Soul and Blade

by Tara Brown

  Even when they shove me in the cell, saying it’s for my own safety until I come down from the run, I know it—I am still inside.

  4. I SAY A LITTLE PRAYER

  The bed smells creepy-familiar enough that even dragging the sheets from it, I have to hold my breath. It’s been four days and I can’t shake the leftovers this time.

  I am not inside, and yet I doubt my every move. I doubt everything I see. I doubted when Dash and the team put me in the cell at the end of the run. I screamed and raged and fought, and even when I realized it was all over and I was out of Rory’s head, I still couldn’t feel safe.

  Mind runs always come with leftovers, but this time they are affecting me worse than ever. I can still smell the dank air all around me. The dank and dark places where Rory lives.

  “It’s the third time you’ve changed them since you got home.” Dash’s tone isn’t purposely mocking, but I feel it sting just the same.

  “You could help instead of judge.” I look back with daggers. Dr. Dash, the real Dash, leans against the doorframe with the strangest look on his face. I refuse to let his look soften me. “Or stand there weighing in with your psychological opinions,” I add. Being back in our townhouse hasn’t been easy for either of us.

  “Jane, come on. I have been bending over backward here, waiting for you to snap out of it.” He sighs and walks to me, wrapping himself around me. I shudder, instantly too hot, and the smell of the sheets I hold crowds me, so much so I swear I taste whatever that dank scent is. I push him off, clutching the very sheets that are ruining my life.

  I turn and storm to the laundry room, stuffing them in the front-load washer, but the machine carries the smell too. I dump bleach in, right on top of the sheets. “Where is Sirius?” I ask, suddenly aware the dog isn’t here. Was there a dog? I swear there was.

  “He’s at my mother’s being cared for by the staff. He’s in good hands. I wanted to wait until we were adjusted and everything was normal again. He and Binx didn’t see eye to eye.”

  I swallow, not sure if that’s true or not. “Binx and he met?” I wasn’t there, I don’t think.

  “They did. I brought him here and their meeting became fur and nails and hissing. Poor Sirius is a baby, so I had my mother come and get him. She said everyone loves him.”

  I pause, racking my brain for any of this. “Was I here when this happened?”

  “No.” His disapproving sigh behind me is like nails on a chalkboard. “I need you to see a friend of mine, someone not related to the team.”

  I look back. “You just want to make them lock me away!”

  He cocks an eyebrow, fighting a grin. “You know I don’t. Perhaps I’ll lock you in our bedroom, and we can do something else with those sheets.”

  I slam the washer and put it on whitest whites before stomping to the linen closet. The moment I open it I smell it. The smell has invaded the closet too. “Do you smell that? That dank smell?”

  He comes to my side, leaning in, getting too close to me. “No. It smells like those little scent things you make me put in after counting out exactly seven of them for each wash.” His refusal to buy into my concern overwhelms me. I turn to shout, but he grabs my face, planting a firm kiss on my lips. I struggle and shake, but he doesn’t stop.

  We kiss until my legs have buckled and I’m on the floor sobbing. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  He lifts my chin. “This is what happens after too many runs.” His eyes are filled with concern. “You are bringing things back with you. Things you can’t shake. It’s why I want you to see someone.” He kisses the tip of my nose. I don’t recoil, not because I don’t want to; I do. I force myself to stay and tolerate the affection.

  Binx walks up to me, weaving himself around my legs and purring with his pathetic attempt at cat love. He’s not the most snuggly cat, but he knows when I need something. I wrap my arms around him, pick him up, and take a long draw of the smell of his fur. He chases away the dank smell and the dirty feelings. He chases everything away.

  There has never been a love like ours—mine. It’s fairly one-sided, but I don’t mind. I know he loves me in his own way. Selfish and difficult, maybe, but I don’t care.

  He stiffens, possibly about to attempt his escape, but then goes limp again, resigning himself to the fact I need him. Probably sensing by my behavior and grip that I won’t let him go without a fight.

