O-Men: Liege's Legion - Merc

by Elaine Levine

  As fast as that thought came, it was washed away by guilt. He hated that his waking thought was of her and not his wife.

  “Leave me alone,” Merc growled, still without opening his eyes.

  “No. Guerre says you’ll live, but we’re not to leave you unattended.”

  Merc cracked his eyes and glared at his friend. “I didn’t give you permission to save me.”

  Bastion’s features hardened. He leaned back on the hind legs of his chair, bracing a foot on the bed. “Relax. We didn’t save you. No one can. We just filled you back up with blood and let your body take things over.”

  Great. He was just a sack of blood, a thing at the mercy of its own will to live. A thing with no sentience, drive, or direction.

  He sighed.

  Bastion laughed. “It’s true. You have no mind. You are just a dumb sack of shit. What were you thinking, trying to kill yourself?”

  Merc sat up and set his legs on the floor. To the best of his knowledge, he hadn’t been upright in some time. The room spun crazily for a moment. He dropped his head into his palms and waited for it to right itself. “Go away. I’m happier having no conscience at the moment.”

  Bastion jumped to his feet and kicked the chair away, sending it clattering across the room. The big guy paced angrily to the French doors.

  Merc took advantage of the space between them and stood. He closed his eyes again and took stock of his body. Contrary to his first thought, he wasn’t full of anything. He was empty. A void of a man.

  Dammit, why hadn’t they let him die?

  Next thing he knew, Bastion had him by the neck and slammed him against the nearest wall.

  “You didn’t die because you can’t die. You’re one of us, one of the first in the Legion. You can’t break that circle.” Bastion’s white teeth flashed as he spoke, a stark contrast with his black beard.

  “Pull your head in, mate. Get off me.” Merc peeled Bastion’s hand off his throat then shoved him back.

  “You want me off you? Then get your shit right.”

  “I’m done, Bastion. Done. I died in that jungle.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “The Omni mutations preserved my body, but a person can’t live without a soul. I lost mine long ago.”

  Bastion straightened and set his big hand over Merc’s heart. “You’ll heal.”

  Merc knocked his hand away. “I haven’t yet.”

  “You need time. You can love again. You can start over.”

  “I don’t want to.” As soon as he said that, a pair of dark blue eyes slipped through Merc’s mind, filling him with all the emotions he didn’t want to feel, things he had no right to.

  Hope.

  Curiosity.

  Hunger… For a female who wasn’t his Tina.

  He shut those emotions off, blocking them from Bastion and the others. Summer’s friend didn’t have a future with a guy like him. Especially if the Matchmaker was involved. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “I deserve to die, anyway.”

  “Why?”

  Guerre and Liege came into the room. Acier too. Selena stayed near the door. Perfect. Just in time for his great confession. “For what I did in Colombia. I set a curse.” He looked at Bastion. “And I can’t stop it.”

  “You did what we were made to do,” Acier said. “End bad guys.”

  “One by one, maybe. That’s legit. That’s honorable. Each bad guy meets his death head-on. But the curse, it’s taken on a life of its own. It exists without me. It’s feeding on people.”

  Bastion set his hands on his hips. He didn’t look as disgusted as he should. In fact, he didn’t look disgusted at all. “None of us even knew that was a skill you had.”

  “It’s not a skill. Curses are bad.”

  Bastion shook his head. “Not necessarily. It’s just karma.”

  “Merc’s right,” Guerre said. “Curses always circle back to the person who gave them life.”

  “How do you know?” Bastion asked.

  “Experience,” Guerre answered.

  “Well, in my opinion, it is done and done.” Bastion swiped his hands against each other as if clearing off dust. “And you beat its return to you—that pit almost took you, but you survived it.”

  Merc looked at his friends. Time to come clean. “That isn’t even the worst of what I did there.”

  Liege went still.

  “I skin-walked. I’m becoming Flynn.”

  Bastion stepped back. Acier looked shocked.

