Minds of Men (The Psyche of War Book 1)

by Kacey Ezell

  Hold here, Paul commanded them, his mind strangely calm and empty. We can’t just go barreling in there. If that kraut is still alive, he might shoot Evie.

  Please, Evelyn sobbed silently. Please hurry! I can’t...if she wakes...I can’t face the storm again!

  We’re coming, Paul said, his tone like steel. Just hold tight.

  Just a bit longer, Evie-girl, Sean added gently. We won’t let them hurt you anymore.

  Evelyn felt the ragged edges of her mind fraying away into incoherent sobs of fear and desperation. The net she’d created with the three men faltered briefly, then stabilized as she startled herself out of her panic spiral. She had a net; she wasn’t alone. Her men were coming, and she had broken out of the hood once with the aid of their names carved into her living flesh. With a focus that intimate, and the bond that resulted, there was no way that anyone, not even the talented German girl, was going to overpower her.

  She forced herself to breathe in and out slowly, hating the way the sensory deprivation hood trapped her hot breath against her face. Her arm burned, the fire forming the shapes of Abram’s and Sean’s names. Evelyn focused on that burn, her mind clinging to it like a lifeline. She had the men, and they had her. They were connected. They were coming. She just had to hold on, just for a little bit longer.

  Not far from her, someone stirred.

  He’s alive, she’s alive, someone’s alive and moving in here! Evelyn screamed down the lines of her link. Oh please, please, please hurry!

  She heard a groan and huddled down into herself in response. The stream of information flowing from Abram, Sean, and Paul narrowed as she closed herself off in terror.

  Evie? Sean asked. Evie, stay with us. He and the others had slowed at her panicked cry. Evelyn felt him flex his hands on the grip of the German rifle he’d picked up. Her breath came hot and fast under the cloth hood. She watched through Abram’s eyes as Paul stepped forward. She watched through Paul’s as he gently, slowly, moved the tent flap with the barrel of his weapon.

  Light spilled across the floor from the camp lantern that hung from the center tent pole. A tangled pile of limbs lay sprawled across the ground. Paul blinked, unable at first to make out who was whom. The dark stain of blood spread slowly out from under the pile. A sound like a groan came from the topmost body, who shifted and lifted his head. His eyes went first wide with surprise at the sight of Paul (and presumably Paul’s rifle) and then narrow with pain and resignation. Abram shouldered in beside Paul and trained his own weapon on the gut-shot German.

  Get Evie, Abram sent to Paul through the net. Sean’s covering outside. I’ve got this one.

  Without any further prompting, Paul stepped carefully over the legs of the man without half of his head and around as much of the blood as he could. He saw Evelyn on the floor, curled into the fetal position, as small as her broken limb would allow.

  Evelyn felt her breathing accelerate, the fire in her arms nearly pulsed as she felt him draw nearer and nearer. Until finally, someone ripped the accursed hood away, and the cold night air flowed over her face. She drew in a great, gasping sob of a breath and began to cry like a lost baby.

  I’ve got you, Paul said, his mind tone smooth and gentle as always. Of all of her men, Paul had the most practiced psychic touch, thanks to his childhood with his psychic sister. He slipped one arm under Evelyn’s knees and another around her shoulders, and lifted. Evelyn felt him cradle her close, like a child. His heart beat fast, and anger lurked beneath the surface gentleness of his mind. Paul Rutherford was livid at what had been done to her, to all of them.

  “Let’s get her out of here,” he said, his voice rumbling through his chest. She sagged against him, letting him be her strength for the moment while she drank in the deliciously cool air outside the hood. She felt the sensation of movement, followed by Paul bending slightly over her, and then they were out of the tent.

  Cold air assaulted her raw senses. She gave an involuntary shiver, and Paul responded by holding her closer. Through her net, Evelyn could feel Sean and Abram moving around, covering her and Paul and now and then grabbing something from the camp as they passed through it and out into the trees. Sean got two of their hiking packs and another weapon. Abram had snatched up the pot that had been set over the fire with their dinner. Evelyn felt something cold and wet brush against her forehead and then her cheek. It had begun to snow.

