* * *
“Better now?” Einhorn asked anxiously. She had come in just after Bella left, since Vickie was in nothing nearly like the shape Red was in. Mary Ann was no Bella, but she was competent enough to take care of the brain-bruising of the concussion, and the bone-bruises of her ribs, so she could breathe again.
“Much, thanks,” Vickie croaked. At least the skull-splitting headache was gone.
Einhorn beamed, and her little pearly horn sparkled. Vickie had to hand it to Bella, her handling of the healer was turning her from a self-centered little diva into a real asset. “Okay!” she said brightly. “Now just stay there and be quiet while it all catches up to you. I’ll send someone to check on you in a little bit.”
The recovery room was quiet. Too quiet. Quiet enough that Vickie could hear both the Djinni and Bella talking all too clearly.
“Christ,” Red muttered in the other room. “You kiss a girl, and she loses any semblance of bed-side manner.”
She winced. So…she had caught them in a clinch. And dammit, it shouldn’t hurt so much. She knew she had about as much chance with the Djinni as Herb did. Of course he’d be all over Bella, most guys were.
And now they were talking about her. It made her cringe. It made her want to run back to her apartment. Not that she was in any shape to run.
“She froze up, it’s as simple as that.”
She hadn’t wanted to freeze…she’d been doing okay up until…it’s not as if she’d planned this. She had thought the Djinni got that. Maybe not.
Dammit. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
* * *
“Sweet Baby Jesus.” Bella took a deep breath. She’d tried another trick this time, something she’d picked up from Soviette; empathic pain resonance, otherwise known as “pain absorption.” Wow, that sucked. But it had halved what the Djinni had been going through, which was just as well, considering from what she could tell he’d been on the ragged edge of sanity the entire time. “Okay, I take back every nasty thing I have ever said about you. That took guts.” There was no immediate answer. She poked his now-healed and baby-pink shoulder. “Djinni? You in there?”
“I honestly don’t know,” he whispered. There were no quips, no stupid jokes, nothing. Bella laid a compassionate hand on his shoulder. Without a word, he reached up and grasped her fingers. He was just a fragile pile of flesh, and Bella felt his relief and near euphoria now that the pain had stopped.
“Wait a sec.” She unhooked herself and moved the couple steps to the minifridge she kept in here. “Cherry, grape, or banana? Or—wait, there’s one orange left, yours if you want it.”
“Orange,” he replied, pushing himself up to sit lightly on the exam table. “One part orange, ten parts vodka.”
“I can do that.” That weird gal Upyr at CCCP made the most amazing, restorative popsicles. She pulled out the orange one and stuck it in a glass she poured full of vodka (which she also kept in the fridge), and handed it to him, then grabbed a banana one for herself. “Want me to suck on this provocatively while you drink yours?”
“Oh good, a show. And here I was thinking I’d miss the main stage at Lady Godiva’s tonight.”
“Moron,” she said, good-naturedly, and bit off the end of the frozen treat.
He reached up and felt about his face. “Is the Cloon still there?”
“A little,” she said. “Mostly around the eyes and mouth, but you lost a lot of it.”
He nodded and reached for his scarf. He belted his drink and wrapped the scarf around his head before reaching for a fresh shirt someone had laid out for him. Pulling it on, he felt Bella’s eyes on him.
She flushed. “Uhm…I thought you might want to know…Bulwark. I was able to take him off all the life support except feeding. And…I got something from him.” She flushed even deeper. “So, he’s in there anyway, and as near as I can tell, he’s all there. He’s just not ready to wake up, and I don’t know why.”
There was something about Bull she wasn’t telling him, that much was clear. Bull couldn’t be getting worse, she wouldn’t have kept that from him. Whatever it was, she was acting different. For one thing, she wasn’t hitting him. Granted, she had just spent a good deal of herself healing him up, but she knew he could take a hit. It was almost endearing, in an odd way, how she would sometimes accentuate her points by delivering a swift right to his chin. But that was mostly when she was mad at him, and generally she only got mad at him when it had something to do with Vix. He wondered what she was thinking.
