Текст книги "Tatterdemalion "

Автор книги: Anah Crow

Соавторы: Dianne Fox
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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

“That doesn’t seem like a good way to not get noticed,” Lindsay pointed out.

“Yes, but who would care?” Dane nuzzled Lindsay’s nose with his own, smiling. “You might have to

ward off worshipers, but people do manage.”

Lindsay liked it when Dane teased like this. It made Dane smile, and Lindsay liked being involved

with anything that made Dane smile. “Sounds like a lot of trouble,” he said, grinning.

“You’re young and resilient. I think you’d cope.” Dane laughed and kissed him. “You’re pretty

brave.”

Brave. “Maybe.” Lindsay could be brave, even if the idea of using his magic still made something in

his gut twist and churn.

He wanted more than just these little kisses, and he knew what he had to do to get what he wanted.

Pulling back from Dane’s mouth, he closed his eyes and imagined them as they had been a moment ago,

with Lindsay tucked against Dane’s side, ready to fall asleep. He sent his magic out in one careful wave,

filling the airplane with his illusion, and then opened his eyes to look at Dane again.

Dane’s eyes were searching, his expression serious. “Think it worked?”

A flight attendant pushing a cart passed them by without a second glance. “Kiss me again, and we’ll

find out.”

Dane pulled Lindsay in for a real kiss, hot and shameless and possessive. Dane kissed Lindsay like he

wanted to make up for not being able to do anything more. Everything more. Like he wanted to make

Lindsay come from that alone. After a long while, he kissed away to Lindsay’s ear.

“How did you end up not sleeping?”

Lindsay laughed softly, but this time, he was more than willing to sleep. He was sated, worn out and

feeling blissful. He tucked his cheek against Dane’s chest and let the illusion go. Life around them went on as normal. Everyone was just as they’d been before—unharmed.

He wasn’t broken anymore. Lindsay felt more than just successful, he felt secure. Finally, he was

safely down in the depths of the world, not drifting exposed on the surface. “Wake me up when we’re

home.”

“I will.” Dane stroked Lindsay’s hair as he fell asleep to the sound of Dane’s big heart beating slow

and steady—all was right with the world.

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Chapter Fourteen

LaGuardia was too bright and too loud, after the dim, muted cabin of the airplane. Lindsay had slept

well, warm and safely tucked against Dane, but he was glad to be off the plane and out of the cramped

confines of his seat. He arched and stretched as they walked out of the gate, easing his muscles into

movement.

Dane kept a hand on him, looking around them warily. He hadn’t seemed this nervous in the forest or

on the streets of Cholula. His mood effectively shut down Lindsay’s lazy contentment. If it hadn’t been for the stress of wondering where Moore’s people were—if they were here at all—Lindsay would have loved

travelling with Dane.

“Luggage, then home,” Dane murmured.

“All right.” Lindsay tried to see what Dane saw, but he didn’t know what he was looking for. “Let’s

go.”

This was where they were going to be most vulnerable, Lindsay realized, between here and the safety

of Cyrus’s house. If they were followed, it could spell disaster for everyone. That thought almost frightened Lindsay more than the idea of being captured again.

At least if it was only him who got taken, the others would come for him. The thought startled

Lindsay so badly that he almost tripped over his own feet. He caught up to Dane with a hop and a skip.

They would come for him. He’d never had that feeling before, and he had no idea when it had crept in, but

all the time he’d spent with Dane had given him some secret hope that it was true.

“It’ll be okay,” Dane said, watching over his shoulder to make sure Lindsay came back to his side.

“Do you want me to…” Lindsay looked around them, at the crowds, at all the movement and light

around them. The air was full of voices rising to the ceiling, bouncing off the walls. There were so many of them. “I could try to hide us.” He could help. He wanted to help, to be useful, like the rest of them.

“I don’t want to lose track of you.” Dane guided him around a kiosk and headed for the luggage

carousel.

