by Angela White
Donner scoffed, “How could anything be worse than aging and dying on this miserable little rock?”
Just for an instant, Angela agreed. And then that dauntless spirit slapped him with a view she knew that he hadn’t ever thought of.
“Is there a time that it’s okay to make the call? Nothing I read had an answer for that.”
Donner was speechless. In all his studies and experiments, he’d never thought to research it. He hadn’t cared about getting permission.
“I still don’t,” he growled, suspecting her delaying tactics.
Angela kept quiet, letting him work it out. Like with sex, it was better if both parties were willing. If the requirements were simple, he could have double the chance of success, of making contact.
For Donner, his entire life had been about this quest. He’d been the only one in his family to have the gift. When his parents had perished, he’d been close enough to feel their pain and regrets, their horror at the empty blackness rushing toward them. I have to know!
“And you shall,” Angela muttered as Donner left the room, waving her guard in. She’d bought an hour at best while he searched her topic. Despite Donner’s lack of interest in the subject, Adrian’s notebooks had stated that the government data banks contained a short, but detailed answer. It was there that Angela had placed all her chips. No one knew what any of the calls would bring or what they were for. Angela had hoped the Butcher might have that missing piece, but it was clear he didn’t. Over the centuries, the information had been lost. She was going in blind.
9
“I see you planted the seed.”
Adrian’s voice was thin, like he was barely there.
Angela didn’t pull him from the grayness. His injuries weren’t life threatening, but the broken ribs and cracked teeth had to hurt.
“Not as much as you in that room, alone with him,” Adrian said, head lolling against the wall.
Trying to concentrate, Angela frowned, sending a small current. Adrian had been in her cell when the guard brought her back. She hadn’t argued.
Adrian jerked and then slid over on the bunk. Angela returned to her plotting, devious mind using the meal and her child’s needs as an excuse for her actions.
“If you’re going to keep him in here, you’d better feed me more. I won’t share.”
Angela was sure Donner would listen to every word that she and Adrian uttered.
That confirmed when the guard slid a third tray into the window a few minutes later.
Angela hurried to it as if she was either starving or trying to claim it, hoping to throw Donner off a bit more. She didn’t wake Adrian.
Angela was still thinking about the images in Donner’s ugly mind. His run to Canada had hidden an attempt much like this, between two alphas that he had thought were a match. It had resulted in disaster and the government ordering a full sanitization to bring it under control. Some of Donner’s men had been compromised. More than a few of them had committed suicide in the last month.
The Canadian’s were powerful, Angela thought. Stronger than her and Adrian, and it had gone badly. Would the same thing happen when she and Adrian were forced to do it? A Maker’s Call was impossible to fake.
She needed to know what had happened when Donner tried this before. All she’d found was a huge explosion in his mind, with no details or obvious clues. Had the Maker been furious and destroyed the alphas? She was almost sure that hadn’t been the case. If the Maker had been angered enough to come back, one county or even one continent wouldn’t be enough to avenge all the wrongs that had been done in His name. Humanity would be wiped out when the Maker returned. That could never be allowed to happen.
10
“He isn’t going to wait much longer,” Adrian mumbled against her hair.
Angela acted as if she was still asleep, not ready to face any feelings. During the night, Adrian had turned toward her from their back-to-back position and she hadn’t protested, too tired and too warm. Now, with fake light coming in from the ceiling to tell them what time of day it was, Angela didn’t like the closeness.
Adrian rose from the only cot and moved to the hard chair, sighing heavily. The sleep had done good things for his injuries, but it was far from over. Donner was a psychopath fanatic that had to be eliminated.
“No worries on that,” Angela stated, trying not to picture it. Donner had to know they were planning his death, but he didn’t care so long as the call was made and he got his answer. Except, Angela didn’t know what would happen. If nothing did, Donner was likely to try to kill everyone here. She had to get her plan finished before that and she spent a minute clearing her head and heart. They would make a call today that might change the world.
“Do you understand what causes the power? What sends the call?”
“That wasn’t in the books,” Angela answered.
“Thought it best to leave that part out,” Adrian admitted. “Sometimes details are too…harsh.”
“Great,” Angela sighed. “What is it now? We have to mind-meld and reveal all our…” Her eyes widened. “Son of a…”
Adrian coughed, hoping to cover.
Angela jerked around to stare at the walls so neither he or Donner could see her expression. She hated lying.
“We’ll be bonded. Forever.”
“We already are,” Angela forced out, sounding angry. “But you don’t know what it will bring and neither do I. That has to be made clear to the Butcher or neither of us will be alive tomorrow. He isn’t the type to take disappointment well.”
“So you don’t think it will work?” Adrian asked, curious. Had she foreseen the outcome?
“No, I think we’ll make the call, I just don’t know who or what might answer. Makes me nervous.”
“Donner makes me nervous,” Adrian said, staring at the hair he’d caressed before she’d woken. “Don’t deny him.”