  This is good, Abram thought to everyone. Snow is good. It will hide our tracks away from this place.

  It could also kill us, Paul thought, darkly. Evie’s weak, and you guys aren’t much better off. Hypothermia isn’t going to help that any.

  Not that we got much vote in the matter, Sean pointed out as they reached the treeline. We should probably just focus on putting as much distance between us and the camp as we can before dawn...sirs. He added the last bit belatedly, as if only just remembering that he was an enlisted man in the company of two officers. Evelyn snorted a laugh through her nose, surprising herself. She felt Paul shift as he bent his head to look at her.

  I’m all right, she thought to him in response. She could feel the giggles bubbling up from within, tinged with hysteria. The tiny, dry corner of her mind observed she was getting rather used to the feeling of hysterical laughter. She’d certainly felt it often enough in the last few days. It was just funny. Though I can’t really say why...

  It’s all right, Evie, Sean replied. They wouldn’t understand the humor anyway. They’re both officers.

  Hey! Abram protested as he pushed a tree branch back to allow Paul to pass with Evelyn in his arms. That’s not fair, Sean. I have a terrific sense of humor!

  Sure you do, sir, Sean thought back as he pressed forward, leading their way. Evelyn knew he hoped he was taking them west. He’d headed roughly in the same direction as the late sunset, reasoning that if nothing else, they could get some terrain between them and the camp before figuring out a more robust plan.

  I do! Ask Paul. Everyone says I do, Abram continued to insist. Evelyn continued to swallow hard against the overwhelming desire to giggle. So much so that she felt her entire body spasm in a quick jerk that nearly had Paul dropping her to the forest floor. She’d managed to give herself the hiccups.

  I’m sorry! Evelyn wailed down the net, and the dam broke. Unable to choose between laughing and crying, she did both. Punctuated, every few minutes, by another jerking hiccup spasm. Paul’s arms began to shake as he, also, fought back laughter. Soon, Sean joined in, and Abram was left staring at the three of them, frustration pinching his features. He snorted softly. Then the corners of his mouth turned up.

  See? he asked, as if their current state of laughter-induced incapacitation had been the result of his joke, rather than a hysterical reaction to what they’d just seen and been through. That, of course, made everyone only laugh harder, until the four of them ended up huddled down in a low spot, behind a fallen log, clutching each other while the laughter turned to tears, and they expunged the fear and anger and adrenaline in one great cathartic blast.

  All around them, snow drifted down through the darkness.

  * * *

  Consciousness came slowly to Lina. She felt as if her awareness was trying to swim through thick, cloying mud up to the forefront of her mind. It was cold, and her throat hurt. And something...wasn’t right.

  She blinked, then tried to breathe in, and it set off an attack of coughing. A necklace of knives stabbed at her as she spasmed, rolling onto her side and fighting to drag in the tiniest of breaths. Tears streamed from her eyes. She brought one hand up to clutch at her throat and immediately regretted it. The necklace of knives stabbed at the outside of her throat, too.

  Slowly, painfully, Lina was able to force herself to calm and take tiny little sips of air. Her chest ached, screamed for more, but she couldn’t chance breathing deeply again. She opened her eyes one more time to see the lamp-lit canvas of the tent wall.

  She was lying on the camp cot. She was cold. Something was wrong, tho
ugh she still couldn’t put her finger on it.

  Her muscles protested any attempt at movement, and she set off another coughing fit, but eventually she was able to push herself up to a seated position.

  Blood. So much blood, running in half-congealed rivulets over the floor of the tent. Pooled around a tangle of something that her mind refused to identify for the moment. The air itself felt tainted with the metallic tang of blood, edged in the crystalline iciness of snow. The wind rattled the tent canvas, blew in through the open flap of a door, made the lantern swing from where it hung beneath the center pole. Wild shadows careened across the space, mingling with the blood and the pile of whatever-it-was that she wasn’t seeing right now.

  “Lina.”

