He heard footsteps outside his bedroom door a few nights later. It was the unmistakably quick patters of a barefooted girl scampering up the stairs, followed by a series of light knocks, almost too soft to hear.
“Come in,” Michael said, his heart speeding up. Could it be Arielle? What plan could possibly motivate her to come to his bedroom at such a late hour?
He fumbled for the matchbook he kept on the shelf above his cot. When he found it, he lit a candle, the one he used for reading at night, just as the door opened and shut. By its light, he saw not Arielle but someone of darker features, wearing a long black coat.
“Charlotte. What are you doing here?”
With hurried movements, she unbuttoned the coat and cast it off with a shrug of her shoulders, revealing a body as naked as if she’d just stepped out of the shower. Her breasts hung heavy and loose like enormous pink teardrops on which two brown nipples stood erect. They rose and fell as she breathed, then swayed from side to side as she reached up and undid her hair to let it spill around her neck. Peeking at him shyly from beneath her lashes, she covered the dark patch between her legs with both hands and stood watching him.
“Charlotte, you really shouldn’t—”
“Shh…”
She slipped under the blanket, lips finding his before he could resist, a blast of warmth against his skin. Michael tried to free his mouth so he could tell her to slow down, but Charlotte stuck to him, her tongue battling his for dominance.
He couldn’t resist this new experience—being with a woman. Yet, it was happening so fast. It felt incredible, and it felt wrong. Charlotte made it feel wrong.
His hands clutched at her waist, searching for some way to grab hold of her and push her away. She repositioned them to grasp her buttocks instead. Michael found smooth, warm flesh, so much that it seemed she was being inflated by his lust, and her body was slowly encompassing his own. He could lose himself in this incredible new world for days if his conscience would only allow him.
The bed squealed beneath them.
“Wrath,” Charlotte said. “They couldn’t get you a real bed?”
“We have to stop,” Michael said.
She reached between their bellies, a masculine movement like a hand reaching to start a lawnmower engine by pulling its cord. Her fingers wrapped around him, surprisingly cold and strong.
“Don’t tell me you want to stop. I know you don’t.”
Michael was about to speak when the pounding began. Charlotte’s eyes, barely visible in the dark, flew open. Footsteps.
Boom, boom, boom, boom…
Charlotte lifted off him, covering herself.
The door flew open. Light fell into the room. Michael twisted to see who it was, right arm lifting defensively as if the light itself were an attack.
“What the hell?” Eli said.
He was holding a baseball bat, dressed in a tank top and boxer shorts, his feet bare. His chest, shaped like a barrel, heaved with each breath.
“Charlotte,” he said.
“Eli, what’s the matter with you? Can’t you see we’re busy?” Charlotte shouted, draping herself in her coat.
Michael shifted to get out from under her. “This isn’t how it looks,” he said.
“Yeah, right,” Eli said, still breathing hard.
“I’m serious,” Michael said. His voice had risen into a whine, and now he felt embarrassed.
Charlotte crossed her arms, seeming almost bored, as if this happened all the time. “He invited me here.”
“No, I didn’t!”
“Shut up! Both of you,” Eli said. He seemed angry instead of surprised now, like he wanted this to end immediately so he could go back to sleep. With one meaty arm, he held the baseball bat horizontal, the thick end pointed at Charlotte like the barrel of an oddly shaped shotgun. “You need to leave. Ian finds out you were here, and you’ll be sorry. Don’t think I won’t tell him what you did.”
Her expression flashed into an angry, almost animalistic scowl.
“Blame the woman, right?” she said. “If he were trying to rape me, you’d say it was my fault.”
“Rape you?” Michael said, stunned. “I would never—”
“Shut up,” she told Michael with a flash of her teeth.
“All right, fine,” Michael said. “I’ll shut up when everyone gets out of my spiteful room. How about that?”
