Theta Waves Box Set: The Complete Trilogy (Books 1-3) (Theta Waves Trilogy)

by Thea Atkinson

  "It's not enough," she thought she heard him say. "It's just not enough."

  Chapter 16

  Theda woke alone, and so sharply aware that she wondered how she'd ever functioned with so much godspit in her system. She took long moments to watch the sun climb the walls, and when it was full light, she eased herself, wincing, from the bed. She felt a hair better, but the ribs would ache for days. A tender touch to her cheek reminded her of the ointment Cain had smeared over it. Evidently, it had already begun to work; the skin didn't feel so squishy with fluid.

  Ezekiel returned as she was pulling the sweatpants up her legs and adjusting them around her waist. They smelled distinctly antiseptic with a waft of musk. Definitely time to shower and maybe find something decent to wear that didn't stink of laboratory and rehabilitation. She would put that at the top of her first day's to-do list. She looked him up and down, too deeply interested in how he managed to look so fresh, wearing a leather duster coat and scuffed jeans, to worry about how she looked to him.

  "Did you stock the house with clothes as well as food?" She asked him, distracted as she pulled at the material, realizing exactly how big it was on her. He'd obviously selected them carefully, choosing to hide her form beneath baggy clothes so that when Cain took her from the sanitorium, she'd be well disguised. It must have taken him a good deal of planning; there was no way he'd entered the complex with a bag of clothes by sheer coincidence. She felt a flush of warmth run down her back, thinking he had all along intended to keep her safe. He'd done what he'd told her; done his best with the options presented him. She shouldn't have doubted him for a single moment. Her gratitude was only eclipsed by her shame.

  When she looked up at him, he had a queer expression on his face, and she thought he must have been watching her closely after all, examining the breadth of emotions running rampant across her face.

  "What is it?" she said, avoiding his eye.

  "I'd say confession is good for the soul, but it wouldn't be prudent."

  So he had been watching her, had guessed her lack of trust. She had to work to keep from squirming in the sweats. After the night they'd shared, the intimate way he knew each inch of her body, she didn't think she could bear him knowing all the darker parts of her psyche too.

  "I don't have anything to confess," she said, hedging.

  His brows scuttled down, confused. "Not you," he said. "Me."

  "You? What did you do? Is it Ami? Did you hurt him?" it was out before she could stop it, and she wanted to bite the end of her tongue off.

  He crossed his arms over his chest as though he wasn't insulted, taking it in stride as though it was a normal reaction.

  "He's safe from me," he said cryptically, crossing the threshold and running the tip of his finger beneath the eye where Cain had spread the ointment the night before. He smeared the residue between his fingers thoughtfully.

  "You look better. Your face isn't as swollen."

  She rubbed at her thigh muscles, trying to massage out the dull ache. "I have a feeling other parts of me are, though." It was a playful tease about the night they'd spent, but he didn't bite. She chewed her lip reflectively; nervous that now in the light, with her baggy clothes, he regretted his actions. She eyed him nervously.

  "What's going on?"

  "I have something for you."

  The first thing that came to her mind was a smear of godspit, but she knew he wouldn't be getting her that. She felt her throat constrict with sudden want, but she pushed it aside, trying to put hope in her tone to hide the need. "Clothes?" she asked.

  "Better than that."

  Without meaning to, she ran her tongue over her bottom lip, pulling it, chewing on tatters of skin. "What could be better than that?"

  He quirked his finger at her and then turned away, obviously expecting her to follow.

  She padded along behind him down the stairs and stopped short at the bottom of the stairs.

  "What the fuck?" she blurted. "How is this better?

  Three men in the living room, not five steps away. Three men she thought never to have to lay eyes on again. Her skin itched as she looked at them, the need for a smear sending her muscles a twitching desire to move, vacate; which pulsed into the need for a trembling but flat out run. It took all her reserves to stand still, facing them. Granted, they were all sitting in chairs, with their hands tied behind their backs, gags in their mouths, but seeing them still made her legs go weak. She stumbled over to a chair and fell into it.