“I could exclude you. Like on the plane.” A tall man, cell phone pressed to his ear, bumped Lindsay

with his shoulder and knocked him back a pace. He stifled his noise of pain and took a few fast steps to

catch up with Dane again. He hated airports.

Anah Crow and Dianne Fox

“You think you can do that with this many people around?” Dane frowned. Lindsay could see him

calculating the distance between them by the way his eyes flicked over Lindsay and the way he reached for

Lindsay’s hand.

Even if Lindsay had ever wanted to resent the gesture, he simply couldn’t have—it felt too good and

safe, on a nearly primal level, to slide his cold hand into Dane’s warm one.

“I can try.” He let Dane draw him in close. Yes, he was getting better at taking care of himself, but

until they were with Cyrus and Vivian, neither he nor Dane could relax. Maybe not even then.

Dane’s beautiful human face was stern, and he stopped walking to draw Lindsay into the relative

shelter of an ATM kiosk. “Try,” he suggested. “If it doesn’t feel good, let it go.”

“Okay.”

Lindsay swallowed a stab of nervousness and straightened his shoulders. He had no idea how Dane

managed to focus in places like this. After the peace of the forest and the mystical calm of Ezqel’s house, Lindsay’s human senses were overwhelmed. Everyone else is overwhelmed too, he told himself. I can use that to my advantage. No one wants to notice us. No one cares. Hiding from people who didn’t care would be the easy part. He hoped it would work on the people who did care.

“Don’t let go.” Lindsay squeezed Dane’s hand.

That got Lindsay a smile. He was used to the flash of fangs and a feral glint in Dane’s eyes, but Dane

was human again—or more than human—and this smile was beatific, like an angel or a saint, and the heat

in Dane’s eyes was pure gold. For a moment, Lindsay forgot about everything except for Dane’s beauty

and the realization that he was looking at his lover. His lover.

“We’ll be home soon,” Dane promised, ducking his head so that his words drifted warm against

Lindsay’s cheek. He pressed a kiss where his words had landed and a shiver ran down Lindsay’s spine.

Lindsay slid his free hand up along Dane’s neck, feeling the beat of Dane’s pulse alive and strong

against his fingers. Home. It sounded so good. Moore and her lackeys were a small shadow on the brightness that was his life right now. Home, magic, future… Months earlier, Lindsay’d had no hope of

anything, and now he had it all.

“I’ll try to get us there.” He kissed Dane’s silky golden skin where his fingers lay and tasted that

familiar musk that was home already. “If you can find our luggage, you’ll be my hero.”

“I’m not already?” Dane pulled away, laughing. “I’m wounded.”

“You’ll heal, remember?” Lindsay said dryly, elbowing him. “Look for our luggage, so I can do my

job.”

“Get to it.” Dane squeezed his hand and Lindsay took a slow breath.

There was a hollow in the center of his magic, like the eye of a storm, and Lindsay made sure that he

and Dane were safe within it. He began to erase them from everyone’s attention. In the confines of the

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luggage area, it was easy to do, but he couldn’t make things quiet. The chatter around him increased,

intensified, until he was wincing from the noise.

“Are you okay?”

Lindsay could barely hear Dane’s voice over the clamor, but he nodded. He was aware of Dane

gathering their few things, slinging bags over his shoulder, sliding his other hand into Lindsay’s.

“Time to go. Seems like it’s working.”

They moved in a blank space in the world, people veering around them without looking, always at the

same distance, like there was a wall around them. A wall of nothing. People’s eyes slid off of them as though even the air around them was hard to look at.

I can do this, Lindsay said sternly, trying to calm the panic that started to rise in his chest. He felt claustrophobic. Had it been this noisy before he’d put his magic up?

I think he’s cheating on me. What? Dane wasn’t, wouldn’t, they weren’t even… I wanted to go to Hawaii, but, no, she had to have Disneyland. Hawaii, who wanted to go there? Lindsay had never even considered Disneyland… I’m hungry, I’m hungry, I’m hungry! A toddler’s wail cut through Lindsay’s focus.

