The only thing I seemed to know how to do was drive people away.
I felt those traitorous, hot tears rolling down my cheeks and cursed at myself instead. God, I looked so weak in front of the one person I wanted to look strongest in front of.
Aiden’s arms fell by his side and the anger in his own eyes weakened. “Bella…” he said, his voice softer and quieter. “I didn’t mean…”
“What?” I snapped. “You didn’t mean what, Aiden? You thought I’d say no and you’d be able to dump me off somewhere and I wouldn’t be your problem anymore, right?”
“No,” he insisted, sounding a little defensive now, and that just made me want to kick him in the shinbone. “I’m trying to keep you alive, Bella.”
“Why?” I exclaimed. “I’ve got nothing. What’s the point?”
“Because once this insurrection is over, you won’t have to run from them anymore! And you can start over, build a new life…”
A sarcastic laugh erupted and interrupted him. “Start over? I’ve already done that. It didn’t work out so well for me.”
“Well, I’m not suggesting you leave the planet, Bella,” he snapped.
“Yeah, just the country,” I snapped back.
Aiden threw his hands up and sighed loudly. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Ok, so maybe they weren’t really going to haul me off to some military prison in Cuba, but it just slipped out. “I don’t know,” I mumbled. “I have no clue where you wanted to bring me. But it doesn’t matter because I want to be here and I do owe this to Mason. Don’t take this away from me.”
“Apparently, I can’t,” he replied bitterly.
“What do you want, Aiden?” I asked. I gestured toward my pizza to indicate it was getting cold even though I hadn’t been eating it anyway. But he didn’t need to know that.
Aiden glanced at the box then narrowed his eyes at me. “What the hell was Talbot doing in here?”
“What did it look like he was doing? And that’s none of your business anyway!”
“Yes, it is. I’ve already told you. This is my assignment and he’s my subordinate.”
I arched an eyebrow at him and crossed my arms. “I didn’t realize working for you meant taking a vow of celibacy.”
I wasn’t at all attracted to Mario. I just resented Aiden’s implication that I couldn’t have sex with him.
Aiden scowled at me and shifted his weight between his feet but didn’t answer me. “You can think I’m a monster, but we got another name out of Miller and tomorrow, we’ve got to follow up on this lead. You are staying here with Talbot.” His eyes grazed the pizza box again then shot back up to meet mine. “Try not to eat too much pizza while we’re working.”
Aiden turned to storm out of my room and for some reason, I thought it would be a fabulous idea to grab his arm to stop him. His bicep flexed beneath my fingers as he spun around again and I caught my breath, unable to keep the memories of this same arm lashing out and breaking the bones in Noah Miller’s face. I let go and stepped back. “What else did you find out?” I asked quietly.
Aiden took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his hair. That urge I’d had before to smooth those spiky strands down didn’t return. I didn’t want to admit it, and I certainly didn’t want him to know, but I was afraid of Aiden now.
“He doesn’t know how Liam’s resurrection was possible, if that’s what you mean.”
I shook my head because I didn’t really know what kind of information I was hoping he’d get from these guys. I’d never expected answers so learning anything seemed like winning one of those smaller prizes in the lottery: it may not make me rich but was still far more than I’d had before. “Does he know why they killed him? Am I right? Is it because they were experimenting on him and he tried to get away?”
“Bella, I thought Dietrich told you Lottie’s whole story.”
I blinked at him because I thought he had, too. “Um… well, he did have a plane to catch. He may have left something out.”
“As soon as Jackson Garrett learned that Lottie had been resurrected, he went to Baton Rouge to have her murdered, but Dietrich and Eric were already in town and they couldn’t get to her. If this doctor were performing experiments on some people, he wouldn’t have been surprised by Lottie’s resurrection and he wouldn’t have waited two years to kill her after her fiancé was in her life again.”