  “Shit.” Liege paced a few steps away and swiped his hands over his face. “Okay. It’s okay.” He turned to face Merc, then looked at the others. “How many times, in that first year, were we presented with abilities that were terrifying, but which are now commonplace?”

  “Skin-walking ain’t commonplace, Liege,” Acier said. “It goes against everything the Legion stands for.”

  “Maybe it was a side effect of having set curses,” Guerre said. “Some new neural path switched on.”

  “How many times did you skin-walk?” Liege asked.

  “Once,” Merc replied.

  “So it was a fluke,” Bastion said.

  Guerre shook his head. “Nothing about our abilities is random. This skill is appearing now because his mental capabilities have developed to allow it. If he did it once, he can do it again.”

  Bastion rocked back on his heels. “So if he can do it, we can. The four of us had the same modifications.”

  “Flynn’s been doing it for years,” Acier said.

  “It’s a lot to digest,” Liege said. “Let’s take some time to consider its uses and dangers.”

  Merc straightened. “I have to go back. I have to find a way to stop the curse.”

  “Fuck no,” Bastion said. “You cannot go back. You aren’t strong enough to deal with the forces you set in motion.”

  Guerre folded his arms and sent a look to each of the guys. “If it comes to a vote, I cast mine for Merc. He has to stop what he began.”

  “We’ll make that decision in a few days,” Liege said. “Let’s see how Merc does back on his feet.”

  Merc nodded and forked his fingers through his hair. “I’m going to take a shower.”

  Guerre did a read of Merc’s energy, which was still low. “You need help?”

  “I think I can wash my own balls, thank you.”

  “Dieu merci,” Bastion said to Guerre. “I could not stand one more sponge bath. His ass is not as cute as that of un bébé.”

  Guerre laughed as the lot of them walked out.

  Fuckers. Merc hadn’t given any thought to his personal care while he’d been under Guerre’s forced coma.

  Whatever. He was glad to be back to himself. Or almost, anyway. He knew the woman who’d visited his nightmare. She was Ashlyn DeWinter, Summer and Kiera’s friend and therefore under the protection of the Legion, which meant she was hands-off for Merc.

  He’d been hungering for her ever since she’d crashed his coma. Figured that he finally had his libido returned to him, only to discover the woman of his interest was both forbidden by his own ethics and preordained to be his by the Matchmaker’s Curse.

  Merc sat hunched over on the bench in the shower, his head in his hands as the hot water poured over him. When he’d astral-traveled to Valle de Lágrimas to save Summer’s friend, he had no idea what he was walking in to. He never expected to see a sensitive, beautiful woman covered in dirt, experiencing the echoes of his own death attempt.

  Merc ripped his mind from that train of thought. Who she was or how she made him feel was of no consequence. He owed his loyalty to his wife. All he had to do was focus on her to push Ash out of his mind. He’d had his one chance at love.

  The Matchmaker couldn’t force another on him.

  10

  Brett Flynn walked through the scruffy streets of Valle de Lágrimas. It was the closest village to his mining and coca operation, so he considered it his town. His workers had reported some kind of super being t
hat had come to town, a guy with strange skills who was slaughtering Brett’s crew. But he had known, even before their reports, that the Legion had found him; only mutants were skilled enough to take out the ghouls he had protecting his interests in the jungle.

  Beyond the gang leaders this particular mutant had killed—three key men Brett had made labor and transportation pacts with for the cocaine produced near his mine—there were dozens more, dead and dying, in the vacated trenches outside town.

  So much for Legion’s directive to fly low, off the radar of human observation. Brett smiled. Maybe Liege was losing his grip on his beloved Legionnaires.

  Brett had never understood the draw of joining up with a group like Liege’s. Mutants were too powerful to be trusted, even against other mutants, and certainly against regulars. True, Brett was associated with the Omni World Order, but even the Omnis, still mostly regulars, had no idea of his full capabilities. They were easy to use, giving him a foundation that offered rich opportunities to grow his own circle of power.

