intrigue me.”

  “Not sure how to take that.” I snipped the thread.

  “Any way you want.”

  “All right. I’m going to take it that I don’t know you very well, Abraham.”

  “That’s not what you’ve been telling me.”

  I probed one of the bullet holes, and his stomach muscles tightened. I’d need to get the slugs out. I picked up a pair of thin, delicate tongs with cupped ends not coincidentally about the size of a bullet. I slathered that with some of the balm before using it to extract the bullets.

  “I don’t know this you,” I said.

  “Am I that different from the man you knew?”

  No. Not all that different. Harder, angrier, certainly more suspicious. But those were his beautiful hazel eyes, that was his voice that made my heart stutter. He even smelled the same, a delicious mix of spice and soap.

  I liked to think there was still kindness in him. A moral core that meant he would stand for the good of others, no matter the cost to himself. But he was a mercenary, and that job description wasn’t exactly suitable for the noble-minded. Still, he was doing right by his promise to Quinten. He was holding to his word of making sure we got to House Earth in one piece.

  “I don’t know. It’s complicated.”

  “You told me that before. Care to explain?”

  “Some things about you are the same,” I said. “I want to hope that you are the man I knew.” I paused, lost for a moment in the memories of what we’d had. Wondering if the smiling, tattooed Abraham in the other timeway might be the man I loved. If somehow in that time, we had found a way to be together, to build a life where neither of us had to carry guns to survive.

  “But I can’t,” I said. “I can’t hope. You are different. I guess we all are. And that’s just the way of it. Now that you know I can cook, kill, and crack computer code, it’s time for you to tell me a few things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like why you really came out to my farm.” I paused, studied his face. “You wanted to bring us in for the bounty on our heads, didn’t you?”

  “Sallyo isn’t the kind of person who shares her take,” he said. “She was the one hired to bring you in. Well, her and a few others. I did not hunt you down to drag you in to Slater.”

  “All right. So when you say you are here now because of me . . . how am I supposed to take that?”

  His gaze was steady, but his expression had closed down so that I couldn’t guess whatever emotion he was guarding. “Any way you want to.”

  “I want the truth. Why are you with us? Why are you with me?”

  He didn’t answer. Not for a long moment. But I refused to look away and give him an easy out of this conversation.

  “You hate Slater,” he finally said slowly. “I hate Slater. Between the two of us, our resources, I believe we can remove him from the world. And I believe it will be a much better world without him.”

  Great. He thought of me as his killing buddy. Someone useful for getting a job done. “Did someone offer you a lot of money to kill Slater?”

  “I don’t talk about my personal business.”

  I raised an eyebrow. That sounded like a yes to me. Who would have put a hit out on Slater? Who were his enemies in this time?

  “Since I’m the person patching up your gut, I think you owe me more than vagaries.”

  “There’s no money on Slater’s head,” he said.

  I didn’t believe that.

  “But that doesn’t mean I don’t have reasons for wanting him dead.”

  “Mercenaries freelance?” I asked. “For free?”

  “It’s personal, Matilda. And that’s all you’re going to get out of me on the subject.”

  “Noted. So, how did you know I hated Slater before you’d even met me?”

  “Other than the fact that you tried to stop him from killing me in the jail? That you fought him and risked gettin
g shot when you were just a child?”

  I tilted my head, considering that. “That was a long time ago. Anyone would have tried to stop Slater from killing you after they saw he had killed the sheriff. Basic human decency, and all that.”

  “Hmm,” he said.

  “So why find me?”

  “If I say because you told me to, you’re not going to buy it, are you?”

  “I think a man like you wouldn’t listen to the crazy talk of an eight-year-old girl you met three hundred years ago.”

  “An eight-year-old girl who foretold the future?”

  “Even then.”

  He smiled, just one corner of his mouth quirking up.

  He really needed to stop doing that, since it just made me want to kiss him.

