Drastic Times (Book 3): Fierce Freedom

by Rock, R. A.

  “Take these two and throw them out the East gates,” he commanded.

  One of the guards met my eye and I waited to see what he would do. Then he slowly dropped his gun. I inclined my head in silent thanks and he nodded back.

  Then another guard dropped his taser, and another his sword, until all their weapons were put away.

  “What are you doing?” Nathan said, fear showing on his face for the first time. And I suddenly saw the young man beneath the royal facade he always wore. “I said throw them out.”

  A big guard stepped forward.

  “I don’t think so, Nathan. We don’t take orders from you anymore.”

  “What? Of course you do. I’ll have you flogged if you don’t. I’ll put you in the water chamber. I’ll…”

  And that was when he realized that if he couldn’t command these people he had no power.

  No power at all.

  He turned his eyes to us, dismay, fear, and anger flitted across his face as his guards closed in on him, taking him prisoner.

  “You won,” he said, despair and disbelief in his eyes. “I can’t believe it.”

  I shook my head, thinking of Zoe and the disaster the past twenty-four hours had been.

  “No, Nathan. No one wins. Today is a day of death.”

  His face grimaced as they led him away and Chad put his arm around me, pulling me tight against him.

  “Maybe we didn’t win but we did a damn good job today,” he said, kissing me on the cheek.

  “I guess we did,” I said, smiling back at him.

  There was a gasp from Grace when just then, Gideon appeared at the door with Shiv and Audrey on either side of him. Gideon watched in surprise as the guards took Nathan away.

  “We’re here,” he called out. “I see you’ve got things under control, though.”

  “You could say that,” Chad answered. “We could use your help to lock things down, though.”

  “My pleasure,” Gideon said, speaking to several people he had with him, who moved out.

  When they arrived in front of us, Audrey shook her head.

  “You three. Can’t you manage for even a few days without us?”

  I grinned and grabbed her in a big hug.

  Shiv folded his arms and glowered at Grace’s wedding dress. She had been about to fling herself into his arms but she stopped short.

  “What the hell have you been up to since I saw you last, Miss Dvorski?”

  Grace grinned.

  “A lot.” She gave an innocent shrug. “But at least I didn’t get married.”

  “You better not marry anyone but me,” he growled, grabbing her and kissing her. When they finally came up for air, Grace was pink.

  “In fact, I think when we get home, we should find the nearest Justice of the Peace and get married immediately. Never mind the big wedding we wanted. Never mind all the fights we’ve had over all the planning. We’ll get married in a ten minute ceremony and be done with it.”

  “I guess we could renew our vows at some point and ask everyone to that celebration,” Grace said, considering it. “At this point, I really don’t feel like waiting anymore either.”

  The older man who had been about to perform the ceremony stepped forward.

  “If there’s a couple that want to get married,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye. “I seem to have a vacancy.”

  The four of us exchanged glances and then burst out laughing, so damn relieved that we were all finally safe.

  WE WERE STILL waiting in the great hall for everyone to leave and for Gideon’s various teams to report in, confirming that the castle was locked down.

  Someone had brought us some lunch and we had just finished ravenously devouring the simple meal of sandwiches and raw veggies from the greenhouse they maintained at the nearby farm.

  There would be a lot to do in the coming days, a lot of decisions to be made. And I was so glad that I wouldn’t be the one that would have to organize all that.

  Gideon was going to take over running the castle, making it a Resistance outpost and using it to filter and screen people who might want to join. He had already approached Russell from Cross Lake to talk about working together and had plans to talk to Kyle as well.

  Gideon also had another surprise for us. He had sent a small team to track down Brett and they had found him only about fifty kilometres to the north in an old trapper’s cabin. The team had brought him back for us to deal with.

  We had already paid a visit to Brett in his cell. It seemed that —with some help from Grace — he had forgotten all about the revenge and the hate he had carried all these years. He told us he suddenly had the urge to build a little cabin next to Niagara Falls and tend a garden for the rest of his life.

  Thinking this was a great idea, we loaded him up with all the tools and supplies he could carry and a few more that he couldn’t and Grace transported everything to Niagara Falls.

  It was the best we could do for him.

  It’s not like we could just let him run around free.

  And I know that I said I wanted to kill him after we saved Zoe. But that was before the madness of today. I had had enough death. And this was as good as killing the Brett who had done all the bad things. Because that man was gone. Mind wiped. And he could never come back.

  Now he was far away. It was unlikely he would ever make the long trek back from Ontario, especially since he really wanted to stay there, in his cabin, tending his garden. My sister has a very powerful mind. She’s kind of scary sometimes, in fact.

  I had had a chance to talk to Matt and he said that once it got warmer, he would take whoever wanted to go home and head back to Sipwesk to begin rebuilding. If there were any community members who preferred to remain at the castle, they were also welcome to.

  Nessa was going to lead the other group home as soon as winter let up. And I was glad they would have tools, seeds, and supplies to rebuild their home, everything provided for them by Gideon from the castle storerooms.