“I’ll do what I have to,” she answered, but inside, she was celebrating. She could feel Donner coming towards them, confident in their agreement now that he’d listened to them work it out. He was about to get all that he’d asked for and then some.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Limited Information
1
“I had to be sure they knew the target was here, that all of the top descendants were here. It was the only way they were going to get bunker babies to go passed my second ring,” Angela explained tonelessly. “I tried to show them how deadly we were even without our gifts. I gave them every opportunity to make the right choice and leave us alone. I also tried to kill as many of them as I could through that second ring. I needed the odds to be even for the final fight. I came close, you know?”
Donner nodded. “Yes. You did well. They’ll be stumbling over bodies in these mountains for years. Keep going.”
“The final ring had to show what we could do. That we didn’t really need the people we were using to fight, that we were more dangerous, more ruthless than our enemy.”
“You succeeded there, too,” Donner admitted. “All it did was get you captured and eventually, killed.”
Angela didn’t stop explaining, stalling. “In time, it will give me absolution. My sacrifice will be greater than my crime.”
Donner threw back his head and laughed. “Don’t you get it yet? There is no god or devil in that top room, no evil or good. That was the line we’ve been fed, but it’s all bullshit. We are the superior beings, the gods. Your call will prove that when no one answers. You’ve wasted your life trying to be good, when all you had to do was use your demon.”
Angela understood his point of view, but she could never accept that. “I’ll be forgiven. You’ll burn.”
Donner shrugged. “One hell is the same as another.”
“Three days after the call, I go free,” Angela demanded coldly, switching topics. She could feel his fanaticism, his lies and tortured, twisted mind. “You can tag along and study things, wait for your answer, but I’m leaving here. I’ll blow
my way out if I have to. You can’t keep me.”
Donner had expected it to come to this, but if the call was successful, he didn’t honestly care what happened after that. “And Mitchel?”
“Give him to the bunker instead of me. Tell them that I died.”
Donner liked that idea even more, she could tell, but she was also aware that he would never keep his word. He would drug her anyway and hope it didn’t harm the baby too badly.
“How about one day a week free, and you come on your own to be with your child, who stays with me?”
Angela swallowed the growl, horrified and furious to be negotiating her child’s life in the labs. This was exactly what had happened to Adrian’s parent. Angela didn’t intend to honor her deal either. “Three days free and you don’t monitor me with anything that has to be implanted. Keep your shit out of my body.”
Donner shrugged, waving at the blank paper on the table between them. “Write it up. I’ll inform the bunker. It will take them a few to get back to us. The rain is pouring.”
Angela nodded and Donner didn’t cuff her to the table as he had Adrian. He left them alone without even a sentry, and Angela was satisfied that she had pegged him right. In time, she could probably wrap him around her little finger and keep a government contact, but she had higher goals than one obsessive Major.
“I think you owe me an explanation,” Adrian stated. Turning him over to the bunker had never been a real part of this plan. He still had a lot to teach them, to offer his Safe Haven.
Angela studied the man across the table from her, not caring that he was busy picking the lock on his cuff with a pen that had been left. Or maybe he’d stolen it.
“Borrowed,” Adrian replied without stopping. He dropped the cuff and held up his hand, eyes now glowing.
“Show me.”
Reluctant to unleash something they had no control over, Angela slowly slid her hand into his. This was it. Once made, they couldn’t take it back.
“I’m sorry,” Adrian vowed. “I really am.”
Angela placed her hand in his, shaking.
Adrian opened his mental doors, all of them.
Unable to refuse now, Angela did the same.
The result was a blinding flash of brilliant gold and green lights that swarmed around them in excitement at being free. An instant later, both lights vanished.
Adrian couldn’t control his draw with all of her doors open. He pulled her into his mind ruthlessly, groaning at the effort.
Angela surrendered reluctantly, wishing it were Marc. She stepped fully into his devious, genius mind fully for the first time.
“I see you,” Adrian murmured. “I see you well.”
Angela was drowning in his love, his devotion, his insanity. She forced out, “Then see me all the way!”
They both froze at the immediate blending of their minds. It was so quick, so complete, that neither of them wanted to move and break their joy at finally being together. There was no one here to get jealous or to misunderstand when the couple physically gravitated towards each other, leaning their heads together. The images in their minds were consuming.
2
“What’s going on?” one of their guards asked.
Donner didn’t answer, too busy listening with them on the other side of the glass.
Trey filled in the blanks. “They’re bonding mentally, the final mark of life mates. We assumed the baby was fathered by the Ghost, but this says differently. These two are the soulmates. Resisting each other would have driven them crazy.”
“They’ve had this in the labs, right?” the guard wanted to know.
“Not between two alphas. None of the matches the scientists lined up were actually a match. That’s why Canada blew. A negative and a positive, instead of two of the same, create bad things.”
“I’m confused.”
“You would be!” Donner snapped. “Shut up.”
Light flared from the couple again, blinding to those in the next room. The soldiers slid their glasses on for protection as the glare increased through the glass.
“What’s happening?”