Oh, God. Lindsay clung to Dane’s hand so hard that his own knuckles cracked.

“Lindsay?” Dane’s gentle rumble cut through the noise.

“I’m okay,” Lindsay lied. There had to be a way to make it stop. Why now? It would have happened

on the plane, if… Lindsay bit his lip, trying to breathe through his nose and not panic and keep the illusion up all at once. Someone was watching, looking for them. He could feel it like paranoia creeping up the

back of his throat.

On the plane, there had been a soft whispering that he’d ignored because Dane’s kisses felt so good.

Maybe he’d been able to hold on because of that distraction, maybe there’d been fewer minds on his. It was

so loud, Lindsay just wanted it to stop. Please.

They wouldn’t be in the airport much longer. Lindsay’s head was throbbing, but he made himself

hang on to the illusion. The idea that they were being watched was getting stronger and stronger. If he was hearing the thoughts of everyone around them, there could really be someone there. If he dropped the

illusion and they were found—or worse, followed—it would be his fault. He didn’t want to be weak.

I’m so tired of being afraid. Dane was a tall, dark shadow at the margin of his awareness. Safety.

Haven. Dane would protect him. Lindsay just had to hold it together.

Taniel had talked about shielding the mind. Lindsay hadn’t thought it was necessary, he hadn’t felt

anything from Taniel or Dane, so he’d never thought to pursue the idea. It was too late for that. When he

could, if he got through this, he’d work on it. But now, he had to survive.

The Institute had taught him things, Lindsay realized. He recognized the sensation of drawing into

himself, detaching from his own body. There was something about working magic that was akin to

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clenching a muscle rather than sustaining a thought. His mind could hold the illusion even while his

thoughts—his self—slipped away.

It still felt like hell, but Lindsay had survived hell before. He had survived Moore and her artifact. He

could survive this. I am stronger than you. Remembering that gave him more strength against the bullet thoughts firing through the minds that were all linked to his in the moment. It let him keep walking.

Lindsay had no idea where they were. He was blind. Belatedly, he realized that the last thing he’d

seen outside of the illusion was the sign as they’d left the baggage area. His eyes were working—how he

knew, he couldn’t tell—but he couldn’t see, and he couldn’t hear, either. His mind was full of so much

vision, so much sound, everything anyone under his spell was experiencing, that he was deaf and

blind…and dumb. If he opened his mouth, he had no idea if his own words would come out or someone

else’s.

And that was when he panicked. He tried to pull out of the illusion, tried to get his mind back. He’d

been under an illusion of his own—that magic worked. That it was simple. That he’d been defective and that was why he couldn’t control it, why he couldn’t use it to save himself. But he’d been wrong. There was nothing magical about magic at all.

Lindsay tried to talk, to tell Dane he couldn’t do this anymore. He fought to get into his own body, to

be the one behind his eyes– his eyes and no one else’s eyes. He couldn’t draw attention to them, he couldn’t give in to the urge to claw at his head and tear at his hair so he could feel it and know that this was his body, his own body. His jaw was clamped—he thought it was his jaw—on desperate whimpers.

Just when he felt a scream about to break out of his throat, everything was silent, even him. As though

someone had dropped a bell jar over a candle, the world was utterly still and the fuel for Lindsay’s panic

was used up and gone. He was locked in stillness like an insect in amber, alone except for a sense of

sympathy.

“It’s hard, isn’t it?” It was a woman’s voice, one Lindsay had never heard before.

Dane was drawing him off to the side, so they were close to the wall, out of the immediate press of

bodies, but everything was still moving around them, everything was chaotic. Someone’s luggage fell off

of a cart with a crash, and a mother with two suitcases and three children stopped right in front of them,

forcing Dane to step away from Lindsay or run them over.

Dane. Lindsay reached for Dane, but the impulse never made it to his hand.