* * *
Bella wondered what he was thinking. Before all the crap hit the fan, it looked as if he and Bulwark were getting kind of tight, in that manly-man sort of way. Afterwards, he picked up the slack with what was left of the Misfits, which was mostly Vickie. Well, and herself, she supposed. He’d actually had her along as a DCO on a couple jobs that weren’t covert, mostly to help her look as if she was utterly incompetent as the Chief Medical Officer. I mean, come on, only on Star Trek did the CMO go on Away Teams; the previous, non-”Acting” CMO had been Doc Bootstrap, who’d almost never left the ECHO campus. Djinni was turning himself around; so…how much could she actually rely on him for the Big Picture stuff?
For that matter, how much could she rely on him for other stuff? He didn’t make any secret of the fact that he found her hot and hit up on her at every available opportunity, but how much of that was her, and how much was because he was a horndog?
“You frustrate the hell out of me,” she said, without realizing she’d said it out loud until the words were out of her mouth.
“Well…yeah,” he said. “Sorry, I thought we were talking about Bull. You just feel the need to pepper our conversations with derogatory statements towards me or something?”
She felt heat rush to her cheeks. “I can’t read you,” she admitted. “I mean, I’m a frikking empath and I can’t read you. I don’t know when you’re joking, when you’re just being a…man…or when you’re serious. It’s frustrating. Especially when I want to know if you’re serious.”
“I’m always serious,” Red said with a shrug. “Just ’cause I throw in the occasional dick and fart joke doesn’t mean I’m not being serious. Really, give me one example when I haven’t been serious.”
She thought of their last assignment together.
“What about the way you let me sock you in the jaw all the time?” she demanded. “I’ve seen you take sledge-hammer hits and not go down, and a little tap from me puts you on the floor? Ha! And what about the way you strolled up to that contact on our last job and said ‘Hi sailor, new in town’? Christ, you almost blew his cover and his mind!”
“He was about to blow his own cover, the way he was staring at you. Or more specifically, at your legs. He was supposed to be playing the role of a priest. Kind of a tough sell when his robes are sporting a tent, don’t you think? He needed something to jar him back to the job.”
“He wasn’t staring at my legs,” she muttered. “And neither are you. Horndog.”
“Hey, what do you want from me? Yes, I think you’re the hottest girl this side of Toronto, and I don’t hide that. I’m pretty upfront about it, you have to admit.” His eyes narrowed a little. “And yeah, I take your hits. You seem to enjoy them. I know I do.”
She stared at him.
“Are…are you suggesting you let me hit you as a form of foreplay?”
“Yes,” he replied. “And I’m very, very serious about it.”
Before she could stop herself, her hand was flying at his face. Her fist met his outstretched palm before she’d gotten more than a couple of inches. Crap! And I thought his chin was hard! He was scary-fast. And she still couldn’t read him.
“I…don’t think…” She gulped. “No matter what you think, I’m not the sort who gets into slapping each other to sleep at night.”
“C’mon,” he said. “That’s not what this is about. It’s about two people who just get each other.”
What was he talking about? She didn�
�t get him at all! She couldn’t read a single thing from him.
“You’re delusional,” she said flatly. “I can’t get a single read off of you. You have to be the most exasperating, aloof, secretive…”
“Of course I am,” he interrupted. “You seriously want to get involved with a guy you can read like an open book? Where’s the fun in that?”
That got her. He was right, of course. How many of her relationships had petered out, simply because she could predict exactly what was coming next? Because she could sense at any time almost exactly how a man felt about her. How much had that cost her? She had never felt that wonder at the beginning of where something might lead. She always figured this was a good thing. No mystery, no unpleasant surprises, no stupid games that could ultimately break her heart. She never thought she was missing much, and if anything, had been dealt a strong hand. But now, looking into Red’s piercing eyes, she felt something unsettling—uncertainty, and a strange attraction to it. Here was a man she couldn’t read. All she could trust were her instincts. They told her he was the classic bad boy, the sort that good girls always fell for, then got their hearts and sometimes more broken. Yes, but that only went when the good girls were going into the relationship thinking they could change the bad boy…not when the bad boy was changing himself. And Red was changing. Look how he’d overcome his negativity about magic…how he was helping Vickie over every single one of her neuroses. He’d done more for Vickie than she had.
