And if I wasn't in prison, where was I?
The door wrenched open. I prepared myself. I was powerless, weak, tired. I wanted a sandwich and a nap, with Creed's big arms around me and my head on Nishelle's chest. Maybe all of us in Edwin's big bed. Somewhere quiet, comfortable, safe. But what I wanted didn't matter. I wasn't going to get cozy and cushy unless I got out of my cousin's basement which, let's be honest, just isn't the way people think through things.
"You always liked to run your mouth," Allison said, walking into my cell.
There really wasn't enough room in there for two people. I threw myself at her, but some psychic-based blast knocked me back into a wall. In the distance, Nishelle snarled but it was like she was miles away. Thousands of them. The world kept threatening to flicker away from me. I reached out with my mind and held on to it as best I could but I was slipping, falling, drifting into something else.
And then, suddenly, I was in my apartment.
Something was wrong with it, like it wouldn't quite come into focus. First, the walls were burnished orange. But the walls had been a minty blue, like toothpaste. I walked from the kitchenette into the combo living room-dining room and eyed the television. Sure, flat screen. Okay. That was right. But I didn't recognize the show on it.
I assumed that was largely due to the fact that the actors didn't have faces. They were dancing around on the screen, the background a mishmash of colors and noise. But I still had no idea what I was supposed to be watching.
The carpets beneath my feet were faded in time, having turned cream-ish white from their original sky blue. The only reason I knew their original color, I remembered, was that time the Alliance had bothered to pull out carpet from beneath the edging around the walls. They'd had to make some kind of repair and the tips of the carpets hidden under there had been a vastly different color.
Nishelle had liked that color.
Nishelle.
Nishelle.
I ran down a thousand steps that had appeared from nowhere. She wasn't there in a basement we never had. Panic crept up my spine, walked along the edge of my mind, and pushed me off a cliff. It held me tight, gripped my throat, and dragged me back up those stairs. I held my knees, panting, and called out for her.
There was no answer. Not even a noise from within the apartment. We needed to go grocery shopping, I remembered. We were down to just some lousy store-brand ketchup and hot dogs that had been open in the fridge for two weeks. It was technically survival food, but our bills were lower than we'd guessed for the month. We had a little extra money. Maybe we could afford a real treat and a day at the beach-
Again, I called for her but there was no response. I shook my head to try to clear it, but it was no use. I checked the bathroom, the utility closet, and even opened all the cabinet doors in the kitchenette. No sign of her.
I turned toward the bedroom door with a sense of overwhelming dread. Was it what I thought it was? Allison, I reminded myself, was a powerful Psychic. She could do whatever she wanted to do in my head and I would believe it was real. That was, if not for the weird show on the television. It was the only detail she'd missed, the only thing she hadn't accounted for. That this memory was so damaged because of what lay on the other side of that bedroom door, that I couldn't even remember the television show that'd been playing when I'd learned.
When I'd seen.
You're really going to make me live through this, I asked in thought.
There was no response, no answer. I didn't really expect one, but I hope that there was someone still there. That this wasn't my new permanent reality.
I opened the bedroom door.
Nishelle laid peacefully on her side, one arm trapped beneath the pillow that held her head. She'd been growing her hair out then, but it was under a shower cap. I wasn't sure which overnight conditioner she'd used the day before, but I remembered the coconut-and-shea-butter scent of it.
The words fell like old haunts from my nightmares. "Nishelle? We gotta go. It's getting late and the stores will be packed."
She didn't move. I realized that she was horribly still, the sort of still that promises only one result. My heart quickening, I walked to her and put a hand on her shoulder. Her small, freezing cold shoulder. I tightened my fingers around it and shook it as hard as I could. "Honey?"
Again, there was no response. Worried, I tested her pulse like the doctor had shown me how to do. Nothing. A scream, a dropped cell phone as I tried to dial the ambulance service. I retrieved it, held the phone to my shoulder, and started to pump her heart. All superheroes in the Alliance were required to take CPR classes. We had to keep our certifications fresh.
If I could just keep her going until the ambulance got there.
If Nishelle would just wake up.
Nate was with the ambulance that day. He was newer to the group that came, told to stay back and keep people out of the room. Instead, he grabbed me and pulled me into his arms. I wasn't a murderer yet. I was just Cassie. Just Strikeout, another Blitzer enrolled in the Alliance. He held me and stroked my hair, tried to calm me down.
The crew were kind enough not to put the sheet over her face while I watched. They hauled her out, still trying to revive her. I would only find out later that that was the typical response unless the person had been dead so long that it was impossible to deny their death.
In the world at large, we still try to keep death a neat, quiet procedure that happens in a certain way. The person dies peacefully at the hospital, they're shipped to the morgue, you identify the body, they fill out the paperwork, and the person is buried. Wash, rinse, repeat for every poor son of a bitch who dies.