  Dash wraps around me too, bringing the smell of deodorant and sweat and him. I lean into my boys and breathe them both in.

  “I hate where he took me.”

  “I know. I read the debrief. The president isn’t very happy that you didn’t find anything out. He was hoping you would know if Rory had betrayed the country in any other ways.”

  “The president can suck it.”

  “That’s treason.”

  “Only if he hears me.”

  He chuckles. “Our house is likely bugged. Let’s be honest.”

  I nod against him, certain it is. “Sorry, Mr. President. But I’m not going back in.” I give him a weak smile. “I’m sorry my cat hates your dog.” I close my eyes and stay here, huddled on the floor and wrapped in love, even if one participant is being forced to endure it.

  “Binx and Sirius will learn to like each other. When we move to the big house, they will have a yard to explore together and plenty of room.”

  I lift my face. “The big house? Which one of the many you own? Is there one that’s larger than the others? Is it like your parents’ place?” I tense, not even wanting the answers to the questions. “It doesn’t matter, I don’t think I can move. I need to be here where it’s familiar.”

  Dash strokes my cheek and kisses my head. “We don’t need to discuss it now.”

  I lift my face to Dash. “It’s been too many runs, you were right. I can feel the walls of my sanity crumbling away. And let’s be honest, they weren’t sturdy to start with.” I laugh, but he sees the truth.

  “You are perfectly sane, Jane. No one can do that many mind runs. No one.”

  “He had all the control, Rory did,” I mutter, contemplating the fact the nanobot installed in Rory’s brain, identical to the one installed in mine, was set to run the hijacked op in his head. “I know I set up a run where I was a doctor and he was my boyfriend and we were in love. I know I set that up. But I was meant to know who I was in his head. I was supposed to know what was happening. No mystery. I just needed to trigger the memory of how he came into the possession of that cabin with those rape cells and then the larger brothel itself. But I wasn’t given that opportunity. I was lost and all of my memories were gone. Even in his forced coma, he is in control.”

  “I think we need to disengage his nanite for the next person going in. I don’t actually know how to do it without killing him.” He kisses the side of my face, and I can tell by the way he’s breathing that he’s hoping for more than an awkward floor snuggle.

  But I can’t, so I continue on about Rory, a subject that turns us both off. “He’s better at mind running than I am.”

  “No. He’s not better. It was his head. Home-court advantage.”

  I nod and try to push it all away. “Well, whoever goes in next will have to be prepared for that if you can’t disengage the nanobot.”

  “Nanite.”

  “Whatever.” Binx struggles from my grip, but after an indignant shake of his fur, he turns and starts to nuzzle me, writhing against me with love and purring.

  “He missed you.”

  I glance up at Dash, nodding. “I’ve never been in a run for a full week before.”

  “I suspect he trapped you inside, using the programming in his nanite to override the information in yours. He let you in, but then somehow he managed to gain control. It wasn’t a mind run, as much as it was a mind hostage situation.”

  “That’s about how it felt too.” I can s
till feel his fingers inside me and his wet kisses and the weird sex in the Thai restaurant.

  I officially will never eat Thai again.

  “How’s Angie? I never saw her when I woke.”

  He looks troubled. “She resigned actually, the day before you woke up. She’s gone home to Scotland. Gave no notice and told the team she was ending it while she was still remotely close to sane. She’ll be taking a long sabbatical before starting up with a position in a clinic just outside Edinburgh. It’s some spot that is doing research on nanite technology in coma patients and unresponsive people—what the research was initially created for before we used it to solve crimes.”

  I can’t help but be sad that my friend left without a good-bye, but I understand. I imagine her dating life with Rory gave her a thousand memories like the one I experienced—being violated in a restaurant or tied up for Rory’s pleasure. “I’ll miss her.”

  He cocks an eyebrow. “She’ll be at your fitting in two weeks.”

