A Lover's Mercy

by Fiona Zedde

  A cresting wave of growls rises up around me. The window near Mai slams shut.

  “Knock her out! She can’t escape if she’s unconscious.” As if I’d abandon Mai here with them.

  “Easy for you to say. I can’t even see her, she’s moving so damn fast!”

  Mai’s eyes fly open, and her sudden and sharp fear burns through me like acid. There’s someone new in the apartment. Someone dangerous. And they’re close.

  “Xóchitl, the window! Just go—!”

  Then something hits me hard in the face. Pain starbursts behind my cheek, and I crash into…nothing, ricocheting into an immovable and invisible wall before landing flat on my back. Then I can’t hear a thing. More than half a dozen Redstones surround me, crowding me. I’m trapped in a bubble of space, my body glowing, my powers useless.

  On my hands and knees now, I take in as much air as I can, gasping. Around me, Cayman and a few unfamiliar Redstones creep closer. His ugly jacket is ripped in places, and he’s lost one of his shoes. His relatives don’t look much better.

  Even though every part of me hurts, my lip curls in satisfaction.

  “Let her go!” Mai twists like a wild thing against the three who have her pinned.

  “Why would we let a criminal go when she’s all but confessed?” Cayman shouts back.

  “I haven’t confessed to a damn thing and you know it,” I growl between desperate breaths.

  Damn. My head is swimming. My arms tremble and can barely hold me up.

  “You should save your breath,” Caressa says, calm as you please. She’s managed to stay out of the fight and looks as fresh as a prom queen at her coronation. “Not that you’ll be able to use it for much longer.”

  My lips curl back in a snarl, hungry to spill her blood. She shouldn’t be here. Not in the place where Mai and I have made love, confessed secrets to each other, cooked and cared for each other.

  Anger floods through me like lava. “Fuck you!”

  Then my senses begin to dim. My vision goes dark at the edges. My quiet sips of breath become desperate gasps.

  “Stop it!” Mai’s shouts sound far away. “You’re killing her!”

  “That’s the idea.”

  My shaking arms give out, and I drop to my belly with a heavy thud. The hardwood floor slams up into my face, and my sweaty cheek slides across it. My breath hitches, body goes slack. The only sound is my desperate breathing while I feel the Redstones creeping closer. Their feet. Their deep breaths. Their powers at the ready to finish me off.

  “Mai…” Her name fumbles off my tongue.

  She screams again. At least I think so, but I can barely hear it.

  My heart slows. My breath. My breath…stops.

  Seconds tick by.

  “I think she’s done.”

  “No!” Mai’s shout penetrates the fog blanketing my senses.

  I’m still here, baby. Don’t worry. At least that’s what I want to say. But I can’t move. I can’t speak. My breath is gone. My eyes are shut.

  More seconds.

  “Let’s just be sure.” Footsteps creep closer. Hard fingers jerk in my hair and yank my head back. Hot breath huffs against my face as whoever it is peers close to check for signs of life. There has to be pain, but I can’t feel any of it.

  “We don’t have time for that. The cops will be here soon.”

  “Kendra dampened the noise. None of the humans heard a thing.”

  “We should torture her, make her confess to what Caressa said she did.”

  “She’s not going to talk. That much is pretty damn obvious.” Cayman this time.

  “And what about the enforcers?”

  “What about them? Do you want to just turn her into them like this, dead or as close as?”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about. They’ll hear about this soon and come for us. We can’t kill a Meta and expect it to go unchallenged.”

  “They’ll know we had no choice. Especially when they find out the wrong person is in jail for Absolution’s crimes.”

  “We can deal with all that later. For now, let’s get rid of this.”

  They’re talking about me. But I can’t do a thing about it. I’m trapped in my body. Can’t move. Mai is screaming, and I hear the slam and thud of flesh on flesh as she struggles to get away. She’s screaming my name.

  “What if the humans find her?” someone asks.

  Mandaia Redstone is ice. “That’s not our problem.”