  "Which one?" he said.

  "Which one what?"

  "Which one of them hurt you?"

  She ran her gaze over each one of them as fleetingly as she could. She didn't want to see any of them ever again, not the doctor with his arrogant air and his ice pick, not Sal with his bigoted opinions, certainly not the orderly who had thrust a meaty fist into her ribs. She tried to speak and failed. Ezekiel's fingers found the small of her back, urging her.

  "All of them," she said finally, and the doctor struggled against his bonds, trying to force words around the gag.

  "I thought as much," Ezekiel said. "Cain does very good reconnaissance." He strode over to the doctor and pulled the gag down past his bottom lip, letting it rest on his chin. "I trust you heard that, doctor.?"

  "You can't do this," he said.

  "Can't, shouldn't. Doesn't change that I will."

  Theda leaned forward, trying to see around Ezekiel's back. "Will what?"

  The doctor's glance landed on her. "I did nothing to you," he said. "Nothing that wasn't sanctioned. In fact I was kind."

  "Kind?" Theda scoffed, finding some steel in her spine, enough to broach the last steps to stand in front of him, glaring down at his waxy face. "Do you call shoving an ice pick into my tear duct kind? Do you call infecting me with some mutant virus kind?"

  "There was no virus, you idiot," the doctor said. "It was just a scare tactic. No one wanted to hurt you. No one wanted--" Any words he might say next were cut short as Ezekiel backhanded him across the cheek. The sound of the strike made Theda jump.

  "Do you understand addiction, Doctor?" Ezekiel asked, his voice so deathly calm, Theda knew immediately what he planned to do with the three. She stepped away from the men as though they were infected.

  A look of pure terror moved across the doctor's face as he registered the same understanding as Theda. She watched as it contaminated the eyes of his comrades. If Ezekiel noticed, he didn't show it. Instead he spoke as if his voice was the only tether to the paltry lives they possessed.

  "You understand my addiction? Why the Beast keeps me?" he murmured. "Why he finds me so damn necessary that he would keep my sister as hostage to his demands?"

  The doctor gave the barest of nods. Sal squeezed his eyes closed, and Theda could swear a tear pooled at the corner of his nose. She turned away from them, electing instead to watch Ezekiel.

  "Good," he said. "Good." He seemed to come to some sort of decision. The weight of it lifted off his shoulders so visibly Theda watched them spring back. He stood for a long moment, breathing in measured drafts, calming himself, she thought. It was during this long spell, while the men watched the Pale Rider the way a mouse watched a snake, that Cain spoke. Theda had no idea how long he'd been standing there, but she gathered it was long enough to comprehend the magnitude of the situation.

  "Please, General Eazy," Cain pleaded. "You're going too far. It's suicide."

  Ezekiel squeezed his fingers into his palms, but said nothing.

  "Eazy?"

  "It's done."

  "It's not done 'til it's done."

  Ezekiel swung his gaze to Cain, and Theda thought it was intentional, so she wouldn't see his face.

  "I told you it's finished. I've decided. I won't go back on that." Again, that steely calm that was terrifying in its intensity. Cain took a step backward, his hands rising in supplication, in surrender.

  "What about her?" Cain tilted his head in Theda's direction.

  "She has the dealer," Ez
ekiel said.

  Theda stuck her hands into the air like a student in class. "She's right here," she said. "And the dealer has a name."

  Ezekiel had the grace to chuckle, and it relieved the tension enough that Theda was able to take the remaining steps toward him and put her hand on his bicep. She felt it tighten beneath her fingers, but he didn't shake her off. Instead, he moved to put his Palm on her cheek, curling his fingers behind her neck. He took in her face, holding her eyes with his for three full heartbeats before he dropped a lingering kiss on her mouth.

  "Cain," he said, straightening up, his eyes locked on her mouth. "The smear you acquired from our dealer?"