  Now Brett just had to figure out which Legionnaire had been here. Lautaro and his little group of Omni fighters were the closest, but while Lautaro’s energy was here, he wasn’t who had done the despicable things. It was someone whose energy aligned more closely with Liege himself, one of his top four operatives.

  Church bells rang, summoning the faithful to services. Perfect. The gathering of residents was just what Brett needed to suss out who knew what about the Legion’s activities without his having to spend days wandering the town, reading minds. He could do a mass scan, see if there was anyone with the knowledge he was seeking. If there was, it wouldn’t be difficult to home in on who needed a more in-depth reading.

  By the time he arrived at the church, the doors had been closed and services begun. That wasn’t a problem. He could wander among the congregants while they focused on the service. He jogged up the wide front steps…then almost fell back down when he encountered an energetic block that kept him from approaching the entrance. The damn thing felt like the high-voltage burst of a cattle fence. He could push through it, but he knew the pain he felt on quick contact would only strengthen as he moved into the space it protected.

  Keeping himself hidden from any regulars who might see him, he moved around the perimeter of the church, looking for a spot where the protection weakened, but he didn’t find one.

  Fine. Brett didn’t need his body to do what was needed. He sat on the steps and focused on separating his energy from his body so that he could slip inside the church in astral form. That didn’t work either. Son of a bitch. Who had set such a powerful protection? The Legionnaires had grown their strengths to the level where they could set curses, something even he could not do. But now they could block astral travelers too? He thought he was the only one who could operate at that level.

  He stood and turned to stare at the ancient church. What was inside that needed such high-grade protections?

  Whatever it was, Brett was going to have to wait for the congregants to leave before scanning them about what the church was hiding and which Legionnaire had killed his men.

  When the service ended, the villagers spilled out of the main exit. Brett centered himself, quieting his mind, and let his energy move among the people, slipping through them like an invisible filter, sensing their thoughts and emotions. Most were filled with a deep peace from the sermon, but one little boy was tangled with fear.

  That negative emotion drew Brett like a bee to a bottle of soda. He summoned the boy closer, all while keeping himself unseen. Young minds were such sweet, easy fruit to pick. They held no resistance to Brett’s probing.

  The boy was afraid of la Tunda. Good. He should be. The ghouls kept these villagers and all Brett’s workers in line. He reached into the boy’s memories to see what he knew of the Legionnaire who’d wreaked havoc here, and was quickly shown an image of an average man from the village. Youngish. Olive skin, dark, straight hair, dark eyes. Not the man Brett had expected—none of Liege’s first four looked like that man.

  Had the Legionnaire shielded himself, or had this boy’s memory been manipulated later, after the fact?

  Impossible to know. Brett moved on to a different topic. Who told you about seeing la Tunda?

  The kid pointed to another kid, this one a teenager. Brett summoned him over. Pablo was his name. To their parents or anyone observing their discussion, the boys were standing near a low retaining wall, staring at a tree, talking with each other.

  Pablo wasn’t as malleable as the younger one. The older kid had worked at Brett’s mine. He had indeed seen the ghouls. Brett was shown a man fighting them. The kid hadn’t seen much of the actual fight, because he’d been forced to hide his face, but Pablo had had seen the man who’d rescued him. They’d walked through the jungle back to the village.

  The man he’d walked with was someone Brett knew well.

  Merc.

  Interesting. So Merc could now set curses. The mutations Brett and the Legionnaires had taken were still evolving, so it wasn’t surprising that any mutant could do new things. The more their physiology and neural networks changed, the more their potential skills changed. What was surprising was the power that setting curses gave to the Legion.

  Brett was about to release the boys when a last tidbit slipped through to him—there had been foreigners here in town. Neither kid knew their names, but they’d visited the death pits with cameras, making a movie they were going to publish online.

  Brett smiled. That would be good to look into further. He might find something for leverage. And if that didn’t pan out, he could always use the older boy to get to Merc. That Legionnaire had some kind of bond with the kid. Burdened with a conscience, Merc might fight to protect him.