  Rough hands handle me, then air rushes over my face, my body. I’m flying into space, out the window.

  Falling. Like the boy who came to the school with his gun.

  Like trash. Spilling out of Mai’s home, out of her life.

  The day is bright, incandescent afternoon light that burns through my closed lids, and it feels like I’m flying into the sun. Then falling away from it. The ground rushes up.

  An agony of flesh meeting pavement.

  Then nothing.

  Chapter 21

  Something is missing. A piece of me I didn’t even know existed. And now it’s gone.

  God, it hurts. This phantom limb.

  Darkness swims all around me, slipping between me and the missing piece that’s just out of reach. My mouth opens to call for it by name, yawning in desperation, but the darkness slips inside, choking me. I can’t even scream.

  Chapter 22

  “I knew that girl would get you into trouble.” A familiar voice pulls me slowly out of the darkness.

  “Tia Ana?” My throat feels raw. Speaking hurts. Actually, everything hurts.

  “Who else, my flower?” A hand touches my brow, and I flinch from the pain. My tia hisses an apology. “Rest now. We’re taking you somewhere safe.”

  We?

  Gradually, I notice the sensation of movement. A rocking, like I’m in some kind of vehicle but I can’t see anything. Black-out windows?

  I take a deep breath. Bad idea. Nausea rushes up, but I clench my mouth shut and breathe until the urge to vomit goes away.

  My body is one massive ache. My limbs feel rubbery and useless, and the part of my brain that controls my powers feels scooped out. Empty. Even my teeth hurt.

  “Where am I?”

  “Someplace safe for now.” My tia hovers above me in white. Her hair is a silver spill over one shoulder, and her eyes look like stars.

  “Am I broken?” My voice is like a child’s. The aches in my body make me feel like crawling back into the womb, and not in a sexy way.

  “A little.” She ghosts her fingers over my cheek but doesn’t touch me. I’m so grateful for that I almost cry. “But nothing we can’t fix. Rest now. When you wake up, things should be better.”

  “Okay.” The echo of my own voice makes my head hurt.

  The pillow cradles my head when I sag into it, and sleep quickly reaches up to pull me back under.

  When I wake again, it’s dark. Real dark this time, not just the dark that comes from having your brains rattled around in your head like pop in a bottle. My lips are dry. The ache in my head has eased to a rumbling train instead of a death metal concert.

  The room is mostly bare, and small, with a darkened lamp on the bedside table, hardwood floors, and walls the color of coffee with too much cream. A single window sits opposite the full-sized bed where I lay, and a pile of clothes, alarmingly colorful, lays folded on a wooden trunk at the end of the bed. Curtains cover the window, and the shadows of nighttime move beyond it.

  So a house, then, and not some underground bunker where I’d have to worry about being crushed to death in a cave-in.

  A quick check of limbs and lungs confirms that I’m better, but it still feels like I’ve been chewed up, swallowed, and squeezed out into a litter box.

  “Tia…?”

  Silence. It stretches into minutes.
This silence pins me to the bed and forces a reflection that I usually manage to avoid, especially after such an exquisite failure as this.

  In hindsight, what I did at that garden party was stupid.

  The overconfidence I once accused the Redstones of was the same thing that brought me to this place. Wherever this place is.

  Away from Mai.

  At the thought of Mai, my entire body explodes with pain. Oh, because I just sat up like an idiot. A groan slips past my clenched teeth.

  “Xóchitl! Lie still. You’re still healing.”

  My Aunt Carmen appears at the door I didn’t notice before. She looks worried, tired. The black blouse and slacks she wears a contrast to her sister’s white dress. Her short hair looks a little crazed, like she’s been running her fingers through it for hours.

  “Mai. Where is she?” The trembling in my arms forces me back down to the pillow. “How long have I been here?”

  “Almost two days. As for Mai, she’s probably with her family.” Aunt Ana follows slowly behind her sister, glowing in white. She floats to the foot of my bed like the angel of death. The touch of her hand through the thin blanket covering me is meant to be a comfort. But it only makes me more frantic to see Mai.