  Cain stuffed his hand into his black watch jacket and extracted a cellophane wrapper that he passed to Ezekiel. Theda watched hungrily as the Pale Rider peeled away the backing, tore it in three and forced the pieces onto his prisoners' tongues. She could swear she felt a burning poker twisting inside of her bowels as their eyes glazed over and their mouth's went slack. She had to cross her arms to keep herself from scrabbling for the remnants on their tongues.

  "Just enough," Ezekiel murmured. "And still, not enough."

  She felt Ezekiel's hand clutch at hers and looked down at it in a daze.

  "It'll be okay, Minou." She heard him say. "It's okay to still want it."

  She nodded mutely. "Will it ever go away?"

  "No," he said, his voice detached, numb-sounding. "It never does."

  She let go a shuddered breath. "What are you going to do with them?"

  "You know," he said and she felt her head wagging in acknowledgment. She couldn't do much more than step away, watching as he and Cain untied the men and helped them stumble one by one through the back door. Just enough, she thought, to keep them docile, but not enough to make them unaware. She shuddered, imagining how the godspit would deaden their limbs, maybe even their sense of self preservation, but not their mental faculties. Not all the way. They'd know it was coming, and they'd let it. She made herself find a seat, expecting both of them to return, to tell her how long they would be gone, but when it was Cain alone who made his way back into the living room, she realized the Pale Rider would do the work alone. She was relieved that he would spare Cain from the deed. Even so, it was difficult to face the horseman as he found a seat on the sofa next to her.

  They both sat staring at the empty chairs for a long while before Theda dared speak again.

  "He said something that didn't make sense," she said.

  "What's that?"

  Caine's voice sounded as though it was coming from far away. She had to shuffle over to the edge of her chair to catch his eye.

  "He said something about the Beast keeping his sister hostage."

  Cain swung his green eyed gaze toward her. His mark seemed to stand out vividly against his skin, and she thought for a second that the horseman had gone pale from fright. But that couldn't be so.

  "I didn't know he had a sister," she pressed.

  "How could you not know; you met her."

  "I think I would've remembered."

  "You must have been too out of it, then," he said, and she cringed at his reference to her addiction. He said it in such a cruel way that she suspected there was more going on than either he or Ezekiel were letting on. She chose to let it pass in favor of pressing the point home.

  "What are you so afraid of?"

  He sighed, but he didn't deny he was afraid.

  "Cain?"

  He leaned forward, crossing his arms on his knees and staring at his fingers as he interlaced them. "His sister's name is Bridget." He peered up at her, tangling his fingers together and unwinding them again. His jaw seesawed back and forth. "Does that name ring a bell?"

  She was glad she was sitting down. Not for one second had she believed that Bridget was Ezekiel's sister. Now it all made sense. Why he had jeans and clothing at Bridget's house. Why he worried about her safety. Why he made them both brave the spitters'den to save her. Remorse settled around her as heavily as a shawl. "I didn't know," she said.

  "Then maybe you need to educate yourself." It was a nasty reference to the rehabilitation sanitorium, and she knew he did it on purpose. She just didn't understand why. All she could do was make a best guess.

  "You're angry, not afraid," she said. "And I don't blame you, but it has nothing to do with me. You don't need to take it out on me."

  "Don't I?" he said. "Do you have any idea where General Eazy went?"

  She stammered over the response. "To get rid of them."

  "To get rid of them. Them. One of them being the Beast's pet doctor. The man who gives the Beast a face that the rest of the world can stand. Do you know what will happen when the Beast discovers what Ezekiel has done? Especially now, after he 'executed' you against orders?"

  Theda's stomach lurched in comprehension. She knew. Of course she knew. And now she understood exactly what it would cost Ezekiel. "He will kill Bridget."

  Cain laughed humorlessly. "If only it were that simple."

  "I don't under--"

  "The Beast needs the Pale Rider, Theda," he said. "But he doesn't exactly need him whole."

  "Sweet Jesus," she breathed, suddenly just as afraid as she'd been just 24 hours earlier.

  "Sweet Jesus is long gone," Cain said. "And the last savior we have has gone to meet his maker." He strode to the back door, but stopped and turned as an afterthought. "I trust you understand the real implication of that sacrifice."