  Barely a whisper. Nearly impossible to hear over the whistle of the wind through the trees all around. Lina couldn’t have said if she heard it with her ears or with her psychic mind. But it was there. It was a voice she knew.

  “Kristof?”

  “Yes. Thank the gods, whoever they are. I had hoped...well. Never mind. I think I’m too close. You have to get out of here, Lina. Hike back to the trucks. Drive yourself to safety.”

  “Kristof,” Lina said. Or tried to say. Speaking resulted in ragged agony. She could barely manage a harsh whisper. “I don’t...understand. What happened?”

  “The Americans,” Kristof replied. The lantern slowed in its wild swinging, and Lina could see his legs move slightly. Part of the shape she refused to see resolved itself into Kristof’s form. He was sitting on the floor, leaning back against...something. His hands were red, pressed to his belly. A dark stain soaked his clothing from chest to knees. Josef wouldn’t be happy about that. Her beloved held his men to a high standard of dress and appearance.

  “What do you mean?” Lina asked, forcing her mind to focus. It was more difficult than it should have been, especially for someone with her training. Every little distraction seemed to sing its siren song to her, luring her attention away from Kristof and whatever it was he had to tell her. And her mind was more than willing to be led down the rosy path of distraction...but she was no child at play. She was who she was, and there was work to do here. Even if she couldn’t quite wrap her mind around what, exactly, she was supposed to be doing...

  Damn, but her throat hurt!

  “The Americans,” Kristof said again. “They’ve escaped. I don’t know how. They must have had a third one following us. One we never saw. Somebody cut Hans’ throat, and the two airmen were gone. I came in here to find...Lina. What happened? Why was Josef strangling you? Why did he shoot me?”

  Josef? Strangling her? Lina wanted to laugh. What a ridiculous thought. Josef loved her. He would never...

  She wheezed and coughed as shards of agony ripped through her throat, cutting off any air, any hope. Memory slammed back into her mind as, finally, her eyes saw clearly the inside of the tent.

  Josef, jerking away from her, fear and loathing in his eyes.

  Josef’s hands wrapped around her throat, tightening mercilessly as air and light faded together.

  Josef’s body, sprawled on the ground, his legs tangled with poor Willi’s; both of their skulls replaced by a bloody ruin.

  And Kristof, gut-shot, bleeding to death in front of her.

  “No!” she screamed, her torn voice ripping through the night. She lurched forward, stumbled, tripped over somebody’s leg and ended up on her knees in the blood beside Kristof. She grabbed one of his hands. It was icy cold.

  “No!” she repeated. “You will not die on me, Kristof! I refuse to let it happen, do you hear me?” She reached out with her mind, intent on capturing his consciousness, on forcing it to stay, to steady, to not leave her alone here in the dark and the cold and the blood.

  Too late.

  His fingers curled around hers as the light left his eyes. Right there, funny, witty, passionate Kristof became just another body in that charnel house of a tent.

  Lina was alone.

  She wanted to weep, to scream. She wanted to find the Americans and rip them apart with her bare, bloodied hands. She wanted to know what, exactly, had happened to make Josef turn on her like that.

  The wind whipped at the tent flap door again, blowing snow inside. Tiny white pinpricks landed on the darkly slick red stain. Her throat hurt. The lantern swung again.

  SS-Oberhelfer Adalina Sucherin got to her feet. She reached across the body of her beloved and two men who’d been like brothers and removed the lantern from its hook on the center pole of the tent. She couldn’t, perhaps, go far in this storm, but she would not stay in this tent any longer. She would gather up supplies from the camp. Make up a pack, rest in another tent until the storm abated. Then she would do as Kristof had said. She would hike back to their trucks and drive one back into the city. She would report what had happened here, and then she would return. She would bring soldiers and tanks and whatever else she needed. She would find those American bastards.

  And she would make them pay.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Twelve

  By the time dawn reached them, Evelyn and her three surviving aircrewmen had managed to put a scant few miles between them and the site of the camp. It was slow going between their injuries, the unfamiliar terrain, the cold, and the snow.