Charlotte adjusted her coat, slipping her arms through the sleeves, flashes of her nude figure revealing themselves here and there, as Eli watched with a frown of concern that seemed too serious for him. When she was dressed, she pushed past the larger boy and hurried down the stairs.
Michael sat on the edge of the bed, legs covered by the blanket, his head hanging over his joined hands. He could feel Eli’s gaze on him.
“You screwed up,” Eli told him.
“I—I swear I didn’t—”
“If Ian finds out, it won’t matter what really happened. She’s with him, you understand?”
Eagerly, Michael nodded.
“I won’t tell anyone what I saw tonight, not even Peter—”
“Thank you.” Michael gave him a look so full of gratitude his eyes almost watered.
“But,” Eli said, “you keep away from her. Control yourself.” He pointed the baseball bat at Michael, much as he had done to Charlotte. “Got it?”
“I got it,” Michael said.
On his way out, Eli glanced at him over his shoulder. “There’s a convenience store on Radar Street. They sell locks for doors. Buy one.”
He left, clicking the light off in the hallway.
The rest of the night, Michael barely slept.
Chapter 14
Over the next few weeks, Michael finished the books on telepathy he’d found in Midas Ford’s attic and began his job restoring old cars and motorcycles with Rudy Jenkins, the head mechanic in Gulch. Rudy was an ex-soldier who had once specialized in explosives. He hobbled around his shop, always in his gray mechanic’s suit, his enormously heavy tool belt dragging him down. His mouth endlessly spewed facts about transmissions, fan belts, and gasoline. He walked with a limp, claiming he still had shrapnel in his ass from a battle against some People’s Republic soldiers he and his men had caught mapping Eastland terrain twenty years earlier.
“Spiteful Kole-lovin’ bastards think they can just walk in here and start taking photos and soil samples? Hell no. My boys and I, we blew their asses up, sent bits of them flyin’ back over the Line. You know, I never had an apprentice before. Kinda nice, if you ask me.”
Sometimes, Rudy brought homebrewed beer into the shop. Just before sunset, he and Michael would sit outside, covered in grease, and Michael would listen to the man’s stories. He learned plenty about the New Dallas Republic to the east and how it had originally been established as a free state, and how the current president was a megalomaniac just like Harris Kole, intent on controlling the region’s economy and expanding his power across the continent. Rudy Jenkins hated government of all forms, and Michael loved that about him.
The work came naturally to him. Michael had always been able to memorize facts, statistics, and complex equations without having to consult manuals and technical guides more than once. It was how he managed to build radios and take apart Handy Dans back home with so little reliance on outside help. Yet, he was distracted. His thoughts constantly drifted to a hypothetical version of reality in which it was Arielle who had come to his room that night instead of Charlotte, without Eli or anyone else to stop them. The fantasy had grown over time—he daydreamed about a relationship where Arielle came to him every night.
After lunch one day, Michael caught up to Charlotte as they were both walking the sidewalks toward Silo Street.
“Hey, um—Charlotte?”
She glanced over one shoulder without stopping.
“Oh,” she said. “Hi, Michael. Are you sure you want people seeing you talk to me?”
He resisted the urge to check for others spying on
them from a distance.
“I don’t care about that,” he said. “I just wanted to talk for a minute.”
“About…?”
He wanted to stop and stare at her, aghast. Was she playing some sort of game? Or was she purposely trying to exasperate him? He kept walking, sliding his hands deeper into the pockets of his jeans as he tried to explain.
“It can’t happen again. You’re with—with Ian, I guess, and—”
“Says who?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you saying he’s my boyfriend? I’m his girlfriend? If so, what gives you the right to place a label on my relationship with him?”
“Well, Eli told me—”
“What if we’re just fucking?” she said.
That stopped Michael dead in his tracks. She took a few more steps before turning to face him. Today, she wore a sleek summer dress—champagne red in color—with thin straps that tied around the neck and buttons that ran up the front. Michael noticed this only because he suddenly wanted to tear the buttons apart, rip the dress off her body, and clasp his hands around her breasts.
