“I know it sounds completely absurd, but Pollen, you’ve escaped Crimson three times. Either you’ve got some excellent strategic ideas in that hard head of yours or you’re extremely lucky. We sure could use that kind of luck on our squads.”
He really is serious. There’s no way I could, even if I wanted to. I can’t handle that kind of responsibility, having such a profound effect on the lives of the others. No I can’t do it, not with my little boy on the way. Not after Marcus revealed that he wants to patch things up and be a family again. No. I can’t jeopardize that.
“I’m honored, sir. But I don’t want to join the militia anymore. Especially after I’ve become a mother. I’ve seen more death than I can handle and I want to be with my son and protect him.”
“Of course,” says Granby despondently. He smiles, but his eyes still show strains of sadness. “Perhaps we could find another way to honor what you’ve done for us.”
“That won’t be necessary. But thank you.”
Another knock at the door interrupts our conversation. Granby stands up and pushes the stool to the side.
“I’d best be on my way. I pray for your safe recovery.”
“Thank you.”
Granby opens the door and Marcus is standing there, a very concerned expression blankets his face, but he does not come in. As Granby steps out, Marcus begins to shut the door, but not completely and I can hear them whispering among themselves.
“Did you tell her?”
“. . . not the best time.”
“She won’t . . .”
“. . . can’t find out yet.”
The whispering continues, but I can’t make sense of any of it. Are they talking about me?
Finally Marcus returns to the room and shuts the door behind him. There’s a strange emotion radiating from his eyes. One I don’t recall ever seeing before. Fear. Heart-pounding, knee-shaking fear.
“What was all that about?” I ask.
“Nothing. Pollen, I really think you ought to stay here for a little longer.”
“No. I want to go home,” I demand.
“A few more nights. Just to make sure the baby is okay.”
“The baby is fine. I can even feel him kicking now. I’m fine. I just want to sleep in my own bed.”
“Please, Pollen?” Marcus squats down, leaning his arms and chin on the bed. There’s something deeper in his eyes that terrifies me. Like he’s trying to hide some awful truth to protect me.
“Marcus, what’s really going on?” My senses scream at me that I’m right. He’s holding something back.
“I told you, nothing. I just want you to be well.”
“Don’t lie to me Marcus. I know something is up. Why won’t you tell me?”
“Okay, something happened, but it’s nothing you need to worry about right now.”
“Tell me!” I shout. My heart monitor starts beeping wildly as my fury increases. Marcus combs both his hands through the shortened hair he cut off weeks ago. He’s really nervous. I haven’t seen him like this before. It’s really scaring me.
“Okay! Okay,” he tries to calm me down. But before he can say anything, another knock interrupts us.
“No, don’t,” I urge as Marcus reaches for the door. He looks relieved at the distraction.
Dr. Yipolis enters, holding a folder, and smiles as he greets me.
“Miss McRae, Orla has informed me that you have a desire to continue your recovery at home?”
“Yes, I’d like to go home.”
“But I think she should stay,” Marcus interjects. I glower at him, and he stiffens, glaring back.
Dr. Yipolis looks from me to Marcus, Marcus to me, with raised eyebrows. He can evidently feel the taut rope of thickened tension between us.
“Well,” he says, glancing down at the chart in his grasp, “it looks like the baby is healthy. Your vitals are within normal range. I don’t see any reason you have to stay here if you don’t want to. You’ll just need to get plenty of rest and follow instructions on changing your dressing daily.”
Marcus’s shoulders slump and he shakes his head, glaring down at the floor now.
“I’ll send Orla in to remove the catheter and IV. Then you’re free to go.”
“Thank you doctor,” I say smugly.
“Take care of yourself Miss McRae,” the kind doctor says as he leaves the room.
Marcus turns around and places his hands on the counter against the adjacent wall, leaning in and drooping his head.
“Now will you tell me?” I demand.
Marcus remains silent for a minute while I wait impatiently for his response.
“Pollen, don’t freak out, okay?”
This is really not good. The tension has just increased tenfold. I can’t find the voice to answer him.
Marcus turns around and approaches me. He lifts my hand and folds it between his.
“It’s about Evie.”
“What about Evie?” I demand, ripping my hand from his.
“She’s gone.”
“Gone?” I sit up, ignoring the shooting pain and the fetal jabs. I swing my feet around to face Marcus. He steps back.