And that kiss that they had shared, she finally admitted to herself why she had surrendered to it. The Djinni was completely unknown to her but in that place, in Vickie’s spell, she had finally seen into him, just enough, to feel what for him must be home. And it felt right, it felt like something she could be a part of…
She looked at him blankly, and felt herself moving closer.
Come to think of it, I couldn’t ever read Bull all that well either…talk about Captain Control.…
And completely unbidden, without any warning, that little bit of memory that had leaked over from Bulwark flashed into her mind. It had surfaced earlier that day, finally something that could give her some clue to what Harm had done to him. But instead of answers, it plagued Bella with more questions, and hurt and jealousy. Harmony, leaning over Bull, as seen through his eyes. Harmony’s last, poisonous kiss, the kiss that stole his life-force and planted that draining, life-stealing hole in him. And her last words…
“I think I loved you.”
She had loved him. Had they been together, all this time? How could Bella not have seen that? You couldn’t be a human being and not want to know about love, want to be in love, want to be loved. A time always came when the love of your parents, of your friends, just wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough for Bella, but nothing had ever been right, not the right person, not the right time. And dammit…dammit…Harmony and Bulwark…It wasn’t fair! That Harmony, that treacherous, lying bitch, had gotten to have all that and a guy like Gairdner and had killed it.
And now, after having never really had a teenage crush, never had a first love, never had anything stick past “Mister Right Now,” here it was. Hope crushed by pain, longing by jealousy, everything hit with a freight train of despair and confusion. She’d been avoiding even thinking about that fugitive memory all day, maybe with the vague idea that if she ignored it long enough it wouldn’t hurt, or it would fade. Only it didn’t; it lurked and ambushed her, right in the middle of—whatever was going on with Djinni.
She couldn’t take it. She had to get away from both of them. Lose herself in work or go for a long exhausting workout, or maybe just drink herself cross-eyed. But she had to get away, now, before she said or did something irrevocable.
She wrenched herself away from Red. She wasn’t sure what she babbled, only that she said something to him. She couldn’t stay in the same room with him, not when she was being torn up by a million conflicting emotions. She couldn’t afford emotions like that. Not now.
Maybe not ever.
She fled, without even a backward glance.
* * *
Vickie didn’t want to listen. Didn’t want to hear it. But there was nothing in this room she could use to drown the voices out, not even a pillow to put over her head, just the flat paper-covered thing on the exam table.
But at the same time, like poking the wound to see how bad it is, she had to listen, had to know what was going to happen. Had to know the worst. She was a pessimist after all; she always wanted to know the worst. Even though, along with everything else, there was a heaping helping of guilt sitting right alongside the anguish.
Then there was a moment of terrible silence. Then Bella blurted something unintelligible, there was the sound of running feet, and Bella wrenched open the side door, careened through the room without noticing Vickie, and fled out the hall-side door, leaving it wide open.
Red followed her as Vickie sat bolt-upright, movement and emotions making her nauseous all over again. Unlike Bella, he noticed her and stopped short, surprised.
“Oh, hey…” he began, lamely. He stared at Vickie for a second, then at the door Bella had through, then back at Vickie. He seemed caught in an infinite loop of indecision.
Her cup of bitterness overflowed. She clasped the ice-bag Einhorn had brought her to the side of her head, lurched to her feet, and stumbled out into the hall. Doing a slow-motion imitation of a ball in a pin-ball machine, she careened down the hall, heading for the brightly lit door at the end, fell against the bar, and stumbled out into the bug-filled night.