I can sense that, you know, came the voice in his head.
“Charlotte,” he said aloud. “Stop that.”
Her voice came again, telepathically entering his mind like the whisper of a scorching hot summer breeze.
We can go back to your little attic space…and we can fuck until dinner comes and goes. Ian shouldn’t be the only one who gets to enjoy me.
Michael winced. Blood redirected itself all over his body, surging toward that one spot between his legs that he suddenly felt very ashamed of. Charlotte glanced down at it, and she half-smiled.
“Might want to hide that,” she said.
Michael balled his hands in his pockets, trying to hide his shame by building walls around it. The pressure had built so fast—this had to have been Charlotte’s direct doing, the result of some kind of telepathic seduction technique.
“I don’t have to deal with this shit,” Michael said, feeling righteous in his anger. This was good. It was better than being nervous. He yanked his hands out of his pockets, threateningly making them into fists. “I’m not going to roll over and take it, either. You stay out of my room, or I’ll throw you out.”
“What’s the matter, Michael Cairne? I’m not blonde enough for you?”
Michael cut across the street, headed toward a patch of forest against the cliffside. He wanted to sit alone among the trees to think about what to do next. His body needed to relax and go back to normal.
Pussy, Charlotte sent after him.
Michael clenched his teeth, trying to contain his frustration. He couldn’t—and he ended up smacking a dried tree branch, snapping it and cutting his palm.
“Serves me right,” he said.
You’re not gonna last a month here, a voice said inside his head.
This time, it had not been sent by another telepath. Rather, the voice in his head was Benny’s, issuing a warning to his little brother—and this time, Benny was probably right.
Michael was persistent when it came to his telepathy training, always asking when they would start. Blake and Dominic assured Michael it was only a matter of time, and that he needed to be patient. After all, telepathy was most useful to spies and assassins, and what kind of spy or assassin didn’t have patience?
Their answer—one who harbored a death wish.
But waiting around wasn’t the worst thing about Michael’s new life in Gulch. No, not by a long shot. Definitely what sucked the most was the fact Warren and Elkin existed. Sometimes, they’d follow Michael around town. Once, he even caught movement in the bushes outside his house. Maybe he was being paranoid, but there was something about the way they looked at him—as if they were waiting for him to reveal a hidden weakness—that unnerved him.
He had no doubt about one thing—Warren and Elkin were men of patience.
Chapter 15
A blast of cold water woke Michael one night.
He came up sputtering, chilled to the bone from what had felt like a shower of ice. He was soaked. A flashlight shone in his eyes, making the figures beyond it little more than black shapes in the dark. The windows were unlit, which meant it was either late at night or predawn morning.
“Get up.”
“What do you want?”
The flashlight flipped to shine against the man’s face. He wore a black wool mask that revealed a mouth and two narrowed, angry eyes.
“Get your ass out of bed now.”
Frantically, Michael kicked back the covers, his hands shielding his face. He was dressed only in boxer shorts, and the frigid air made goose bumps ripple across his skin. The whole situation seemed to be a flashback to that bloody night at the restaurant. He was terrified.
Once he was standing, Michael could see there were two of them, both wearing masks. He couldn’t tell who they were, but he had a feeling he knew.
Warren and Elkin.
“Don’t do this,” Michael said, moving toward the door. He stopped when one of the men shone his flashlight over a pistol. They were serious.
“You open that door and I shoot, you got it?” one said. “Don’t do anything stupid, kid.”
The man’s voice came out unnaturally gruff, like he was trying to disguise it. The other man, also holding a pistol, came forward with what appeared to be a black bag in his free hand. Michael let out a hiss of breath as the man whipped the bag over his head, blinding him. They led him down the stairs to the main floor of the house.
