Dark Survivor Echoes of Love

by I. T. Lucas

  Wonder raised a brow. “Is the hand movement different for soymilk?”

  Carol's eyes widened, and she slapped a hand over her mouth. “Don’t tell me you’re a virgin.”

  Mortified, Wonder glanced around. Thankfully, the morning rush was over, and the café was deserted save for one guy sitting with a newspaper at the furthest table. “Shh, don’t talk so loudly.”

  “I’m sorry,” Carol whispered. “Not that it’s anything to be ashamed of. I just thought that you and Anandur had something going on. I was sure he was full of shit when he said he thinks of you as a little sister.” She gave Wonder a once-over. “Because, honey, there is nothing little about you.”

  Wonder grimaced. Obviously, Carol hadn’t meant to offend her, but to Wonder the remarks had felt more like barbs than compliments. She didn’t like it when people commented on her size, and she hated Anandur’s stupid attitude toward her.

  Little sister? Really?

  Ugh, what a frustrating male. Carol was right. Anandur was full of shit.

  Over the few hours she’d spent working at the café, Wonder had had more guys come on to her than in the entire nine months she’d been awake, all of them handsome immortal males who found her attractive despite her size.

  It had been a nice boost to her ego, that was for sure. The problem was that she hadn’t felt a thing toward any of them.

  There was only one guy she was interested in, and he was acting incredibly stupid.

  Little sister indeed. Anandur should tell it to his manhood. That part of him didn’t think of her as little or a sister.

  “What’s the matter?” Carol looked at her with worried eyes. “Did I say something wrong?”

  Wonder glanced at the pitcher of milk. The foam was ruined. Cringing, she emptied it in the sink. “People judge me by my looks. I don’t like being called big.” She wasn’t going to mention her virgin status, or Anandur’s weird ideas of propriety.

  None of the other guys who’d flirted with her thought she was too young.

  “Why the hell not?” Carol put her hands on her hips. “I would love to be as tall as you.” She waved a hand over Wonder’s body. “You can wear whatever and look great. You know how hard it is for me to find flattering clothes? Everything is either too long, or too tight in the wrong places.”

  “Yeah, but you can wear heels and dresses and look feminine. I always have to wear flats, which I don’t think look good with skirts, so I’m always in pants.”

  She looked down at her sneakers. “And those are the only shoes I have here. Magnus is going to collect my stuff and bring it when he returns. I’m okay as far as clothes go because Amanda gave me a bunch of her old discards, not that they are really used. Some still have the price tags attached.” Wonder rolled her eyes. “Talk about pricy. But anyway, I don’t even have flip-flops. How does anyone shop for things here? Is there a store somewhere?”

  “Do you have a phone?” Carol asked. “I mean a clan issue one that works here.”

  Wonder pulled it from the back pocket of her jeans. “I do. And?”

  “Come on.” Carol took her hand. “Let Auntie Carol show you how it’s done.” She led her to a table.

  It was funny for Carol to call herself auntie when she looked only a few years older than Wonder. Although as far as Wonder knew, she could be as old as Anandur. Living among humans, Wonder had got used to thinking of age in human terms.

  “Have you ever shopped online?”

  Wonder shook her head.

  “What size shoe are you?”

  “A nine.”

  Carol typed a few words on the screen and then handed the phone to Wonder. “Here you go. Go crazy, girl. Do you have a credit card?”

  “I have a debit card.”

  “Works too. When you find a shoe you like add it to the shopping cart. You see that little icon up there?”

  Wonder nodded.

  “You can always edit the shopping cart before checking out. So just put in there anything you like. When you’re done, show me, and I’ll input the keep’s address. All the deliveries go there, and every evening one of the Guardians brings them over here and puts them in the office building’s lobby. You can collect your packages from there.”

  “Wow, that’s awesome. But what if the shoes don’t fit?”

  “Easy. You send them back.” Carol pointed at the top of the screen. “See that? Free shipping and free returns.”

  22

  Grud

  “Do you want more eggs, dear?” Vera asked.

  Grud handed her his plate. “More hash browns and sausages too.”

  Regrettably, it was time to say goodbye to home-cooked meals and to having two personal servants at his disposal.

  Yesterday evening, he’d gone to the club Wonder worked security at. When he couldn’t find her, he’d asked the barman about her.

  “A vacation,” the guy had said while looking Grud over suspiciously.

  After that, he’d sat down, ordered a drink, and thralled the waitress who’d delivered it.

  “Witness protection,” the woman had said, adding that it was a secret and that Wonder’s life might be in danger.

  With the barman still eyeing him suspiciously, Grud couldn’t have kept her talking for too long, so he’d ordered another drink, and then another, and each time had probed a little further.

  “Here you go, dear.” Vera put a heaping plate in front of him, then waited.

  “Thank you,” he growled at her. It was better to say the words and get rid of the old crone rather than suffer her annoying presence.

  “You’re welcome.”

  Crap, she’d ruined his concentration. Grud forked a sausage and stuffed it in his mouth.