“Oh,” I breathed. “He told me they tried to kill her… he told me about that part, but I didn’t put it all together…”
I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at my toes. The orange-red polish on my big toe was beginning to chip, but that bottle was back in my apartment in Baton Rouge. An apartment that had almost certainly been overrun with assholes from this company by now, or maybe the CIA, or God knows what other radar I’d landed on.
Aiden sat at the foot of the bed, as far from me as possible, and sighed again, not angrily this time, just softly, almost… compassionately. “You heard of Willis McGrath?”
I nodded. Everyone who had been here for more than a few years knew the name Willis McGrath, and everyone also knew he’d died in what they claimed was a boating accident on Lake Charles. Dietrich had told me the truth about that, too.
“McGrath said it seemed to be something unique about certain human bodies. Some organic abnormality in the brain maybe. That’s the theory Dietrich has always thought makes the most sense, and if Dietrich thinks a particular explanation is rational and logical, then that’s the one I’d go with. I wish I were half as smart as that guy.”
I smiled at my toes. “You must be. I hardly think Dietrich would allow anyone to work on one of his teams whom he doesn’t think is intelligent.”
“Well,” Aiden deflected, “everyone’s a moron compared to him.”
God, I was such an idiot. He idolized this man, and I’d embarrassed him in front of his boss twice now. Worse, I’d undermined Aiden’s own authority on the team he’d been put in charge of, which had probably been an honor to him in the first place.
And in Aiden’s admittedly flimsy defense, he had tried to warn me I wouldn’t be comfortable with the way they operated. That may not make abduction and torture right, but did it make him a monster?
“Aiden,” I said softly, focusing far too intently on my toes again, “what do you feel when you’re hurting someone? Even if they’re a terrible human being. Even if you know they’ve done horrible things.”
I heard him exhale a slow breath and dared to peek up at him. He didn’t look irritated with me, only curious. “Nothing anymore. In the beginning, it’s always difficult, no matter who the person is. But after a while, we can get inoculated to anything, Bella. It’s a balance. I can’t imagine any government agency really wants to breed killers who are incapable of remorse.”
“And do you ever feel sorry for the things you’ve done?”
Aiden pulled the pizza box closer to him and wrinkled his nose at the slices inside. “Banana peppers?”
I shrugged. “I like them. Mario doesn’t, which is why there’s a pile of them in the corner.”
Aiden nodded and kept his eyes on the pizza like it was far more interesting than me or the conversation I’d initiated. “Sometimes,” he finally said. “Why are you grilling me like this? Haven’t you already made up your mind about me?”
“No,” I answered truthfully. “I don’t know what to think about you. One minute I like you and the next minute you’re pissing me off or scaring the shit out of me. That’s why you’re not getting any of my banana pepper pizza.”
That still far too sexy grin pulled at the corners of his lips and he pointed to the box in front of him. “There’s ham on here, too.”
“I had to compromise or Mario refused to eat with me.” I was only half-joking. Mario had come over when I’d called him and asked him to join me, but once he found out what I was ordering, he threatened to leave and order room service. And I really didn’t want to be alone. I was tired of being al
one.
“His name’s Adam, you know,” Aiden told me.
I shrugged. “He likes Mario and so do I.”
Aiden shrugged back at me like he didn’t care, but he clearly cared.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Enjoy your pizza. And if you interfere with my operation again, I’m pulling you out of here. Period.”
I grunted at him and wondered what he’d do if I threw something at him. Nothing too harmful, like the lamp, but maybe just a little harmful like the alarm clock. “I didn’t interfere,” I mumbled.
Aiden rolled his eyes and muttered what sounded like my taste in men was as bad as my taste in pizza. I wasn’t sure I heard that correctly or I would have told him that was true considering I apparently couldn’t stop feeling attracted to him, and he was clearly carrying more baggage than I wanted to carry with my own.
Mario took his time returning to my room, probably wanting to make sure his immediate supervisor was long gone. By the time he finally came back, the pizza was cold, and I begrudgingly admitted cold banana peppers didn’t make a good pizza topping. He gestured with his pepperless slice of pizza toward the nightstand and said I could make it up to him by turning on the baseball game.