Blake, Dominic, he tried calling out with his telepathic voice. But he hadn’t learned that yet. They hadn’t taught him anything of value since he’d gotten here. They hadn’t prepared him for this at all.
The intruders opened another door before leading him down more stairs. The air was even colder, dry enough to make his skin itch, carrying the smell of mildew and soil. They were taking him to the basement, probably so they could shoot him without raising an alarm.
“Please,” Michael said, whispering to show he could keep quiet. “I’ll leave Gulch. I’ll leave right now, and you’ll never see me again, I swear.”
“Shut up.”
The cold tip of the pistol pressed against his spine.
Michael obeyed. His shortened breaths came out hot and moist inside the hood. The fabric scratched his nose and forehead, and his toes burned from the cold.
This was it—he was going to die.
“Take off the hood.”
“What?”
“Take it off!”
Michael recoiled from the force of the man’s voice. It had to have been Warren; Elkin’s was too high-pitched and nasally to be that strong.
He slipped off the hood, staring at the two men. One was taller than the other, but both were dressed in black.
“Why are you doing this?” Michael said, arms raised and trembling.
“Turn around,” the taller man said. Michael was sure he recognized that voice, yet it didn’t sound like Warren. “Don’t make me tell you again.”
Michael turned, and what he saw made his eyes narrow in confusion. Peter, Eli, and Ian, all naked except for boxer shorts, were sitting against the concrete wall across the room, wearing glum, hardened expressions. A pair of gas lanterns cast a seedy yellow light over their faces.
“Guys,” Michael said. “What is this?”
Closing his eyes, Peter faced away. Eli and Ian dropped their eyes to the patches of floor between their grimy feet. At least if Michael died tonight, he wouldn’t be alone.
“Sit by the wall. Next to that skinny piece of shit with the shaved head.”
Michael went and sat next to Ian, who avoided his eyes. Their captors stood in front of them now. Their black tactical suits were clean and well preserved. The shorter man stepped forward and kicked the side of Michael’s knee, forcing him to topple against Ian.
“Don’t look at me, kid.”
Ian pushed him away. “Get the hell offa me.”
> Michael scowled up at the shorter man. It was easy to imagine Boyd and Welcher behind those masks, back from the dead to finish what they’d started back at his parents’ restaurant.
Anger surged inside of him.
“I said don’t look at me,” the man said, kicking him again.
Michael flinched, but kept his focus on the intruder. The shorter man hunkered down so he could gaze directly into Michael’s eyes.
“Look what I found, Mom. A real rebel.”
Boyd. It was exactly the sort of thing Boyd would say.
Michael narrowed his eyes at the man, catching sight of the tiny string in his mind. It was little more than a ghostly vapor, but there it was. He tried to latch onto it, picturing his mind reaching out like a hand trying to grab a shred of silk dancing in the wind.
The man smacked him across the face.
Michael breathed furiously. Once more, he tried to visualize the string. The man smacked him, and again the string was lost. Good. Michael’s anger was building.
“What’s the matter, Mike? Am I distracting you?”
Suddenly, Michael leaped up and pushed the man back.
“Fight them,” he shouted at the other guys. “Come on!”
The man easily regained control of the situation. His partner didn’t even have to help. The taller one crossed his arms over his chest, merely watching as the shorter one flipped Michael onto his back. Cold concrete scraped Michael’s shoulder blades and back. His head smacked hard against the ground.
The shorter man straightened and kicked Michael in the side, forcing him to scramble back against the wall. Michael glared up at the man in hatred, still not angry enough for his ability to come out on its own. Another episode could kill him or turn him into a vegetable, but at the moment, he didn’t care. He wanted these men dead.
“Relax,” the taller man said. “You’ll hurt yourself thinking that hard.”
In one quick move, he pulled off his mask and shook out his hair. It was Dominic.
The shorter man, seeing Dominic’s exposed face, took off his own mask. Michael was surprised to see Reggie smiling at him.
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