“Don’t worry,” the woman said. “It’ll get easier once you learn. I’ll be there to teach you this time.”

“Lindsay…” Dane said his name, trying to reach for him, but that was all. Lindsay watched him wind

down like a toy. His eyes were open, but all the light drained from his face. It was as though he’d simply

left his body there and gone somewhere else.

“Let’s all stay very calm.” The voice in Lindsay’s head was cool and precise. “Making a scene will

just get people hurt.”

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Lindsay could feel his magic still working, but there was a power more controlled than his behind it

now. He felt empty and limp, like a puppet. It was a sensation so familiar that he could hardly fight it.

“It’s time to come home,” the woman said. Not the woman. The girl. Lourdes.

Somewhere, Lindsay was screaming in terror and outrage, but it never went beyond that small place

deep inside where he’d been locked the whole time he was at the Institute.

“Don’t run.” There was hot breath on Lindsay’s hair and big hands on his shoulders. The voice was

horribly familiar. Jonas. “Let’s get you someplace safe.”

Lindsay tried to struggle, but he couldn’t fight himself. His body wasn’t here anymore, and his mind

was gone as well. He was a walking dead man.

“Dramatic, but accurate.” There was laughter in Lourdes’s thoughts. “Hush. If one of us slips while

we’re playing this game, it could kill us all.”

Lindsay knew he was walking, being guided by Jonas’s hands on his shoulders. Dane followed behind

like a dog.

Could kill us. Lindsay was willing to make that sacrifice. He gathered his courage.

“All of us?” Lourdes’s thoughts were a chiding tap on Lindsay’s soul. “Even him?”

Lindsay had a flash of awareness that Lourdes had her mind on both of them. She felt impossibly

powerful. Under the moment of horror and awe, he felt that she was having trouble holding on to Dane.

The mind could make up hope from nothing.

“Why don’t you both come this way?” There was a nearly invisible door in the wall that led off to a

service hall, easily missed until now. A beautiful young woman in an airline uniform stood there, holding

the door for the three of them. “Jonas, if you’d escort our friend to the car, I’ll make sure Dane joins us. It is Dane, still, isn’t it?” She gave Dane a bright smile as though he could see her, as though he’d answered.

“I thought so.” She held out her hand and he came to her, letting her take his hand.

Jonas steered Lindsay toward the door and his claws slid through Lindsay’s clothes to dig into

Lindsay’s shoulders. “Feel free to try that game of yours on me again, little man,” he murmured. “Any time

you like.” Trickles ran down Lindsay’s arms under his sleeves.

Why couldn’t Ezqel have let Jonas die?

Jonas laughed softly as he guided Lindsay through the long, white hall under the strings of fluorescent

lights. “Too bad you can’t fight, pretty. Worse that I have to keep you in one piece. I’d like to take you apart in front of our friend here.” He rumbled, sounding so much like Dane. “He died too soon last time,

would have missed the whole thing.” His breath was sweet against Lindsay’s cheek. “He did die last time. I

remember it now. Can’t wait to do it again.”

“If you’re good.” Lourdes’s voice was light, floating in the stale air of the hall. “If I have to kill him

to keep him quiet, you don’t get to. Can’t you watch your paws? The smell of his little friend’s blood is

making him harder to handle. I’d rather kill Dane now, but I’m trying to be civil to you. Do you think

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Cyrus could grow a new dog if we sent him the head? I’d know that already if you’d let me cut yours off,

Jonas.”

Jonas laughed again. “Let’s see what you have to give me before we talk about me giving you

anything, girl.”

Please don’t hurt Dane. Lindsay had watched Dane die once already. He never wanted to see

anything like that as long as he lived. He reached for his magic, heart racing with fear and anger when it

still wasn’t there for him to use. The place where it was, here and not here at once, was empty.