  “There might be a business deal I thought you’d be interested in.”

  Wow. What do you know? He could tell the truth.

  “What business deal?”

  “It involves galvanized.”

  “Don’t tell me you want to start a union.”

  “No. Not exactly. There are . . . deals in place that I’d like us all to be a part of. Things that will allow for galvanized to be expunged of their crimes and offered other options.”

  “You want galvanized to go legitimate? Can that even happen? Un-mercenary yourselves? From what I’ve seen, people are pretty reluctant to trust you.”

  “Not you,” he said. “You trusted me from the moment you saw me.”

  I held up my wrist. “Stitched. Ergo, one of you. Also, I know you . . . kind of. Mostly. So I’m not the best example for your cause.”

  “You’ve never killed a man.”

  He said it like that meant something. Like it was rare and important.

  “So?”

  “You are the proof that we can live. That we read books, make jam. That we can believe in human decency and can be healers, not just warriors. You are proof that we are human.”

  Sure, he sounded sincere. But there was something more he was holding back. I may not have known him for a long time in my past life, but I knew enough to sense when he still wasn’t being completely truthful.

  “Who do you want to prove our humanity to? I thought you were pretty happy being a mercenary.”

  He must have expected a different question. Maybe thought I’d swoon over his pretty words and puppy-follow him where ever he wanted me to go.

  But if our recent bouts of getting shot at and almost killed and getting jumped by mutant beasts had taught me anything, it was that this world was just as dangerous and full of deadly surprises as mine had been. Asking the right questions was tantamount to survival.

  Nine days until the bombs started falling. Eight, by the time we reached House Earth . . . if we got there.

  Time was ticking down, and the weight of its passage made my heart race.

  But it appeared Abraham had other goals in mind.

  “Important people who can make a difference,” he said. “House Earth already accepts you as one of theirs, don’t they?”

  “Honestly, I have no idea.”

  “It’s a start,” he said. “A way for people to understand us.”

  I dug into the supplies for a clean cloth, then slathered it with the balm. At least he was being mostly honest. I would have hated it more if he tried to string me along.

  “I don’t think holding me up as proof of anything will change anyone’s mind. You change people’s minds by doing things.” I pressed the cloth against his wound and unwound a strip of cloth to secure it into place. “By doing good things.”

  “Do you really believe that?” he asked.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “It’s . . . I don’t know. It’s kind of sweet.”

  “Sweet?”

  He grunted as I tightened the knot with a little more force than strictly required.

  “Ouch,” he noted.

  I repacked the supplies so I could take them out with me to check on Foster then stood.

  “Am I sensing your displeasure?” Abraham sat, his shoulder dropping so his muscular arm could fall to cover his newly bandaged wound.

  “You are sensing my willingness to leave you to put on your shirt while I go take care of Foster. Also?” I pointed at him. “I am not going to be your little doll to parade around in front of people so that you can broker deals. Do you understand me, Abraham? I’m not your new toy, not your bargaining chip, not your way out of a bad situation you got yourself into and have had hundreds of years to get yourself out of.”

  He stood, his arm dropping away from his injury. That rakish smile of his flashed, and he stepped right up to within an inch of me. He wrapped his hands gently around my upper arms. “I feel I owe you an apology. Maybe I can apologize somewhere more private?”

  Oh, that is a dirty, dirty trick.

  He was going to kiss me.

  He was going to do it to shut me up. Maybe to convince me to take his side, to make me swoon.

  He was going to kiss me because he thought I was sweet. Because he had always liked it when I stood up, pushed back, and put him in his place.

  Nope. Not happening. It was going to be me who kissed him.

  For my own reasons.

  I stepped into him, slipping my arms up so I could place my hands on either side of his face. His hands stroked down my back, his left pressing my hips even closer as I stood on tiptoe and slanted my mouth to his.