  “What? We need to go get her.” The blanket tangles in my legs and stops me from getting out of the bed. Exhausted from the brief struggle, I fall back against the pillow, gasping.

  “You shouldn’t have said that, Ana. That family is full of devils and no one is safe with them.”

  Tia Ana lightly squeezes my foot before settling in one of the chairs near the bed. “Devils belong with other devils.”

  “Mai isn’t like them.” The denial scrapes through my throat.

  Mai is the opposite of what the Redstones stand for. She’s fighting as Mercy because she wants to save the world. It’s sweet. But it’s also suicide.

  Her mother would rather see her dead than waste her power saving humans.

  “Whatever Mai Redstone is or isn’t, isn’t your concern right now, cariño.” Tia Carmen tries to soothe me. “You have to give your body time to get better.”

  As usual, her sister doesn’t let it go. “It would be easy for her to fall back into the good graces of her family. Sure, she talks about hating them, but I’m sure she feels perfectly safe with them. She hasn’t lost like you’ve lost because of them.”

  “You’re right, Tia,” I tell her through teeth clenched in pain. “Her control over her body was taken away from her—”

  “And your whole life was taken away from you.” Tia Ana’s hands land on her hips.

  My head begins to pound. “I’m not going to compare trauma, Tia. Mai and I have both lost because of the Redstones. I won’t let them take us, too.” My stomach muscles protest as I sit up, and I can’t suppress a gasp of agony.

  Dammit. How off my game was I to let those Redstones get the best of me?

  “God! Stop riling her up, Ana!” Tia Carmen rests a hand in the center of my chest with a shushing sound. “It’s okay, love.”

  Slowly, warmth radiates from her fingers and into my body. I hiss from the pain of suddenly falling back into the bed but then, just as quickly, the aches begin to fade. So does my clear thinking.

  “Rest, Xóchitl.” Her voice is firm. “If anybody is going to break you tonight, it’s not us. You’re here to heal not make yourself worse.”

  But it’s like she’s speaking from far away. Vaguely, I’m aware of Tia Ana leaving the room after saying something about tea.

  My tongue feels too heavy to speak, but I give it a good try, fighting against my aunt’s attempts at shutting my brain down.

  “Tia, stop. I can’t be spaced out right now. I need to find Mai and finish this shit I started with her family.”

  “Stop growling at me and lay down. Don’t let me set Ana on you. She’ll really knock you out and you won’t like it. Or maybe that’s exactly what I should do to settle you down.”

  “No!” That’s not what I want. That’s not what I need. I need to be clearheaded. I need to think. I need to plan.

  My eyes want to drift shut again, but I open them wide and push hard at the sensation of drowsiness. Tia Carmen frowns but doesn’t try to put me to sleep again.

  A gentle tap of bare feet against hardwood floors announce Tia Ana’s return. With a sharp look in my direction, she sets a mug of something hot on the bedside table.

  “Rest, Xóchitl.” She nudges her sister out of the way, then takes a spoon wrapped in a cloth napkin from her pocket. “No arguments. And if I see you trying to leave, the next thing you know you’ll be tied up in this bed and not for any reason that you’ll like.”

  Now, this is just weird. “Tia!”

  “Exactly.” A sharp smile flits across her face. “I have a thousand ways to torture you and making inappropriate comments about your sex life is just one of them. Keep squirming around at your own peril.”

  Then, after helping me sit up, she slowly feeds me the concoction in the mug. It’s warm and smells like ginger. The taste isn’t as pleasant. When the cup is empty, she pats my shoulder with a teasing “Good girl,” then leaves the room.

  Once she’s gone, Tia Carmen pulls the blanket up to my shoulders and reclaims her seat. Whatever Ana has forced on me suffuses my whole body in warmth and calm.

  “How did you find me?”

  “My crazy sister, of course.” My tia rolls her eyes. “She’s wanted to come visit you since the day you left. At home, if she isn’t talking about how you abandoned us, she’s plotting to surprise you with a kidnapping back to Mexico.” It’s obvious she’s not joking.