“Has to happen sometime, Lindsay,” Lourdes said blithely. “He’s done too much damage. We can’t

keep him. He is a lot prettier now, so I see why you’d be upset. Did he put on that pretty face just for you?

Underneath, he’s just a flea-bitten old thing. We’ll get you a nicer dog. Nicer than Jonas, even. Look.”

There were stairs that led down, and a pair of tall, solemn men, twins, stood waiting on the landing.

“Hello, gentlemen,” Lourdes said cheerfully. “Lindsay, meet Hesham and Mahesh. They’ll be taking care

of you. I know how much you like being cared for and I wouldn’t take something away from you without

replacing it with something better. I’m sure Dr. Moore will let you keep them.” The two men bowed in

unison, extending their hands to Lindsay.

They looked like corpses, fallow skin tight over dry bones; they smelled of cedar and sandalwood and

roses and dust. Lindsay tried to back away from their reaching hands, even though it put him in Jonas’s

arms, against the feral’s big chest. Suddenly, even Jonas seemed better than whatever these men could do

to him. And Dr. Moore. Her name was laced through all his worst memories.

Jonas shoved him away. The twins caught Lindsay gently and righted him, each taking one of his

arms. “I need my hands free,” Jonas said roughly. “Come on, girl, enough socializing. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Lourdes was sauntering down the stairs behind them, her arm looped through Dane’s. Her mind slid

away from Lindsay’s as soon as the twins had hold of him, but Lindsay’s magic was still locked out of

reach. Now, he was terrified. His magic was gone.

“You think you have a grip on him, but it might not last.” Jonas snarled as he spoke. “It doesn’t last

on me, not forever.”

Lindsay struggled against the two men who held him, hoping that Jonas was right, that Dane would

break free of Lourdes’s hold on him. Whatever she was doing, Dane had to get free. Lindsay had to get

free. He didn’t want to go back to Dr. Moore, not again. Not ever.

“Come, sir.” One of his two keepers spoke, and the man’s accent was British. They were gentle with

him, smoothing his clothes and hair as Dane would have done, always keeping an iron grip on him, and

they guided him down the stairs. Under other circumstances, they would have been comforting, and that

thought made Lindsay ill.

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Together, they all went into the lower levels, through winding tunnels, and came out in a service bay

where a van and a limousine stood waiting. The driver of the van, a broad, flat-faced man in coveralls, got out and swung the back open to reveal the cage inside.

“Say goodbye, Lindsay.” Lourdes let go of Dane and he stood still. “He’s going with Jonas and

McKay, in the van. We have other things to do.” Hesham and Mahesh turned Lindsay so that he could see

Dane, each with a gentle hand on one of his arms, as though they were supporting him instead of holding

him prisoner.

It was Dane’s body, but was Dane really in there? Lindsay wouldn’t say goodbye to him, either way.

It felt wrong. He wished he could see into Dane’s mind, to bring him back to himself.

He stepped forward, and they let him, their hands still on his arms so he couldn’t run. When he was

close enough to touch Dane, he leaned up and brushed a kiss over Dane’s lips. Wake up. Lindsay kissed harder, desperation and fear building up inside him and seeping out from between his lips. His magic was

gone, but he still had his body. Lindsay swallowed a scream and pushed his tongue into Dane’s mouth,

trying to elicit some response, anything.

Nothing.

Dane stood there, as still as a corpse. Lindsay’s stomach twisted and he barely kept from retching on

the asphalt.

Jonas snorted, and he grabbed a handful of Dane’s hair and shoved him toward the van. “All that

effort and no show.” McKay, standing by the door, laughed and helped him throw Dane’s unresisting form

in the back.

The limo driver, a slight, gray woman, was holding the door. “Come along, Lindsay,” Lourdes said.

“We can’t keep Dr. Moore waiting.”

Lourdes patted Lindsay on the cheek as she breezed past. He flinched at her touch, but he couldn’t get

far enough to avoid the warm brush of her fingers. Dr. Moore could wait until hell froze over. He was

going to find a way out of this, one way or another.