  “Red, let’s go back to our room,” Yumi said, finally when almost everyone was gone. Shiv and Grace were still here, talking quietly in a corner. And Ernest was sitting on the floor beside his girls, who were sleeping side by side on the blankets that we had been wrapped in, earlier.

  It was quiet and sleepy and Yumi and I were getting ready to leave when suddenly there was a shout from the door of the great hall. It was one of the guards who had been sent to bring Zoe’s body up from the cells — we were having her funeral later today.

  But why was the idiot shouting so loud? He would wake the kids.

  Then I heard what he was saying.

  “She’s alive.” He spotted us and came straight to us.

  “She’s alive,” he repeated.

  Ernest was frowning as if he didn’t need this man messing with him. Grace and Shiv came over as the man laid Zoe down on the blankets beside her daughters.

  She was indeed very much alive. I could see her chest rising and falling with her breaths.

  Yumi and I exchanged shocked glances.

  “Maybe we made a mistake,” I said, for the benefit of the guard, who nodded and beamed.

  “I’ve heard of that before,” he said. “I used to watch all those shows about strange happenings.”

  I raised my eyebrows, not sure what to say.

  “They used to have a show every once in a while about someone they thought was dead that wasn’t. And she’s not.”

  He was grinning around at us, truly glad that Zoe was alive.

  “That’s good news,” I said, smiling at him. I shook his hand. “Thank you so much for bringing her here to us.”

  “Yes, thank you,” Yumi echoed. “We really appreciate it.”

  The man shook his head, seeming terribly pleased.

  “You know what? In all the years that I worked for Nathan, he never once thanked me. I can’t believe we served him for all this time.”

  “Sometimes it’s hard to see what’s right in front of you,”
I said. “And Nathan was a master at spinning things.”

  “That’s true. Well, a good day to you all,” he said and left the room.

  “What the hell?” Ernest said, gazing around at all of us. “She was dead, wasn’t she?”

  “She was,” Grace said, happy tears in her eyes. “Give me a minute.”

  She closed her eyes, putting her hands on Zoe. A couple minutes later, she opened them again.

  “There’s been a healing. The blood vessels were closed kinetically. I can tell.”

  “But there’s no Kinetics here,” I said. “We’d sense if there were minds other than our own.”

  “Hang on,” Chad said, closing his own eyes and I winced, thinking that he had forgotten that he couldn’t use his power to find the mind that had performed this miracle.

  But he didn’t frown and open them, he only smiled and kept them closed for a long minute. When he finally looked at me, I could barely contain my impatience.

  “What? Did you find the person who did it?”

  “I did.”

  “And is that person a threat?”

  “Only if she’s not trained properly.”

  “Who?” we all said at once.

  He looked down at the tiny newborn baby trying to suckle her still unconscious mother.

  “The new baby.”

  She still didn’t have a name. There had been no time.

  “How?” Ernest said, staring in awe at his tiny daughter.

  “It was probably an instinct to save her mother,” Grace explained. “There have been a few cases of a powerful mind doing something like this before.”

  “The baby saved Zoe?” Ernest said, his eyes wide with wonder.

  “Seems that mental abilities run in the family,” Chad said. “She’s a strong Kinetic. Thank goodness Madeline is too. She can help train her.”

  “How do you know she’s a Kinetic?” I demanded.

  He grinned.

  “There’s a new brick in my mind,” he said. “And it’s hers.”

  “Are you serious?” I said, lighting up. “Then there’s a way to fix what I did. A way to heal your powers, Chad.”

  I threw my arms around him and squeezed tight.

  “Ernest?” Zoe said, opening her eyes, her voice weak. “How am I not dead? Because I’m pretty sure I was.”

  “Today is a day of life,” Ernest said and there was a chorus of agreement from all of us. Then he dropped his head beside her and wept. We all might have got a little teary eyed at that point.

  But there had never been a better reason to do so.

  NATHAN WAS THE only loose end left to deal with. I contacted Madeline at The Sanctuary and explained everything, telling her that we were sending her a criminal that needed to be imprisoned — for life. Grace transported him to the beach outside the Sanctuary and Madeline’s people had taken it from there, locking him up in their state of the art 25th century cell. He would be well cared for and he wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone anymore.

  Grace had been about to mind wipe him when he begged to be imprisoned instead. He said he would rather keep his mind and be in prison than lose it and be free. I thought of Brett with that goofy look he had had on his face the last time I had seen him and thought that that’s what I would want, too. So, we had agreed to his request.

  And now that it was done, I really needed a day off.

  As soon as we got home.

  Searching for somewhere I could have a quiet moment to myself, I had come out onto the top of the dam as the sun set over the water. The sky was a deep purple and there wasn’t a breath of wind. The silence and peace washed over me, cleansing my spirit. Chad joined me a few minutes later.

  “So, Mrs. Dvorski,” he said, leaning against the rail. “What do you think?”

  “What do I think? I think I need a bath and a month of vacation.”

  He gave me a little smile.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  I knew what he meant.

  “What do I think about us?” I said and he gave one nod.

  “Well,” I said, pretending to ponder. “Sometimes I think that I’d like to sleep with a guy like Russell.”