  It’s my turn to look confused. “Fitting?”

  Dash leans back, examining me for something. “You’re joking, right?”

  I laugh and lower my face, completely baffled about what a fitting is. “Yeah.”

  “After the week we’ve had, that’s not even funny.” He gets up and hands me my cell phone. “I’ve taken the liberty of updating your schedule with all the wedding information. The dressmaker needs eight months from the time you try the dress on to the time it’s ready. And you can’t gain or lose any weight.”

  The wedding dress. No wonder he’s feisty. I never remember the crap that goes into planning a wedding, and for some cracked-out reason he takes it personally. “I haven’t gained weight in ages.”

  He cracks a grin and I see the force behind it. He’s being pleasant.

  We’re being weird.

  The silence that was once calm and relaxing turns awkward.

  There are too many things fitting in the silence now. Too many lies. So many I don’t know if we will ever work them all out. I know he told all of them to protect me, but it doesn’t change the fact he lied.

  Underneath his cool doctor exterior, he’s actually quite rich and very British, contrary to the lack of accent, unless he’s angry, of course. He’s completely snobbish when he’s being honest, and his parents are insane and pretentious. Of course the one tidbit of it all that makes me really cringe is his brother, Henry. The man who is currently in jail awaiting trial for crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court. Along with many other prominent political figures. His time spent at Rory’s brothel has earned him a special place in history, shaming his family and friends.

  God, I hate Rory.

  All I want is to call Antoine and tell him how bad it all was—is. To call the last member of my team. What we had before Rory went rogue was amazing. Antoine was the brains and me and Rory the brawn. He and Angie are the only ones who really understand the weight of all this betrayal, and there is no way I would ever talk to Angie about it.

  Instead of that, I settle for some loving and lift Binx into my arms, forcing another struggle snuggle—the one he hates, where I pretend to kiss him, but am driving my nose into his fur, sniffing him. He lies in my arms, his body stretched further than a cat should stretch as I carry him to the bed. Without any sheets I wrap myself around him and sit, hugging and sniffing.

  “We have chicken Parm from Mrs. Starling. She wanted to make sure she made you dinner for your first night back, but I told her to wait a few days. I tried to explain, but—”

  But.

  It is an epic but that contains images and horrors flashing behind my eyes.

  Images of me getting off the table and then screaming and fighting the team who are clearing me of the monitors.

  Images of me shoving everyone away while trying to strangle an unconscious Rory as his finger still gyrates inside what he believes is me.

  Images of me throwing everything and being forced into a cell for my own safety and the safety of others.

  Images of Dash’s eyes through the window as he watches me sitting in the corner rocking back and forth with slight twitches from the drugs I never even took.

  Images like the one of Dash finally risking coming into the cell and wrapping himself around me while I sob and cling to him, weak and exhausted. I didn’t believe it was him or that I was really out.

  It’s a big but, a huge but. One we won’t ever discuss again. I whisper silent prayers to that effect to the gods I don’t completely believe in.

  “I love chicken Parm.”

  He smiles and it’s real, thank God it’s real.

  “We’re okay, right?”

  “Always, Jane. No matter what.” He nods.

  I don’t know if it’s true or not. I don’t know how I feel about anything or what will happen, but I know as long as he still loves me, I don’t care. He has always been the right kind of dark for me.

  There is a place inside me that is damaged from everything. A life without family or memories of love. Years of being a soldier and seeing too much and feeling too little. Years as a mind runner who feels my emotions plus the victim’s, and stumbles blindly in the brains of others. Years of PTSD that I don’t even want to scratch the surface of. But he matches the damage. I can’t figure out how—he’s so perfect—but he does. He somehow matches me and I him, and we round all the bad things off.

  There is a reason Dash is the way he is, a reason he fucks and doesn’t make love. A reason he doesn’t talk about things.

  And I doubt that reason is entirely his upbringing.