Before she could even manage to marshal her thoughts enough to wonder how she was going to get home, the sound of a motor approaching made her turn and squint into headlights bright enough to send twin daggers into her skull.
What might have been the strangest contraption she had ever seen pulled up at the Med building door. A canopy slid back revealing half a man, a man with a neat, short afro and skin the color of dark coffee. The rest of the man was buried in machinery. She blinked. Between one blink and the next, he looked up at her.
“Mutual friend said you were gonna need a ride home,” drawled the…driver? “ECHO Op2, ‘Speed Freak’ at your service Ms Victrix. Oh, and same friend said to ask you to get me wired in.” He winked. “If y’all know what I mean.”
The hell? It had to be Ramona. Though how Ramona had known…never mind. She was just feeling too battered and too anguished to think about it, and fell into the passenger’s side seat, which embraced her like a comforting hand. The canopy slid closed, leaving her in darkness, with machinery between her and…Speed Freak.
She felt something hard and lumpy stuck in her bra. She fished it out. It was the Djinni’s broken claw.
She stuck it back in, as the last of her control shattered. The motor howled, and the vehicle accelerated off, allowing her to lean back and cry for loss and loneliness without anyone knowing.
But how can you lose something you never had?
* * *
Red stood in awkward confusion, staring at the door through which the two most important women in his life had just fled. From him.
Ah, Red ol’ boy, you still got that magic touch.
Bella…Vix…what was it about him that made them both turn into neurotics—or in Vix’s case more neurotic—around him? Women. So. Messed. Up. And what was it about women that the better they were, the more messed up they got around him?
Who to go after? Bella or Vix? One way or another he knew, absolutely knew, that he was going to have to put some sort of conclusion to this running away shit. And he knew there was one woman he had to deal with now, right this minute.
He started for the door, to follow—determined to have this dealt with one way or another, when the door shut in his face.
The hell?
Suddenly, and with no warning whatsoever, the room suddenly got very warm. There was a scent of sandalwood, cinnamon and vanilla. And simultaneously as he sensed a presence behind him, the room seemed to get claustrophobical
ly smaller, as if something far too big for it had crowded inside.
“I greet you, Timothy Torres,” said a voice that was inside his ears and his head at the same time, a voice that had so many over- and undertones it sounded like a chorus.
He yelped and stumbled back. Great, let’s add ANOTHER woman to the equation. Bring on the crazy!
“I am neither mortal woman, nor crazy, Timothy Torres,” the voice said, sounding faintly amused.
He turned. And there she was. It was her, the one talked about in hushed whispers and furtive glances, as if they were all afraid she could overhear them. He understood. She seemed like the real deal, had that whole aura thing going and everything, and pupilless golden eyes that seemed to peer into his very soul.
Ugh, that can’t be a pretty sight.
It was hard to tell what she was looking at, exactly. Without pupils to follow he had no reference, no way to read her. He checked for body-language instinctively, and got another disconcerting jolt, because she didn’t have any. She was still in a way no one he had ever met—at least no one who wasn’t in a coma, dead, or “almost dead” like Tomb Stone—could be. In fact, everything about her threw off everything he knew about reading people, and he might as well have been blind and deaf. He closed his eyes, ignored the scents that assaulted his skin, and there it was. What he couldn’t see, or hear, or smell, he felt. It was judgment, her judgment, and it was harsh.
“She is not for you, Timothy Torres.” Now it wasn’t amusement in her voice, but admonishment. “It may be that she is not for anyone. But she is not for you. The path you take pursuing her is not a good one. Not for her, and not for the futures.” Then she sighed. “I determine, I do not judge. I…may sometimes inform. You may ignore me. You would not be the first. But this path is not a good one—”
“Yeeeeahhhh…” Red interrupted, his hand held high and timid like a schoolchild, his eyes still shut, his expression pained. “Why don’t we start with something simple. Hi, I’m Red. Not Timothy Torres, and I’d really appreciate it if you never said that name again.”
Revolution: Book Three of the Secret World Chronicle - eARC Page 20