  As Paul carried her through the darkness, Evelyn struggled to put herself back together, and mostly failed. She wavered between hysteria-induced laughter and terrified catatonia. The only thing that anchored her to reality was her psychic connection to each of the men. She clung to their consciousnesses, drawing strength from the knowledge she was no longer alone in her own head.

  “We should stop soon,” Paul said, as the first rosy fingers of sunrise began to reach through the trees behind them. “Find a place to hole up for the day. Eat, rest. We all need it.”

  “Good idea,” Abram said. “Let’s push on along this ridge until we find something that will suit.”

  Paul did find something, about five minutes later. It was a stone house, or the remains of one anyway. The roof had long since fallen in, and a tree had grown up within the three walls that remained. It looked as if it had been untouched for centuries. It would do nicely as a hiding place for the day.

  They tucked themselves inside the walls, between the spreading roots of the tree. Abram dug another one of his fire pits, and Sean set about making something out of the supplies they’d stolen from the Nazi camp. They’d long since eaten what had been in the pot that Abram had grabbed, but the pot itself was more than useful as a cooking utensil.

  “At least it will be more than a few oily sardines today, huh, Evie?” Abram joked as he knelt down beside her. He and Paul had fixed a nice little nest for her. She lay snug in the junction between two of the larger roots, cushioned by one of the bedrolls from the Nazi packs. She looked up at him with a wan smile. His face looked terrible, all purple and green from the beatings he’d received. At least one of his teeth was missing, having been knocked loose at one point or another. He still favored his right side as he moved; he probably had a cracked rib that had to be ridiculously painful. Still, despite all of this, the navigator smiled with his own brand of irrepressible optimism and humor. And that caused Evie to smile back.

  “Those were the most delicious sardines I’d ever tasted,” she said softly, her voice sounding rusty and disused to her own ears. She shifted just a bit, pulled the bedroll blanket up a bit higher as she spoke. She didn’t want him to see...

  “Evie! What in the hell?” Paul and Sean looked up sharply at Abram’s cry. The navigator grabbed the blanket under which she’d been trying to hide and ripped it down, exposing her bloodied forearms. Abram’s eyes went dark and narrow with anger.

  They did this to you? he asked her through the net.

  No! No. I...I did it, she admitted. He grabbed her wrist and turned her arm over so he could see better. The bloody, angular letters stood out in stark relief against the white flesh of her arms. That was how I broke through the hood’
s feedback loop, she said to all of them. I needed a focus, something that would resonate with all of you. Names provide a powerful focus, as they represent what we think of as ourselves. By putting your names on my skin, I was able to create a connection powerful enough to blow the hood’s electric amplifiers. They were causing the feedback that was keeping me disconnected from all of you.

  But then why is my name there? Paul put in from across the fire. He’d seen her arms through Abram’s eyes. Sure enough, there were three names etched into her skin. You didn’t know I was alive until after you broke through and reached out to Abram and Sean. Why would you have put my name there?

  I just added it, Evelyn admitted, somewhat shamefacedly. Just a few minutes ago. I-I was...am...afraid. If they catch us again, or...or if something else happens. I won’t be severed from you again. She felt a kind of mad ferocity swell within her at this statement and spill out down the lines to touch each of their consciousnesses.

  We won’t ever let that happen, Evie, Sean said. The two officers nodded, bolstering his words with their own agreement.

  I know, but...I just needed it. Please. Don’t be angry.

  What did you use? Abram asked. Evelyn blinked, then handed him the wooden sliver that she had kept in her hand throughout the entire ordeal. Abram hissed between his teeth.

  All right, Evie, he said. I can see the necessity, but let me at least clean these out. The last thing we need is for you to get another infection.

  All right, she agreed in a mental whisper. Relief flooded through her. They knew. They knew about her focuses, and they weren’t angry at her. Her men supported her still. That was important in a way she couldn’t think about right then.

  Sean came forward and helped Abram as they cleaned and bandaged her arms. Then they re-splinted her leg. Each of them had plenty of wounds to be cleaned and bandaged as well, and by the time they were done, the food was ready and the sun had risen above the level of the trees.