  There’s more and I don’t care what it is. He doesn’t ask to see my issues, even though I know he wants to, and I won’t ask to see his. I would rather not see mine, so adding in anyone else’s is scary.

  “Do you want to eat now?” he asks, snapping me out of my thoughts.

  “Yes, please.” I put Binx down, smiling when he sprints from the room, from my needy mood, his least favorite.

  Dash walks to me, lifting me up and hugging me tightly. “Let it go. It doesn’t matter now anyway,” he whispers and carries me from the room. He hasn’t started heating up the chicken, but I swear I can already smell it.

  We eat. We shower. He tries to touch me and I cower like a rape victim. We each go to bed dissatisfied and annoyed.

  It’s not the evening the chicken Parm deserved. It deserved wine and kisses and maybe a soak in a deep tub followed by a massage.

  But it isn’t what I get.

  I get heartburn and heartache and memories that aren’t real about things that have scarred me.

  5. S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y NIGHT!

  Ya ready for this?” Angie nudges me, grinning from ear to ear. Since Dash and I picked her up at the airport in New York for the blessed weekend with Dash’s family, she’s been grinning. I’m almost scared she’s forcing it, even if she flew all the way here from Scotland.

  I frown but nod, making her laugh. “Ya can be excited, Jane. Yer about to marry the best man in the world. A girl should be excited on the day she tries on her wedding dress.” Maybe she is genuinely happy for me and not faking it at all. Maybe I’ll be alone in the faking it. Lord knows I had to fake it the entire drive up to New York from DC.

  I swallow, but my mouth is dry and my throat is oddly sore. Even the walls of the town car feel like they’re closing in around me.

  She rolls her wide eyes. “Just get it out then, ya awkward wee weirdo.”

  “I’m sorry. I know it isn’t mine to be sorry for. I know I didn’t do anything. But I feel sick all the time when I think about it.”

  She winces, her eyes glossing over for half a second. But she shakes her head, swallows, and squeezes her eyes shut until the tears are gone again. “He doesn’t deserve a single moment more of me time or me energy. Not a minute of it. He was a wanker and a scumbag, and he was
never mine. I see that now. I was a means to an end.” She opens her eyes and smiles through the pain. “I am better off. I’ve joined a dating site and I have three hundred hits.”

  “A dating site?” The skeptical agent inside me screams this is a bad idea. I always assume the worst, which in the case of dating sites is abduction and possibly being made into a skin suit.

  “Och, ya don’t expect me to spend the rest of me days pining after some Irishman? Bah, never happen. From now on I only date Scots, and I only accept men with beards.”

  My nose wrinkles involuntarily. I don’t like the idea and I can’t hide it.

  “Don’t make that face. Ya don’t know.” She leans in so close I can smell her coffee breath. “Ya have never actually lived until a man has rubbed his beard on your cunny.”

  I lean back, horrified and unsure if I should mention the article I saw about the germs in beards.

  She closes her eyes and relives something naughty before sighing and nodding. “Tell Dash to give it a try. Even a wee beard is some kind of special on the girlie bits.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  She nudges me again. “Yer so awkward. Just show him a picture and point and say, ‘Jane likey. Jane want.’ And then grunt. He’ll get the point.”

  I finally laugh at that—the kind of healing laughter I haven’t had in ages.

  “Ya missed me, didn’t ya, Janey?”

  “I did. But I understood too.” I nod and lean into her, still laughing. She is exactly the comic relief I need at this moment.

  “How weird is this going to be with Dash’s mom, since ya basically put her golden Henry in jail?”

  “More awkward than before, which was unbearably awkward. So I’d assume, more awkward than any single thing you could compare awkwardness to. He’s Dash’s brother. And she loves him the best. It’ll be bad.”

  Angie looks like she might try to calm me down, but the car pulls up to the shop, and she smiles. I don’t smile. Instead, my insides tighten and I feel a little nauseated.