Death doesn't give a fuck how we want to compartmentalize it. Death does what it wants.
Just as suddenly, I was back in the cell. Allison stood outside it, looking down at me. I was on my hands and knees, fistfuls of hair torn from my aching scalp as I curled there, one shoulder against the wall. My throat ached like someone had shoved sandpaper down it.
"Next time, remember that I'm bigger than you are," Allison said, then turned and walked away.
The exhaustion hit me like a ton of bricks. I turned slightly so I could watch her head back upstairs. The door rattled, smacked, then locked again.
"It's okay," Nishelle said, her arm reaching through the grate above my head. "I'm right here. We're all here. We'll get out, I promise."
What an idiot I was. "Nishelle," I croaked. "We're not getting out of here unless she lets us. I was wrong."
The arm cautiously, slowly, withdrew once more. And I curled up on the floor to tremble and try not to close my eyes. Because I knew what awaited me in the dreams that were to come.
And I didn't want any part of that.
Chapter 12
I got the cab's fare as it pulled into the emergency lane at the hospital. I didn't bother complaining; it was a heck of a shorter walk and my legs were already tired from the little mission I'd had. No wonder some of our older superheroes got cranky after a job. It's one thing to sit behind the curtain and let them do their job.
It's an entirely different one to go do all the hoofing yourself.
And it's a completely different, third thing to go running off with an angry Creed who refuses to stop muttering to himself.
The walk to Scribe's room was a quick one, only really punctuated by Adam's growl. Not like I blamed him. If Scribe had pertinent information the entire time and hadn't bothered to tell us, it felt like some injustice. Something that was intentional.
But I couldn't really wrap my mind around why he'd do something like that. It didn't make any sense. He had no reason to protect anyone that was attacking members of the Alliance, especially if they were working in conjecture with someone like Dreamweaver. She'd done the Alliance some solids over the years but when we really needed a Psychic, she was rarely anywhere to be seen.
And since Cassie had come back, she'd disappeared entirely. In fact, I was pretty certain that Dreamweaver left when Cassie's
release date had been announced. While it could have simply been coincidence, I somehow doubted it.
Nate entered before Adam or I could, swishing back the curtain divider. Scribe was still left to his own devices, not sharing a room with anyone else. I had to wonder how Cassie had ended up in Scribe's room to begin with. You'd have thought that the boss would garner his own place while he was recovering, but maybe they'd wanted someone to keep an eye on him when the nurses were busy.
"You don't have to do this if you don't want to, sir," Nate said, his voice promising pain if we disagreed with him. I didn't much care to, but Adam?
Adam was mad.
"You don't tell us everything you know. You lay there while we lose more people, while who knows what is going on with my sister and my girlfriend, and you expect us to just come at your beck and call to find out what's really going on?"
He pointed a finger at Scribe and continued. "You're risking everyone's lives for whatever ego trip you're on and it's bullshit!"
"Dreamweaver is Wren," Scribe said. "And she's the mother of my daughter."
That shut Adam up. I sat down on a nearby chair, turning it so I could rest my chin on the back of it. Emma, Scribe's daughter, had never really resembled him or his wife. I'd always wondered. "Go on."
He shook his head. "My bad judgment isn't on trial here right now. Dreamweaver used her to try to get an edge in the Alliance. She failed. The last place I knew of her was in Renfield-"
"Yeah, I already checked that out, boss," I chimed in. "There's definitely some kind of tiny operation there, but nothing that I could find that was useful."
"Nobody's blaming you," Adam grumbled.
I appreciated that, but it didn't help matters. I gave him a nod and let Scribe talk. "If she's not in Renfield, she's probably in Parker's Cove. She's had a house up there for ten years or so."
"How do you know that?" Nate asked.
He gave our shifter a sigh. "Had to drive Emma up there on some weekends now and then until she said she didn't want to see her anymore. House number's 125 Argyle Lane. It's a big old Antebellum manor type. You can't miss it."
Adam left without a second look back, tense and testy. Nate followed him. I spent the extra minute to take in the whole situation. "When you're released, I want to sit down and get your testimony to the whole situation, sir."
Scribe let out a sigh. "That's probably a good idea. Go on, Edwin. The others are going to leave without you, and you just got out of the hospital to begin with."
I went.
Parker's Cove was a 45-minute drive, if traffic didn't suck. We headed back to the Alliance building, grabbed my car, and let the guys get suited up. It would be best if they weren't wearing their everyday stuff when we broke into someone's house. I popped the plates off my vehicle, tossed them in the back seat, and off we went.
The traffic was some of the worst I'd ever seen. Three hours of stop-and-go nightmares got us to the interstate. From there, it was another half hour away. I halfway expected Adam to get out of the car and start flattening the others so we could get there faster.