  The waitress had told him about two police detectives who had been asking everyone at the club questions about their redheaded friend. They’d also questioned Wonder.

  Had they been Dur’s buddies from his spy unit?

  Was that how they’d found the facility? By following Wonder?

  Grud doubted she’d caved under questioning. That female was too tough for that.

  Over the last drink, he’d also discovered that the redhead, aka Dur, and his partner had come to the club before, asking about suspicious characters.

  Like who?

  Who had Dur and his partner been looking for?

  Was it part of their spying activity?

  Had Dur been working undercover as a police detective?

  None of that made any sense.

  The bottom line was that Wonder was gone and he wasn’t going to find her because none of her coworkers knew where she was.

  Which meant that there was no reason for him to stay away from the Brotherhood. Grud was smart enough to realize that he was in over his head and that he wasn’t good at detective work.

  It was better to stick to what he knew, which was taking orders and doing what he was told. There were worse fates than that. At least in the Brotherhood, he was part of something. Being on his own in a world full of humans wasn’t how he wanted to spend his immortal life.

  If he had the female, it would’ve been a different story. But that wasn’t going to happen.

  The question was what to tell his commanding officer when he called. It was best to stay as close to the truth as possible. He just had to come up with a good excuse for why he hadn’t reported immediately and had waited until the third day after his escape.

  Gommed would demand to know what had taken him so long.

  “Are you done, dear?” Vera looked at his empty plate. “Do you want anything more?”

  “That will be all.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin and dropped it on the dining room table. “Where is Harold?”

  “He is in the kitchen. Do you want me to call him for you?”

  He waved a hand. “Harold! Get in here!”

  It took the old man a couple of minutes to get up and shuffle his feet to the dining room.

  “Sit down!” Grud pointed to a chair. “You t
oo.” He pointed at Vera.

  When the two humans were seated, Grud got up and put his hands on the table. “Look into my eyes,” he said, imbuing his voice with command. “Forget that you ever saw me. I was never here. You are going to sit here and not get up until the clock over there shows ten o'clock. Nod if you understand.”

  The couple nodded like zombies. A little drool started running down Harold's mouth.

  It was the old man’s fault. If he weren’t such a tough cookie, Grud would not have used such brute force to manipulate his brain. The guy had probably suffered permanent brain damage.

  Grud collected his new wallet, which now contained several thousand dollars and the couple’s credit cards, his new twelve-hundred dollar phone and Vera’s car keys, and headed out.

  It wasn’t until he’d driven all the way to the city that he stopped at a supermarket parking lot and pulled out his phone.

  “Yes?” His commander answered after several rings.

  “It’s Grud, Sir.”

  23

  Magnus

  “I don’t like the idea of splitting up,” Jeff said.

  Magnus scratched Ralph behind the ear. “This one likes me. He’ll have no problem going with me. We can cover more ground faster if we split up.”

  Jeff cast a glance at Liam who was talking to Reese as if she was a girl he was asking on a date.

  “Who is this pretty girl?”

  Reese sniffed Liam’s hand suspiciously.

  “I’m a good guy. I promise. If you behave, I’ll take you out to lunch. Do you like burgers?”

  Reese’s ears perked up as if she understood him.

  “Ah, that’s my girl. We are going to have so much fun together. Do you like In-N-Out? Because I do. Best burgers ever.”

  Jeff shook his head. “I guess your friend is okay too.”

  That was a relief. Magnus didn’t want to thrall the guy again. He felt bad enough about forcing Jeff to cancel the appointment he had scheduled, so he could come and help them search for the Doomer.

  But the bigger picture was that a Doomer on the loose had the potential to cause much more damage than Jeff’s disappointed clients would incur.

  It wasn’t as if they were looking for a missing child, although to them it might have felt like that. People got very attached to their pets. Hopefully, he wouldn’t need Jeff’s help for the entire day, and the guy could still help Mr. and Mrs. Faber find their missing pooch.

  “What about them?” Jeff glanced at the four additional Guardians.

  “Insurance. The guy we are looking for is dangerous. He might get aggressive. I didn’t tell you that before, but my missing partner is an ex-commando suffering from a resurgence of post-traumatic stress disorder. He might think that he is still in the war zone.” The story was a last minute inspiration to explain the inconsistencies without messing with Jeff’s brain again.

  The guy frowned. “You should’ve told me that.”

  “Don’t worry. He will never get near you. Once we find his location, you and the dogs can go inside your van and wait a safe distance away. We will handle it from there.”

  “Why do I need to wait, then?”

  “In case he is no longer there, and we need to keep on searching.” Magnus made a sad face. “I have to find him before he does something that would have him put away for a long time. It’s not right for a war hero to end up in a mental institution.”

  The patriotic speech achieved the desired result.

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Good.” Magnus clapped Jeff on the back. “Let’s get going, gentlemen. We fan out from here.”

  The hacker had found the last location the phone had transmitted information from, and just as Magnus had thought, it was right next to the truck.