His new guards guided him toward the limousine, helped him in, and settled beside him on the seat

facing the back. Lourdes sat across from him, phone in hand. “Would you tell Dr. Moore that I’ve got what

she wants?” she was saying to whomever was on the end of the line. She gave Lindsay a sweet smile once

he was settled. “Yes. We’re looking forward to seeing her too.”

Lourdes’s mind—it must have been hers—was still clenched around Lindsay’s magic, keeping him

from it without any sign of effort on her part. He had thought she was gone from his mind, but he had no

other explanation for it. Unless…he glanced at the twins, and one of them, he thought it was Mahesh,

smiled at him. Lindsay stomped on his panic at the idea that he had to deal with three mind mages at once,

and sorted the information he could get.

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Guests. So Dane was going to the same place Lindsay was. That made him feel a little better. With the way Lourdes held his magic in check, he couldn’t imagine what he’d be able to do with that, but knowing

that Dane’s mindless husk wasn’t being taken somewhere so that Jonas could kill it while Dane couldn’t

fight back was a relief. It would make it easier for Lindsay to find Dane when he got out. He pushed for his magic again. That he couldn’t feel or hear Lourdes in his head was no reason to think the grip on him

wasn’t hers. All Lindsay could do was wait for a break in her attention.

Lourdes tucked the phone away in the purse that sat on the seat beside her and folded her hands in her

lap. “We’re so glad you’re back,” she said pleasantly. To his dismay, Lindsay had the distinct impression

that she was sincere. That made things so much worse, that these people might care about him as though he

were one of their own, as though he were a wayward little brother. “Everyone’s just dying to see you

again.”

Dane knew exactly what was happening the moment the world slowed. He tried to say something,

managed to get Lindsay’s name out, but that was all. He even knew who was doing this to him. How had

Cyrus missed this? How had he?

As he stood there, frozen, fighting to keep his awareness connected to his body, he could see Jonas

stepping out of a service hallway. He could see the widening terror in Lindsay’s eyes as Jonas laid hands on him. As he was falling away from himself, he saw Lourdes.

Not for some days. Ezqel’s voice and Cyrus’s sounded the same in the fading echo along the hallways of his mind.

She looked much as she had when he’d seen her last, though the childish roundness was gone from

her face and her body. Now, she was slim and willowy, her fine red hair pulled back tightly in a twist at the nape of her neck that reminded him of Moore. Lourdes’s pale, pale eyes were the last thing in his vision

before he was gone.

Dane woke with a collar around his neck and his hands trapped behind his back in iron gauntlets. He

was in a moving vehicle, his back pressed up against bars. He’d been here before. Maybe not this exact

van, but one like it, more than once. He didn’t have to open his eyes or do anything beyond inhale to know

that Jonas was there with him.

“So, do you ever get tired of failing?”

Yes. Yes, he did. “Fuck you, Jonas.” Dane got very tired of failing. In fact, he was exhausted from it.

Failing all by himself was one thing, but this new twist of failing Lindsay was something else altogether.

“So, the elf fixed you did he?”

When Dane opened one eye, he saw Jonas sitting across from him, back to the bars on the other side

of the van, trapped in here with him. “Looks that way.”

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“I’d forgotten what you looked like.” Jonas sounded almost thoughtful. He stretched his legs out in

front of him and crossed his arms over his chest. He was ugly, brutal-looking like a club or an axe, but he was still human on the outside. “Pity you got so pretty just in time to die.”

“Who says I’m going to die?” Dane didn’t have any intention of dying. He had a lot of fucking up to

fix; he didn’t have time to die. Lindsay hadn’t even had a chance to live, not really, not whole, and Dane

planned to make sure Lindsay got every chance he deserved.

“Me. They won’t let me kill your scrawny little boyfriend, so I’ll have to be satisfied with killing

you.”