“They took her.”
“Who?” I’m on my feet now, struggling to hold myself up as my legs are a pair of wet noodles beneath me. As soon as they stiffen enough to hold me up, I yank the monitor off my belly and rip the IV needle from my arm.
“The Trinity.”
Epilogue
(Marcus)
Oh god I hope she makes it.
My mind flashes back to that fateful day we finally escaped this wretched purgatory. We were so happy then. We were a team. Now look at us. Broken and mangled and at death’s doorstep.
How could I let this happen? Stay with me, Pollen. She lies lifelessly in my arms as I chase after Glenn and Drake in the abysmal tunnels of the Web. Drake? I thought he was dead. How is he alive? I can’t make sense of anything anymore.
I thought I was done with Pollen. What she did drove a stake into my heart that I’ve spent months trying to rip out, but it won’t budge. And yet, I’m still hopelessly in love with her. I can’t deny it anymore. Especially now that I am on the verge of losing her.
Just behind me, Glenn is acting as a crutch for Nicron. Damn, I hope his injury is not too bad. He’s just the type to play off a fatal blow as simply a flesh wound. Like that time we were in the sparring arena and I used too much force with the staff. He limped out of there, laughing it off as a sprain. He ended up with a greenstick fracture of his tibia and had to sit out for the next three weeks while it healed.
Ahead of me Drake is approaching the first intersection out of Crimson. I want to talk to him, but what the hell do I say? Why the hell aren’t you dead? How could you leave your daughter behind while you played superhero? And why the hell didn’t you get Pollen out of there sooner? Yeah, Marcus, can you come up with any more hostile questions to welcome him home after being chained up like a scrappy dog for a year and a half?
“Where are we going?” Drake asks as he approaches the intersection with heavy footsteps. The look of him freaks me out. He looks nothing like Pollen, like how I’d imagined him. His face is gaunt and ghost-like. His body is nothing but skin and bones covered in threadbare scraps.
“Go left,” I say. My voice sounds stale and fatigued, but the adrenaline rush of having Pollen falling away in my arms keeps me moving. “It’s about ten miles to the open bunker we used to get down here.” Drake nods and leads the way.
“So, you and my sister . . .” Drake starts, but his voice trails off.
“We met at Crimson,” I say, finishing his sentence with my own words. “We’ve been together since then. Well mostly, anyway.”
“Mostly?”
“We were going to get married. But I found out that she and dickwad here got a little frisky in Granby’s office. The baby’s his.” I nod my head back at Glenn and Drake stops abruptly. He turns around and charges Glenn, taking us all by surprise.
; Nicron ducks out of the way when he sees Drake coming and hobbles over by a wall.
The first few punches go by unobstructed. Even though Granby insisted that we work out our grievances, it feels sublime to stand back and watch Glenn take a beating. The only thing that would feel better right now is if I were the one throwing the punches. Even Nicron stands back and smirks at the scene. But after the last punch induces a lurid crunch, Nicron attempts to step in between the two. His efforts have little to show since Drake nudges him out of the way easily and his leg gives out. Finally, I lay Pollen down on the floor, gently as if I’m carrying a tray full of antique glassware, and grab Drake from behind, halting the bashfest.
Glenn stumbles and falls back, resting on the floor. In the dim yellow lights of the Web I can see a goatee of glistening blood dripping down his face.
“You’re dead!” Drake shouts at him, as he continues to struggle against my arms.
“Take it easy, man,” I say.
“You have no idea what he’s capable of,” Drake growls.
“Yes, I do.”
Drake ruffles up his netlike sleeves and shows me his arms, disfigured and mangled from months of torture. I’ve got nothing on him. I was only tortured for a few hours. I don’t know how Drake could have survived.
“I could shoot him right now, but that wouldn’t bring me peace. No. I need to see him suffer. And from the sound of it, you do too.”
“Glenn and I are at opposite ends of the spectrum, and yes, I did enjoy watching you beat the shit out of him. But we need to take him back to Ceborec. We’ll deal with it there.”
Drake glances back at Glenn disdainfully, then begrudgingly nods. Nicron is back on his feet and helps Glenn up. The two hang on to each other as they stumble through the tunnel behind us. Just as gently as I set her down, I retrieve Pollen and continue on our course.