  The Doomer was cleverer than he had given him credit for. Parking the truck inside the garage of a vacant home for sale proved that he was resourceful. The stupid part was dumping the phone right next to it. Except, the Doomer probably had no idea that smashing the phone would not erase its location history that was stored in the cloud.

  Frankly, Magnus hadn’t known that either.

  Still, the guy hadn’t been inside the vacant house, which meant that he was hiding in someone’s home. Hopefully, he’d only thralled the occupants and hadn’t killed them.

  Doomers didn’t have much respect for human life.

  “Let’s go, Ralph,” Magnus told his new friend after stopping for a short pee break.

  Seven minutes into the walk his phone rang with Liam’s number on the screen.

  “I found the house.” He rattled out the address.

  “I’m on my way. Don’t do anything until I get there.”

  24

  Losham

  Out in his backyard, reclining comfortably on a chaise lounge, Losham unfolded the morning newspaper and prepared to read the headlines when Rami rushed out from the house looking all excited.

  “Gommed called.” His assistant sounded breathless as if it had been Lord Navuh and not the commander of a small unit.

  “Yes, Rami. And what news did he have to share to make you so happy?”

  “Grud escaped captivity. Gommed asks if you would like to question the warrior personally.”

  Well, that was certainly exciting news. To date, no member of the Brotherhood had ever managed to escape the clan’s captivity once captured. That was why it had always been assumed that whoever had gone missing was dead, executed by the Guardians.

  Losham put the newspaper down and straightened up. “Of course I want to question him. But we need to make sure he is not being followed and that there are no bugs on him or his vehicle. I find it hard to believe that he managed to escape from Guardians.”

  “Maybe he was held by humans? It could have been one of the gangs we put out of business.”

  “You forget that he was captured before we took over the drug distribution.”

  “Is it possible he was detained by the police?”

  “He would have been allowed a phone call.”

  “True.”

  Losham smoothed his palm over his beard. “Did Gommed give you any details?”

  “Only that Grud called saying that he’d escaped and asking to come home. He called from an unsecured line, and Gommed said that he preferred to wait with the questions for when they were face to face in a secure location.”

  “Good thinking. Gommed is not stupid. Tell him to double and triple check that Grud is not wired or followed and only then bring him to the warehouse.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We will go there when Grud arrives. Tell Gommed to call you when he has him in the office.” Losham didn’t like to spend any more time at the warehouse than absolutely necessary, but that was where all the meetings were being held.

  The apartment building, which served as the men’s lodging, was a short distance away from it, but the place had no facilities available for conducting meetings or anything else. The decrepit building’s only redeeming quality was its low price.

  Losham was perfectly happy with the arrangement.

  The budget that had been allotted for office space had gone toward the purchase of the house he and Rami lived in.

  Gommed’s wasn’t the only cell currently operating in the Bay Area, there were several, and Losham liked to keep them as separate from each other as possible.

  He conducted most of his work from home and traveled to the various locations when meetings with the commanders couldn’t be avoided.

  Naturally, none of them had been given his house address, so if any of them ever got caught, they couldn’t tell where he lived.

  Losham loved the place too much to risk compromising its location.

  Rami came back holding his phone. “Gommed is meeting Grud at a supermarket parking lot first to make sure he isn’t followed and to check him and his car for bugs. After that, he is bringing him to the apartment building for a more thorough search.”

  “Good plan.”

&nbs
p; If the location of the apartment building got compromised, it wouldn’t be a big loss. The warehouse, on the other hand, was full of expensive equipment and even more expensive stockpiles of drugs. Not to mention the humans working on the assembly line, who after being subjected to repeated thralling were nearly brain dead.

  “When does he think he’ll be done with all that?”

  “He says forty-five minutes to an hour tops.”

  “Very well. We will leave in an hour.”

  Rami bowed. “Yes, sir.”

  It was a forty-minute drive, but Losham wanted to finish reading his newspaper and have another cup of coffee before heading out. Grud could wait.

  25

  Magnus

  “My car was stolen,” Vera lamented.

  Her husband sat on a rocking recliner, staring at the wall with a vacant look in his eyes.

  The good news was that the dogs had found the house Grud had been hiding in. The bad news was that the guy was gone and he wasn’t coming back. Thralling the couple to forget he’d ever been there was a sure sign that he was done with the place.

  The Doomer had done a hatchet job with the couple’s brains, but Harold had it much worse. The old man had probably tried to resist.

  Magnus was afraid the damage was irreversible. “Is there any money missing from your bank accounts?”

  Vera looked at Harold. “Honey, could you check with the bank? I don’t know how to do it.”

  The guy didn’t respond.

  “Oh, my, I’m afraid his Alzheimer's has taken a turn for the worse.”

  That was bad. “Are you sure you can’t check the bank, Vera?”

  “I can call. I don’t know how to use the computer.”

  “Please do so. I have a feeling that the same man who stole your car has also taken money from your account. I need to know how much is missing.”