I flipped on the television because I was relieved he wasn’t asking me to sit through Star Trek or something equally obnoxious to anyone who’s actually ever traveled to another planet. Not being a baseball fan, I quickly lost interest in the game and I must have fallen asleep sometime during the sixth inning because it’s the last part of my day I remembered.
That night, I dreamed about Mason for the first time in almost a year. After his murder, I used to dream about him frequently, but as the years passed and I became preoccupied with my own survival, those dreams became fewer and farther between.
We were sitting on a beach with the ocean stretching endlessly before us in its cerulean magnificence. Mason pointed to a yacht in the distance and we played a guessing game as to where it was going and who was aboard. There was something so innocent and playful about the way he teased me every time one of my guesses veered toward the macabre. I laughed and put my arm around him, teasing him right back and telling him I would always be around to protect him from the sinister millionaires who preyed on naïve young men like him.
Mason smiled at me, but his smile didn’t reach his beautiful green eyes this time. “I don’t think you can, Bella. I don’t think anyone can.”
“Don’t be silly, Mason. Millionaires aren’t really rounding up guys in their early 20s to sacrifice them to their money god.”
Mason shook his head and looked out over the water again. I followed his gaze and inhaled a quick breath when I realized we weren’t near an ocean at all. We were sitting by a lake, but no lake I’d ever been to. I didn’t recognize the bridge behind me or the buildings or chemical plants that surrounded the water. I grabbed Mason’s hand, terrified that I’d be lost in a lost world.
“They’ll sacrifice me, Bella. Not to any god but they’ll sacrifice me for the sake of money,” he said sadly.
The fear and pain in his voice broke my heart and I squeezed his fingers. “No,” I whispered stubbornly. “I won’t let anyone hurt you, Mason. I promise you. We’ll keep each other safe, ok?”
Mason turned those emerald eyes on me and sighed. “I wanted to keep you safe, Bella. And everything went so wrong.”
I thought he was talking about coming to Earth. “It doesn’t matter!” I exclaimed, desperate to just make that fear and pain disappear from his eyes. “We’re here now, and we’ll figure it out together…”
Mason’s fingers tucked some of my long, blonde hair behind my ear as the motor of the yacht hummed closer. “You thought I didn’t love you. Or that I didn’t love you enough. But I did. So much, Bella. I’m sorry I wasn’t stronger. I’m sorry I didn’t make different choices.”
I shook my head again to tell him none of it mattered, but the low humming of the yacht’s motor sputtered as it approached the shore. Mason sighed and looked at the lake again. “They’ve come for me. I have to go now.”
I grabbed his arm and held on with both hands. “No!” I yelled. “You’re not leaving me!”
Mason pulled my hands from his arm and stood up. I was powerless to stop him. “I didn’t want to, Bella.”
“You mean you don’t want to! You don’t have to go!” The hysterical edge in my voice frightened me, but I didn’t know why.
A door on the yacht opened and a tall man with silver hair, a man I didn’t recognize, stepped out. But Mason recognized him and he scared Mason. I gripped his hand again and begged him to stay with me.
“I wish I could,” he whispered. “But if I don’t go, they’ll come for you, too.”
“Who?” I whispered back.
Mason looked up at the deck of the yacht and squeezed my hand. “It turns out that in the end, we knew nothing.”
He let go of me and walked into the murky water of the lake as I screamed at his back, “What does that even mean?” Mason disappeared before he reached the yacht floating near the beach where I still sat in the warm yellow sand.
I woke up calling his name and reaching out into the darkness of my room, trying to grab him and pull him back toward the shore, away from that yacht and whomever was aboard just watching him like a dead man walking. My heart beat so quickly and so loudly I couldn’t hear the constant thrumming of the air conditioning, only the occasional door closing down the hallway.