Drake looks nervously at Pollen. I can see he wants to take her himself, but I can’t bring myself to hand her over to someone who looks so weak. Or maybe I’m just afraid to let go of her. If she dies, I want to spend every last second with her before she goes.
How do I do this? How can I reconcile what she did to me with the irrevocable love I feel for her. Can I ever forgive her? Can I ever forget?
Forget. Yes, I can forget. There is a way—a way to lose these past few months that have tormented my soul. A way to forget the pain she caused me, the ultimate betrayal, so we can move on. Yes, I have to do this.
When we reach the intersection at Holly Springs, we turn left to proceed on our path. At the first bunker door we pass, I stop.
“Drake,” I say. He spins around. “Can you take her?” He nods and I painfully relinquish my hold on Pollen, delivering her carefully into his arms.
“Nicron, you still got any explosives?” He eyes me warily as he and Glenn hobble toward us.
“Yeah, man, but we’re still way too close to Crimson to go up now.”
“You won’t be going up,” I announce. “I will. You guys keep going until you reach the bunker we used to get here. Don’t worry, I’ll make it back to Ceborec with the other troops.”
“What the hell are you doing, Marcus?” Glenn steps forward into the glow of the yellow emergency light. His nose is puffed up on both sides giving him a slight extraterrestrial appearance. The gushing blood from his nose has slowed to a dripping stream over his upper lip.
“I’m going up.”
“No you’re not,” Glenn says as he snatches the small explosive device from Nicron’s hand. I lunge forward to grab it, but he ducks away and shoves it into his back pocket.
“Damnit Glenn! Hand it over.” My shouts roar down the walls of the tunnels.
“No.”
I lunge forward again, clamping my fists around his neck and hurl him back into the wall.
“Don’t do it man,” Glenn murmurs. “It won’t work.” For once, Glenn actually looks human to me. There’s actually some semblance of emotion in his eye.
My grip loosens.
“I need to forget.”
“Marcus, you’ll forget about it for a while. But the memories will come back eventually, like they did before. You know that.”
I pull away from Glenn as awareness sinks in. He’s right. Sure I’ll forget about Pollen’s betrayal and all the pain I’ve been through. But, for how long? And what happens when it comes back? Will the past few months become some washed up summer rerun destined to be relived?
“Marcus, I’ve loved Pollen more than I’ve loved anyone else in the world. It kills me to see her with you. But she doesn’t feel that way about me. The way she feels about you.” Am I really hearing this? From that jerk that knocked her up. Is this the same guy that put out cigarettes in my arm and lashed my back making it look like a map of the Web?
“But she slept with you,” I grumble.
“Do you really think she would make the conscious decision to sleep with me after all the shit I did?” I remain silent.
“Damn, Marcus. You really are obtuse. She was drunk. She was practically apoplectic after the attack that day. I gave her some liquor to settle her nerves. We both drank way too much. I took advantage of her, yes. But she didn’t know what was going on. She thought I was you. She said your name over and over again. In her mind it wasn’t me she was sleeping with. It was you.”
Deep inside my chest, there’s a sensation I can’t quite explain. It stings, but in a good way—like the burn of peroxide on a wound and the knowledge that despite the pain, it will clean the wound and expedite the healing process. I can do this. I can still love Pollen. I’ll find a way to get over what she did. Somehow.
End of Part 2
About the Author
Daelynn Quinn grew up in southern Maryland where she spent most of her time exploring her fertile imagination among the trees of her backyard forest. She studied history in college, but dropped out to travel and see the world. After starting a family, she returned to college and earned a degree in Dietetics. Her passion for creativity never perished, however, and in 2013 she finally completed and published her first novel, Fall of Venus. She continues to work on her Fall of Venus series and has another series of young adult books in development.
www.daelynnquinn.com
www.facebook.com/daelynnquinn1
Acknowledgments
First of all, I want to thank my family for all the support and advice they’ve given me, especially Walton Meredith. It was his fruitful belief in my talents that drove me to continue writing. Thank you to all my beta readers and reviewers for the feedback and encouragement. They kept my spirits high and my motivational motor running. Finally, I have to thank my wonderful editor, Ayla Page, for finding the errors that evaded me. Her knack for grammar made this book complete.
Fall of Venus series
Part 1: Fall of Venus
Part 2: Crimson Return
Part 3: The Trinity
Autumn 2013
Crimson Return Page 24