Deep down, I knew the greater risk was Nate. The quieter Nathaniel was, the worse he felt. And there was no real reason for him to feel like he was a failure or like he'd done anything wrong, per se. That meant he was probably as pissed off as Adam was; if not more so.
I worried for Cassie, but I was well aware that she could take care of herself if it was necessary. I had little doubt that she was probably irritating Dreamweaver into a rage she'd never recover from. Our girl was known for her quips and her banter before prison and she'd only gotten sharper.
If it came down to it, Cassie would hold out until we got there.
No, I was worried about the others. Lexi would probably make it through. She was tougher than nails and a little lax in the emotional department. Isabella... I sighed at the thought of Izzy. Who knew what was going on there? If it was all a Psychic's attack, she'd spend the next many years repairing her precious public image.
Mostly? I was worried about Nishelle. How long had she been under someone's influence? And had it hurt her mind? Had it ruined her beyond repair?
It was possible. There were some charted and studied instances of Psychics that had turned villain; mostly not Cassie's clan, completely Play-Dohing someone's frontal cortex. And that was concerning, to say the least. Some of those people were fine until they weren't, or when they were faced with certain situations. You know those spy programming suicide soldier-type books?
...What do you mean, no?
Anyway, the theory was sound enough that I thought Nishelle might be programmed to detonate if she were around Cassie, alone. It was certainly a rational enough idea, considering that even she was keeping herself away from our girl.
And if that was the case, all Dreamweaver would need to do was leave Nishelle alone with her for ten minutes while she went to go get a pizza or... something.
If that were the case, our girlfriend was in deeper danger than she realized. Even if she did realize it, she might not come to terms with it until it was too late to save herself.
125 Argyle was one of those old ivy-covered houses that makes you think of classic castles and whatnot. Scribe didn’t know his architecture as well as he thought he did. Personally, I just saw a ton of taxes and not much else. Not like I'd ever have that kind of worry with what I made at the Alliance, but it was important not to think about what you were paid and instead consider the good you did for people's lives. Right?
Sure.
I parked at 136 Argyle and grabbed Adam by the shoulder as he tried to throw himself out of the car. "Go around the back. There's cameras out front."
"Do you think I give a damn about cameras?"
"I think your sister spent years building you a perfect PR image and if you ruin that, she'll be livid with you when you get her out," I told him.
That got to him. He looked away from me, his head lowered. It wasn't even a lie. Melody was obsessed with how she and her brother looked, not even entirely because she wanted to make the rest of the Reeds proud, but because she really was that passionate about how they appeared before the media. I thought it was stupid. Deeds did more than words ever could; but modern media disagreed with me.
She'd even set his social media up. And last I knew, she was ghost-posting as him. This was, of course, before everything went to hell.
I'd taken over for her once I'd been able to.
It was what friends did.
"He's right. I count at least fifteen out front," Nate said. "There's a stand of trees over there, between the houses. We can creep back through them, get behind the house, see if it's the right one. Then we get the girls, come back here. And we get out."
After that brief huddle, Nate and Adam slid out of the car and crept off toward the trees. If the stakes weren't so high, I'd have made a Scooby Doo joke to myself. As it was, I was busy suddenly realizing that my vehicle held five people at most. And, if they were successful, we were about to be a group of seven.
I'd make it work. Even if a couple of the girls had to crash in the trunk area, I was sure we could get everyone home.
Once they disappeared, I pulled out my phone and tapped in a few codes to unlock the mainframe I'd downloaded from the computer back at the Alliance. "Testing, testing. 1, 2, 23."
"Twenty-three?" Adam sounded less than amused. "Door's unlocked."
Something made a soft, squeaking noise on the other end. I assumed it was the door. Boot steps. The slight crinch noise of supersuit rubbing against supersuit. I could nearly see it in my head. The two men made their way across the first room, probably a kitchen. It was almost always a kitchen when the door was in the back like that.
Then they'd head into a hallway or some sort of transitional area between the rooms. No one simply built houses in block formats anymore. There were hallways, breezeways, stairways; all sorts of ways from one place to another. Pointless, adding square footage to houses that were already cut into a mil
lion pieces.
If I ever bought a house, I was going to make sure that thing had as few transitional areas as possible in it. I'd have doors that opened into multiple other rooms. I'd probably drive everyone nuts that dared to go into it, but at least all the square footage inside the house would be used.
Next, they'd look in the bathrooms. They'd check closets, look for basement doors. I knew their grid-sweep style like the back of my hand. I wasn't the one who had invented it or even encouraged its use, but how many times had I played the helper on the other end of the line, just listening to someone break down a house in so many pieces through my headset?
You know, no one ever checked the attic.
"While you're in there," I said, as quietly as I dared. "You two should check the attic if you don't find anyone. It's that one room everyone misses. Even the villains don't usually think to stash people there."
Accelerant: A Superhero Reverse Harem Romance (The PTB Alliance Book 2) Page 11