  “Then a few days ago, she comes into my room with plane tickets. Says we’re going to see you and will stay at a hotel if necessary, though she hopes you haven’t lost your home training enough to let that happen.”

  Her barb hits its intended target and I flinch. Though the apartment is Mai’s, not technically mine, my tias are welcome any place where I am. “You know I’d never let that happen, Tia.”

  She waves a dismissive hand. “Anyway, when we arrived, there was something foul in the air. I could just about taste it as soon as we landed. Ana knows people here, if you can believe that. So she asked her friend who picked us up from the airport to go straight to you. We barely stepped out of the car before Ana heard something.”

  Tia Ana has really fantastic hearing. It’s cost me a few secrets over the years.

  “I wanted to rush right in, but she stopped me. We waited barely a minute before we saw you flying out to meet us. But not the way we dreamed. We picked you off the sidewalk, put you in the car, and drove away.”

  Thank all the gods they came when they did. The idea of bleeding out on the sidewalk or, worse, ending up in a human hospital didn’t exactly make me want to jump for joy.

  “Where exactly is ‘here’?” I coughed to clear the tremor from my voice.

  “Honestly, I have no idea. But Ana says it’s safe. And you know I believe my sister when it comes to things like that.”

  Unlike Carmen, Ana has always been interested in enforcers and the job we do. She asks endless questions and speculates out loud about the things that my mother got into. If my aunt’s power had been interesting or useful enough, she would have signed up to be an enforcer, too. But the power she has, although impressive, isn’t aggressive enough for what the enforcers need. We have some healers with us, but only those who also harm with their ability.

  “I’m relieved you both found me. I don’t know where I’d be if it wasn’t for you.”

  “Dead.”

  I heal fast, but she’s probably right. “So now that I’m not dead and Mai is still with her family, what’s the big plan?”

  “For you to rest just a little while longer.” She clasps her hands in her lap and gives me a firm look.

  “Tia, I don’t ha
ve time. Mai doesn’t have time.”

  “Somehow, I knew you’d say that.”

  At a single touch of her hand to my forehead, weakness invades me like a poison. “No…” But there’s nothing I can do about the heaviness in my head and in my limbs.

  “Sleep, love. You’ll feel much stronger when you wake. I promise.”

  Her words are already drifting away. Or am I the one drifting? My eyelids shutter my view of the small dark room, and sleep crashes over me like a tidal wave.

  Chapter 23

  An insistent vibration from my arm drags me out of a deeper than normal sleep. The vibration is familiar, and urgent. Work. Instantly, I’m awake.

  Aches and pains ladder up and down my body as I sit up and shove aside the blanket, but none of that matters. Heartbeat banging in my chest, I read the digital text on the bracelet that never comes off.

  Ethan Redstone escaped. We need your team now.

  Redstone. This is worse than anything I could’ve imagined. I knew keeping him locked up like a pet was a bad idea. What were the justiciars thinking, allowing him to sit there and plot a way out of the low-security jail?

  Unless they wanted him to have an easy means of escape.

  No. I can’t afford to give that thought any more room to grow. Betrayals are an everyday possibility in Meta life, but not from us. Not from this part of our society that’s always been separate from the mess of politics and backstabbing. Right?

  The muscles and aches in my body pull as I stand up. My head wobbles on my neck like an oversized blossom on a stalk.

  Breathe. You can’t afford to be weak. Not right now.

  In. Out. The breaths move through my lungs, deep and easy. My feet stay steady under me. Mostly.

  Footsteps slap against the tile floors, and my tias rush in.

  “Xóchitl!” Tia Carmen stares at me in horror.

  Tia Ana grabs my arm. Her grip is gentle but firm. “Where on earth are you going?”

  “I have to get to work.” I shrug off the hold and stagger toward the pile of clothes I noticed earlier.

  “You’re not in any shape to work. Either at that school or with your enforcers.”