Donner didn’t answer. She’d made a deal, but in truth, it was impossible to guess what she might do now that she and Adrian were alone together.
Donner casually retreated behind the concrete divider as the hum of untold power filled the facility.
Angela wanted to protect herself, to pull away and stop, but Adrian refused to let her back out now. He sent his force over her in full strength, finally letting her feel how much he wanted her, how he’d always wanted her.
Adrian took them to that first meeting at Safe Haven’s gates, to seeing her and realizing she was the one. His voice echoed in her mind as he showed what had become clear to him.
I have always loved you!
The first image was one of Angela in western times, with a handful of kids and a happy husband, but the haunted look in her eyes when she glanced at the ranch foreman gave her away. The foreman, blond and too late to matter, stared back with the same intense longing.
You were always a day ahead of me, out of my reach.
The picture changed to Angela at the stake, burning, as Adrian and her husband screamed in horror from their cells.
He always met you first!
Adrian’s awful pain blasted them into a deeper level of their former lives, taking them to a stunning, lush continent where bombs were falling and three people were running for their lives. The same men were on either side of the woman, covered in ashes and blood, but it was easy to tell who the woman wanted as they died. Her hand clutched at the blond sentry, instead of her wealthy husband.
Why were you always out of reach?! Adrian demanded harshly, exposing his centuries of torment. Why?!
The image flashed to Rome, to Adrian in the arena as Angela sobbed from the balcony while her owner laughed.
Tell me why!
The final vision went farther, and Adrian studied it obsessively. He’d never gotten further than this point in time. The next vision would give him answers he’d been denied in all those lives.
Adrian tightened his mental grip on Angela and flung them into the past as hard as he could…
The garden teamed with life. Giant rabbits and wolves ran through the valleys, not in a life and death struggle, but both in pursuit of the apple that Eve had tossed. She liked how the animals would fetch the food and then quickly swallow it. They could gather their own, of course, but it was fun to interact. The animals and Eve had nothing to fear from each other. They wandered the garden together in peace and amusement.
Nearby, Adam was farming, as he’d been told to do by the Master. His big arms labored under the bright sun and for a moment, Eve wondered what she was supposed to be doing. Then the rabbit at her feet ran off, chasing the wolf, and she was distracted from the new thought.
Her sweet laughter ringing across the area brought a smile to Adam’s lips. The Maker had promised him a mate and one had come. He was satisfied. When the Lord told him to, Adam would lie down with her.
Across the pond, the caretaker sat with his back to the divine couple, pretending to be absorbed in his work. The Maker had decreed that Elliot would spend his life gathering the knowledge that was to be passed along to the offspring of the Garden. Adam and Eve would live and love, and reproduce. Elliot would serve them until their children were able to replace him. During his time in the garden, eons, Elliot had begun to feel that unfairness.
“So pretty!” Eve squealed as she discovered a particularly pleasing flower.
Eve’s laugh sent mating thoughts into the minds of both men, but only Elliot acted on them. Put here to study and teach, the caretaker easily discerned what Eve liked, what made her smile and what caused her to scold. He chose to use those things to steal her from her mate.
Eve, pure, had already begun to notice the differences in the two men. Adam was hard and commanding. He told her what to do and she obeyed without question, even when she didn’t want to.
The caretaker was covered in hair and more muscles than Adam, but he was kind and quiet spoken. He gave her gifts of leaves twined into animal shapes and taught her how to swim so that she could view the animals living under the waters.
Adam had no feelings of jealousy over Eve and the caretaker. The Maker had given the men jobs. When that work was finished, the woman would be his and the caretaker would tend to their children. Adam had no thoughts of disobedience or free will. The Master had said it would be so. Who was he to question it?
Elliot had become aware of the wrong he was doing and even felt guilt for it, but he would not stop his conquest of Eve. In the end, he seduced her away from her mate, like the animals he studied.
Eve, filled with love for Elliot, confessed to Adam that she had lain with the beast and would give birth to his child–Elliot’s child.
Enraged by the betrayal, Adam struck Elliot down in the garden and brought about the final banishment that included himself, as well as the pregnant Eve. When her child was born, she called him Cain.
Adam, bitter to have been turned out, cast the newborn from his sight to die, refusing to let Eve go to her child. Cain’s cries weakened until both of them were sure that he would soon join his father. Then Adam took what had been stolen from him and gave Eve his child, who they named Able.
Angela struggled to break free of the awful visions.
That can’t be. That can’t be!
Easy, Adrian soothed, almost as upset as she was.
But it’s us! she screamed. We did this!
Adrian could only try to comfort her, knowing it would never be enough. He now had the reasons. Despite being the better match, he and Angela had never been destined for each other. Each time he’d tried to interfere with her and Marc over their lifetimes, it had ended in disaster for all of them.
We cursed the world! Angela sobbed. You did!
Adrian felt the harsh judgment of centuries weighing down on him and he opened his heart to the Maker, crying out, “Why not me, Lord? Why was I left alone?”