  Poor Merc. He couldn’t stand to see children harmed.

  Losing his own had almost killed him.

  Ash’s ride from the airport shuttle dropped her off at her driveway, completing the long journey home.

  She’d never been so glad to be back. The late March sun was warm on her back and highlighted her bungalow’s tiny cottage garden, ready to burst into life if there were no more snowstorms that season.

  She had a lot to do to get ready for work in the morning. She’d discovered from previous travels that jumping back into a routine immediately following a vacation was the best way to sidestep the adrenaline hangover that lingered after coming home. After what she’d experienced in Valle de Lágrimas, she fully expected a doozy of a trip hangover.

  She went through her kitchen, living room, and down the hall to her bedroom, where she dumped everything on her bed. Her routine upon returning from a trip was always the same. Drink a big glass of water. Unpack. Shower. Laundry. Grab a bite. Get ready for the next day. Have a glass of wine. Prep for bed. Then finally crash.

  Thinking about Merc, the village saint, was nowhere on that list.

  She stripped and got into the shower. When the hot water hit her back, her mind wandered to all that had happened in the last few days. She’d had time and distance now, enough to think about the mystery man and Valle de Lágrimas in a more rational, dispassionate way.

  And still none of it made sense. The only thing she could figure was that she’d been taken in by a hoax perpetrated by the town. No one could set curses, or condemn living beings to sit in chairs until their bodies died of thirst or starvation. No one could survive a hailstorm of bullets or summon home a long-lost son by simply blessing a medallion.

  But it had felt possible. He had felt real. All of it had. And if none of it had happened, then how could she have had that vision in the pit? Her visions, even when she couldn’t confirm them, always felt like the truth.

  There was only one answer, and she liked it not at all. The town had messed with her mind. Whether through drugs or hypnosis, she didn’t know. She closed her eyes and wondered at her luck surviving her experiences in the village.

  Confusion and exhaustion were a dangerous combination. She sat on the sea
t in her shower. Unable to fight back her wild emotions, she wept.

  I told you I wasn’t worth your tears.

  Ash startled. That voice was in her head, but it wasn’t hers. It was a man’s—the same man from her vision at the fort, the one who’d spoken to her in the pit.

  It was as if he was inside her head, which wasn’t possible. Her visions were never long-lasting, more like short snippets of scenes that passed almost before she was aware of having them.

  Whatever it was, it would wear off as soon as she got back to normal life. She had a business card from Larry. She would call him later in the week to see if his memories, and those of his group, matched hers.

  Having decided on a course of action, Ash felt better.

  After her shower, she got things ready for work the next morning—her laptop, her lunch, her outfit. Tomorrow was just going to be a regular day.

  And damn if she didn’t need some normalcy.

  She was too tired for her glass of wine. Instead, she settled into her bed, then pulled the covers up. She loved her little bedroom, in her little house. Everything about it suited her perfectly. She set her alarm and shut her eyes. She lived in a college town in an area not far from Old Town. Kids from the university were often out and about at all hours of the night. She held still and listened to her world—or what she could hear through her closed windows.

  This was home. She was back, and she was safe. The excitement, the fear, the nightmare of the man who haunted her was over.

  Ash still felt out of sorts the next morning the whole way into the office. It was maddening to think she’d let herself be victimized by the village hoax. She wondered how many other tourists were going to get taken in by the same shenanigans.

  She poured a cup of coffee, greeted her officemates, attended the weekly Monday meeting, then tackled the stack of work that had piled up while she was out.

  After a few hours, Ash grabbed her purse and took out the utility knife she’d brought back from Colombia.

  MERC.

  She ran her fingertips over the engraved letters. Odd that she hadn’t gotten a read off it. This was a real, physical item connected to the man in the legend. It wasn’t a dream or a vision or a rumor or an urban myth. A man who had once lived had owned this knife.