Dane lunged forward, trying to get his feet under him, but his collar was chained to the bars and he

was wrenched backward before he managed to get any momentum. The metal squealed in protest but didn’t

give, even when he tried again. Jonas sat there and laughed, watching him strangle himself as he fought to

get free, blood trickling from where the collar cut into his neck, and his claws splintering on the inside of the gauntlets.

Finally, Jonas stopped laughing and moved enough to slam one foot into Dane’s face as Dane surged

forward again. Dane felt his nose crumple and his teeth crack. Blood poured down the back of his throat

and his head smashed into the bars. It should have hurt worse than it did, but all Dane felt was a rush of

ecstasy as his magic flowed through his flesh and began to knit it together again.

It took everything he had to keep from laughing, to make himself sag in his bonds and fall limp

against the bars. Jonas was mocking him again, oblivious to Dane’s deception. The smell of blood must

have been thick enough in the van that it covered anything else. Or maybe Jonas never had grasped the idea

of self-sacrifice.

Dane hung there, his breath barely rasping past the pressure of the collar on his neck, as Jonas got to

his feet and, holding the bars overhead for support, kicked Dane over and over again, cracking bone and

pulping flesh with glee. Dane lay there and let Jonas break him, soaking in the pain and waiting for his

chance to get free.

For every purpose, there is also a season, Ezqel had said while he was being healed. Your season canbegin again. You think you have much left to do. I can see it in you, you know. You will fail, and fail, andstill not end. At the time, with his magic fading and runes burning into his skin, it had felt like a fresh curse.

Jonas wrenched Dane’s head back and, for a moment, Dane was looking up at the man who had been

his friend. For a moment, there was regret on Jonas’s face. The regret was gone as soon as it had come,

replaced by hate. Dane mustered up a smile as Jonas slit his throat. …and still not end.

Lindsay tried to watch out the window, to figure out where they were going. No tunnels yet, and no

bridges, so they were still in Queens, or in Brooklyn. Traffic was thick, but even so, the street signs were

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too dark and went by too quickly for Lindsay to read. He wondered if that was Lourdes’s doing, or if it was simply the way the car was moving.

There weren’t any skyscrapers to help Lindsay guess where he was. Most of what he could see out the

window was too dark to make out, though a trick of the streetlights made a massive cemetery just barely

visible. The only damn thing he could see, and it had to be something that wouldn’t do him any good,

because he didn’t recognize it.

“Are you sure that what you’re seeing is real?” Lourdes had been reading something on a small device

she’d pulled from her purse, but she stopped to look over at Lindsay.

“I’m sure that you’re a bitch,” Lindsay muttered. “Does Moore have you trained to sit up and beg

too?”

“Spending time with that animal has taught you poor manners,” Lourdes said primly. “I’m Dr.

Moore’s colleague, not her pet. You know, your education has been sorely neglected, Lindsay. You’re

remarkably lacking in deductive reasoning.”

“Just offering you the benefit of the doubt. I’d respect you more if you were her pet. At least then

you’d just be following orders.” Lindsay slid his gaze back to the window, not wanting to miss the changes

in his surroundings.

“You could be so powerful.” Lourdes’s expression shifted, softened. “I know you hate what they did

to you, but now that you’re free of it, you could negotiate, you know. You could be useful to them. To us.

We’re not puppets.” She gestured at Hesham and Mahesh to either side of him. “Ask your friends here.

We’re not fools, either. We have purpose of our own.”

“Why would I want to work for the people who tortured me?” Lindsay flicked his gaze back to

Lourdes incredulously. “For two years, they kept me strapped down and drugged up, poked and prodded

me and experimented on me. Why would I want to be a part of that?”

“Better to be a part of it on your own terms than on theirs.” Lourdes shrugged and smiled at him. “I

should know. It’s not so terrible, and they’re not necessarily wrong. There’s so much you don’t know,

Lindsay. So many things Cyrus and his pet and his woman didn’t tell you about us, about our people. Did