  His eyes opened wide and then he narrowed them at me. I sensed him trying to tell if I was joking or not.

  “Really.”

  I nodded.

  “Or sometimes I wish that the two of us…” I pointed back and forth between us. “Could forget everything that’s happened between us and just have mindless sex. Just two bodies that are attracted to each other. Nothing more.”

  He made a sound in his throat when I said mindless sex.

  “Or maybe not just sex,” I said, changing my mind. “Just a fresh start maybe.”

  I thought of all the pain that we had uncovered in our sessions with Bill and about what I had said when Zoe had died. And I wondered if we would ever be able to sort things out between us.

  “Sometimes I wish that too. But it could never be that way. We have too much history,” Chad said, shaking his head.

  “You know,” I said, thinking out loud. “I think that’s the problem. We have too much history. Too much hurt. Too many unhealed wounds. Maybe that’s what’s kept us from getting back together for so long. From forgiving each other. We’ve just hurt each other too much.”

  “So, what?” he said, frowning. “What are you saying?”

  I stared out at the brutal, beautiful landscape and thought about what I was trying to communicate.

  “Imagine if we could meet again at the age we are now? Having never known each other before. A completely blank slate. I wonder what it would be like.”

  He contemplated that for a moment.

  “You mean, would we still have the same interest in each other? The same attraction?” His eyes cut over to mine and then away again.

  I thought about the idea and wondered what that would be like. Having an empty page to write our story on — instead of the messy, scratched-out, erased, and scribbled on one that we were currently working from.

  “Would I still fall for you and you for me?” he said, almost to himself.

  “I don’t know,” I said, dismissing the thought. “But I guess we’ll never find out. Because we can never have that. And after the way I treated you, I think we won’t ever be able to figure this out. That we might as well give up now.”

  I leaned against the rail beside him, staring down at the river.

  He lifted my chin and I was forced to look up.

  “So, then what? That’s it? We throw in the towel? Stop trying? Find other people?”

  “Maybe,” I said, pulling away from his hand. “What if we waste our whole lives trying to make something work that was never meant to be?” I said, wishing it wasn’t so, wanting desperately for it not to be so. He turned his body towards me, leaning on the rail with his forearm.

  “And what? You’d find some other guy?” His blue eyes looked dark. Stormy. “Somebody like that war chief?”

  “Maybe,” I said, with a half shrug, trying to tear my gaze away. But his eyes had snared mine and I was caught.

  “And then you’d let him hold your hand?”

  He took my hand, the marking lining up and mocking us with its promise of eternal love. We both stared at it. I could make out both the Y and the C now.

  “I guess,” I said, answering his question and wondering where he was going with this. “If we were together, I think we would hold hands. It’s expected.”

  He took a step and we were face to face, too close. I straightened up and so did he.

  “You’d let him get this close?” he said, keeping an inch between us. A breath shuddered through me. His closeness was sending my body into overload.

  “If I was dating him, I think I would have to. It’s expected,” I said, trying to keep my voice even.

  “And you’d let him kiss you?” he said, his eyes boring into mine. “Deep? Thrusting into your mouth the way he wants to lower down?”

  I swallowed
hard, almost forgetting what the hell we were talking about. I was more turned on by Chad’s words than by the way that guard back in New Winnipeg had groped me.

  “I guess so,” I said, my voice sounding breathy. “It’s expected.”

  “And would you let him fuck you?”

  I drew a shaky breath.

  “It’s called making love,” I said, and his eyes lit up at our old joke. “And that’s expected, too.”

  “How’s that working out for you so far? Letting other guys kiss you? Make out with you?” I knew he was referring to my failed attempt to have mindless sex with the aforementioned guard.

  “Not so good.” I had to admit.

  But he already knew that.

  “Why?” he said, his rough voice demanding the truth.

  There was no other answer as I stared into his eyes, my chest heaving with desire.

  “Because you’ve ruined me for other men,” I whispered, repeating what I had already told him before.

  “I think your theory that we should give up and find other people is flawed,” he said softly and I could feel his breath on my lips, his thighs barely brushing mine, the hand that wasn’t twined with mine resting possessively on my hip.

  “Why?” I said, barely able to form a coherent thought, never mind keep up with this ridiculous conversation.

  “Because you’ve ruined me too,” he said and then his lips were on mine, claiming me as his own. And he kissed me deep. Like he was making love to my mouth.

  But it was more than lust. It was a soul-deep connection. I wrapped my arms around his neck and he pulled me tight against him. We kissed like we would never get to again. Like this was the very last time. Sweet. And sad. And terribly desperate.

  And I knew that no matter how I wished to be free and have the possibility of choosing another. That could never be. It just wasn’t possible. Not for him. And not for me.

  Not when we still loved each other so damn much.

  IT WAS A week after all the madness at Castle Bakersfield and we were ready to finally go home. Our bellies were full of the good lunch we had just eaten. The bracelets were fixed. And we had said our goodbyes. This time we were leaving for good. The five of us had discussed it and decided to time travel from here in the south.