I glanced at the clock, the red three and two zeroes taunting me, telling me I wouldn’t be sleeping again tonight. I groaned and pushed the blankets off of me, not sure if I was burning up or freezing cold. Every time I closed my eyes, I could still see his face, those beautiful eyes transformed by the fear of knowing what fate was approaching him.
I frequently had dreams that didn’t make sense or sometimes, even felt too real, but there was something so unnerving about this particular dream, something about the way Mason talked to me, and the emotions he displayed as we joked with one another and the way they changed when the ocean transformed to that lake. I reached for my water on the nightstand and realized how badly I was shaking.
No dream or nightmare had ever scared me like this, and given my past, I’d had plenty of terrifying nightmares.
I let my hand fall short of the glass, suspecting I’d only drop it, and forced myself out of bed. The carpet felt cold beneath my feet as I ran my hands along the rough textured wallpaper of the hotel room.
I had to talk to someone. I had to get out of this room. I had to run away.
I stumbled into the hallway and leaned against Aiden’s door. My fingers wouldn’t cooperate and make a fist, so I slapped my palm against the metal door, cringing at the sound it made. It seemed to echo down the quiet hallway and I imagined every door opening so the sleepy guests could stare at the alien woman who was losing her mind.
And then I wondered why Aiden would even open his door after the way I’d treated him.
I placed my palm flat against the cool metal and thought about going next door to Mario’s room, but there was only one man I wanted to talk to, even if he didn’t want to talk to me.
Despite my earlier misgivings, something kept drawing me to him and it wasn’t just his body or his beauty.
The door swung open and I fell forward. Probably hadn’t been my brightest idea to lean my weight against a door I’d been knocking on, but I was in some sort of sleep-induced-shock. Look: it was three o’clock in the morning.
And I’d had no coffee. I swear it wasn’t intentional.
Aiden caught me and steadied me, pulling me into his room and flicking the light switch. “My God, Bella, you’re shaking. What the hell happened?”
Now that I was in his room, even thinking about saying the words, “I had a bad dream,” made me feel like a six-year-old child. But what was I supposed to say? He’d been ordered to protect me, and if he thought there was a legitimate threat on my life right now, he’d have the entire hotel ev
acuated in minutes.
I swallowed as I stared into those amazingly unique eyes and tried to put a little distance between us. “Mason,” I said, my voice scratchy and hoarse.
I was screaming in my sleep. My God, what did happen?
Aiden rubbed a hand over his face and looked over his shoulder. “Sit down,” he said. “I’ll get you some water.”
I sat on the edge of his bed as he tore open the shrink-wrap surrounding one of those plastic cups common to hotel rooms everywhere. As he walked to the faucet, I noticed for the first time the print on his pajama bottoms and smiled, despite feeling nauseated and shaky and utterly terrified of some boogeyman haunting my dreams.
He turned around and caught me smiling and arched an eyebrow at me.
I lifted a hand. “I’m not judging.”
Aiden glanced down and seemed to remember what he was wearing. He snickered and handed me the glass of water. “Ex-girlfriend gave them to me. She thought this Pokémon thing was cute. I still don’t know what the hell it is. But they’re comfortable and I’m a guy. It beats having to shop for something new.”
I tilted my head as I sipped on the water. “It’s a… dragon?”
Aiden shrugged. “Ask Mario. If you want to kill four hours.”
I nodded and tried to place my cup on his nightstand but my hands were still shaking. Some of the water spilled over the edge of the cup and I watched it leave a dark blue circle on the carpet. For some reason, it reminded me of the lake and I shuddered.
Aiden knelt in front of me and took the cup from me. “Bella, what is going on? Did somebody contact you? If so, you need to tell me…”
I shook my head and closed my eyes, but I could still hear Mason telling me that final goodbye before his last sacrifice. “You’re going to think I’m so stupid,” I whispered.
Aiden sighed and I opened my eyes. “Bella, I’ve had you under surveillance for months. Believe me. I know you aren’t stupid.”
The Chosen: A Resurrected Series Novel Page 8