  Chapter 17

  "Stop," she said, propelling herself at him, catching at his arm, and holding him until he no longer resisted. She needed to keep him with her, explain all of this, make it right, whatever the news was. She had to hear it.

  "What does that mean?"

  He looked at her like he was looking through her. "Tell me again about your little gift," he said.

  "It's the blood," she said. "I see a person's past lives through it." She let go his arm, realizing she was squeezing it enough to make her knuckles go white.

  "The blood is the life," Cain murmured thoughtfully, crossing his arms once she let go.

  She waited as he stood there, and the words rumbled through her mind. She'd heard them plenty enough times, spoken in prayer, intonation, and pleading for someone else's salvation. She'd heard it during communion, during sermons, during almost every sanctified ceremony her father performed. It was supposed to mean something holy. It was supposed to mean something that could connect them all to the divine. She crossed her own arms, let her fingers grip her shoulders as though she had to hold herself upright. She realized she was hurting herself.

  "It doesn't mean that," she said. "The god left me here."

  Cain shrugged. "Did you never wonder why?"

  Had she? Only every moment she wasn't high on godspit, every moment she wasn't tricking her gift out so she could buy her next fix. Every moment she couldn't crush with soul-crunching ecstasy, which became so rare she didn't worry about it anymore. Until recently. There in the storage closet, when she'd hallucinated her mother's face, heard her voice, she'd begged for an explanation, and when none was granted, she'd lost herself to sleep because she couldn't stand to examine the possibility that she might die alone. And then Ezekiel had saved her. And he'd loved her. And he'd left her again to murder the men who had harmed her.

  She swallowed the lump that rose in her throat. She'd let him murder those men. Did she need further explanation of why she'd been left here by the god? She twisted away from Cain's piercing examination.

  "But what does that have to do with Ezekiel?"

  "It means the Beast doesn't need to keep Ezekiel well to get what he needs from him. He just needs time. And you."

  "You know more than you're telling me."

  He cocked his head, daring her to ask more. She glared at him, never one to pass up an outright challenge.

  "Tell me who you are."

  "You know who I am."

  "You have the mark, and you have the name, but that doesn't mean you're tha
t man."

  He gave her a sheepish grin.

  "Does Ezekiel know?"

  "He might, at some level, know who I am. But it wouldn't matter."

  "What else do you know?" She squinted at him, suspicious.

  "I'm just a man, Theda. I'm not a god."

  "You called Ezekiel the last savior."

  "A metaphor, and an incorrect one at that." He looked uncomfortable, tapping his fingers against his arm.

  She thought he might say something else, but a noise came from the front door, of the lock clicking open, of Ami falling through it, breaking the tension between them. She let go Cain's arm at sight of Ami. He didn't look right.

  Cain was the one to speak first. "Where have you been?" He demanded, trying to push past Theda to the front foyer.

  Ami raked a trembling hand through his sandy hair at sight of them. "I went out to ah--I went to--"

  "To sell," Cain finished for him, his gaze going to a torn paper bag in Ami's other hand. "What's that?"

  Ami's distracted eyes cast downward to his hand, but he didn't seem to be seeing what it was that he clutched.

  "I bought bagels," he said. "An old woman was selling them on the street." He fell on the first step of the staircase, clenching the bag tighter. It made strange rattling sounds, indicating that it wasn't empty, but that what was within was nowhere near as heavy as bread. Shock, Theda realized, studying him. The signs were all there. He was even starting to shake.

  "The smears, Ami," she urged, rushing to kneel at his feet. "Who did you sell them to?" She had a terrible feeling that she wasn't going to like what he said.

  He raised his head from its downcast hang and locked eyes with her. Still, he hadn't registered the bag he held in his hand, he wasn't seeing her. His gaze was unfocused, pupils barely overtaking the blue. She watched to see whether they would adjust to the light, thinking that perhaps he was in the throes of withdrawal, but she knew he didn't use. At least he hadn't used when she knew him last.