  I was kissing him because I missed him. Because I loved him. Because he was the man I wanted and could never have again. I was kissing him because I needed to feel him again. Needed to taste him again. The real him, here in this real time of ours.

  He stilled and held his breath, surprised and maybe overwhelmed with the wave of sensation.

  If he was surprised about my move, he quickly got over it. His lips, hot upon my needful mouth, moved against mine with more tenderness than I’d expected.

  He bit my bottom lip gently, and I licked the corner of his mouth, my tongue flicking out to touch the edge of his stitches there and then retreating back so I could dip into his mouth and finally, finally taste him.

  If he’d been tender before, that one move ignited a fire in him. He shifted his grip, bending to stroke his hand over my butt.

  I was teetering on one tiptoe, breasts, stomach, hips, and thigh pressed against the hard muscles of his chest, stomach, hips. He slipped one hand up, and I thought for a moment that he was going to lift me and then lay me on the cot. Instead his palm stroked along the side of my breast, and I made a soft, hungry sound.

  He pulled his mouth away from mine and pressed his lips once, gently, to my throat. A shiver of pure pleasure pooled under his mouth, spreading over my neck and trickling down my breasts. Then he just as gently bit me.

  “Abraham,” I said. “Please.”

  He lifted his torturous lips from my neck and gazed down at me, hazel eyes holding an animal intensity. “Yes?” he whispered.

  “Kiss me,” I whispered. “Just for the me that I am. Just for this now.”

  That slash of a smile pulled at his lips: rakish delight. “For this you. Forever.”

  He lowered his mouth to mine and kissed me with intent, as if it were the first and last time we would ever touch. The contact was fire on fire.

  I was swallowed whole, lost, every inch of me straining for his touch, his caress.

  His arms tightened around me, a strength, a rock in the storm that rolled inside me.

  Quinten made a small sound, a whimper of pain.

  And that was all it took to bring me back to this here. This now.

  To whom I was with. The man I had loved. The man who was no longer that man.

  I pulled away, though he reached for me, his lips begging me not to stop what I had started. What we had started. I pressed my lips together and
shook my head. “I can’t,” I breathed.

  I was lying. I knew it.

  He knew it.

  And we both knew this lie had to be our truth for now.

  “I know,” he said.

  He loosened his grip, lowering me back to my own feet, giving me up inch by inch, as if savoring the warmth of me. As if it would be the last time we would ever touch. And it might be.

  I didn’t know if we could ever become something more. My past expectations of who he was would only mess with how I saw him now.

  If I was smart, I’d be content with this one kiss, cut my losses, and move forward.

  But I wasn’t. Not at all.

  “You should get some rest,” I said, refusing to hold his burning gaze. I turned away, dizzy with him, aching for him. I was doing the right thing. The logical thing. Wasn’t I?

  “I need to check on Foster.”

  He didn’t say anything, but his silence crouched between us, a weight of unfulfilled promises.

  I squared my shoulders and walked out to the other room. I did not look back.

  Foster stood at the stove, stirring a pot. From the rich, sweet smell, I knew what he was cooking. Hot cocoa.

  “Foster,” I said. “I’ve checked everyone else. I need to see to your wounds too.”

  “Yes.” He pulled the small pot away from the hottest part of the woodstove.

  He poured the cocoa expertly into two cups, turned, and offered me one.

  I took it, and the warmth of the cocoa seeped into my hands, bringing with it a sense of comfort I hadn’t felt in a long time.

  “A toast,” he rumbled.

  I shifted the grip on my cup and raised it a bit. “To surviving the day?”

  “To you. You saved,” he said. “Saved our lives.”

  I raised my cup, the knot of emotion in my throat choking off my words. When all this was over—if I survived—I was going to carve out a little time without the threat of assassins trying to kill me, injured family members needing tending, or my heart being so achingly confused by a man I apparently couldn’t stop loving. In any time.

  I was going to sit on my front porch and watch the clouds go by for days.

  “To our lives,” I said.