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

by Thea Atkinson

  "Someday you'll piss yourself too," Theda told her.

  "Issat so?" Kat quirked a red brow. "And who's going to scare me, little mung?" She nodded her head at the unconscious man curled into a ball. "You'll be lucky if this one ever regains his senses." She chuckled at that, but it was hollow, and Theda watched as the woman stole a squint-eyed, suspicious glance toward Cain's forehead. A wrinkle of thought marred Kat's skin.

  When she realized Theda was watching her, Kat rocked back on her high-heeled boots, her hands on her hips. She looked, to all the world, confidently malignant, but there was something in her posture that made Theda think it was an act.

  The general turned and reached for the lock that had been thrown on the floor when Theda had been there last with the councilman. She remembered discarding it when she decided to torture him by pretending to be the Red General. A groan escaped her lungs. If she had resisted that urge they would have found Ezekiel faster, avoided Sasha, and in the end gotten safely away from the den?

  She didn't even need to see the lock to know it had been jammed on. Instead, she eyed the woman as she lifted Ami from the bed, cradling him as though he were precious cargo. Without so much as a glance backward, Kat strode across the room and was gone.

  She thought about shouting for help, but she couldn't imagine anyone inside of Sasha's den being the sort to offer it. Besides, she'd just been paraded past them by a woman no one would want to cross. Shouting for help would be a useless endeavor.

  Chapter 12

  It seemed like an eternity before she heard Cain groan. Theda was so relieved that despite the pain in her side, she worked her way over to him, doing her best to lift his head onto her lap without damaging his head any more. She brushed feathered strokes against his temple with the backs of her fingers. At least she wasn't alone; that would have been unbearable, and taking care of someone else made her forget how miserable she felt.

  Eventually, his eyes fluttered open. When he caught sight of her, he smiled feebly.

  "You're alive," he murmured.

  "So are you." She trailed the backs of her fingers against his forehead. His eyes fluttered closed for a moment and his expression smoothed into one of pleasure. She couldn't help smiling, thinking her touch could be a soothing one.

  The bars were digging into her back, but her side hurt too much to shift away from them. Instead, she did her best to focus on keeping him comfortable. Somehow, the pain didn't feel so bad when she did that. She leaned her head against the bars, letting the muscles in the front of her neck stretch as she arched. That helped too.

  She'd had a long time to think while he'd been unconscious, and plenty of nasty thoughts had squirreled their way through her mind, trying to raise panic. The one thing she kept telling herself was that if she had to be imprisoned with someone, and it couldn't be Ezekiel, then the next best thing would be an immortal man. A wounded man, but immortal nonetheless. She wondered if immortality took away the fear that came with the thought of feeling mortal pain.

  When he spoke again, it was as if he'd read her mind. "What's the damage?"

  She bent to see that he was looking at her with a worried expression.

  "You have a few bumps."

  His mouth twisted into a wry smile. "I can tell that; I meant for you."

  "My side hurts." She didn't want to alarm him, so she downplayed the damage.

  "Does it hurt to breathe?"

  "A little."

  "Cracked ribs would be my guess." He tried to lift off her lap, no doubt thinking to relieve her, but his eyes rolled back as though the movement was threatening to take his consciousness. She cupped his ear with her palm and pressed his head close to her belly again, supporting him.

  "Don't move," she said. "I'm okay."

  "I wish I could make it more okay."

  "You're here," she said. "That makes it more okay." She let her fingers trail across the mark on his forehead, tracing it in thought. It gave him the god's protection from harm, but did it save him from fear, she wondered. She wasn't sure fear could exist if there was no threat of death. She wanted to ask him if he was afraid, if the mark also gave him courage as well as protection, but she didn't want him to ask her if she was afraid. Because she was. She was terrified. In the moment she gave the thought credence, she noticed her fingers were trembling on his skin. She jerked her hand away, burying it beneath her leg. She noticed him watching her.

  "Why didn't you run?" he asked.

  "Why didn't you shoot her?" she countered, knowing he would understand she meant Kat.

  "Because she's protected, Theda. All of the Riders are." He tried to sit up again, but winced so that his hand went to his head instinctively. Theda caught his wrist before his fingers met his skull. She didn't want him to feel how bad his injury was.

  "What do you mean protected?"

  "Don't you remember anything from the war? Did it look like they could be hurt to you?" He tried again to touch his wounds, but she shielded his head with her own hand. His fingers met hers instead. "Is my head normal size?" he asked, his fingers trying to spider through. "Because it feels as though it's three times as big."

  "It's fine," she said. "Just a little bruised."

  His gaze flicked down to her side with scrutinous deliberation. She knew he didn't believe her.

  "Just like you're a little bruised I'm thinking."

  She couldn't keep his eye when he looked at her like that. Like Ezekiel always did. Laying her bare and vulnerable.

  "Tell me what you mean by protected."

  He sighed. "Protected like I am, except by a different god."

  He didn't have to explain which god he meant. "So shooting Kat would have been a waste of good ammunition. That's what you're saying."

  "Absolutely."

  "So why shoot Ami?" Theda was surprised to hear the note of bitterness in her voice. Bad enough she'd had to slip her friend a smear, now the poor man would wake to a gunshot wound.

  "Kat wouldn't have bothered to keep him alive this long and then bring him here unless she had a reason."

  Theda thought back to the look on the woman's face when she realized Ami had been shot. "She cares for him." She tapped Cain on the temple playfully, feeling light all of a sudden. "And you knew it. So you used him against her."

  "I didn't know she cared for him," he said. "Just that she cared about him."

  "Well, it sure was effective." She thought of how close Ami had come to being strangled to death and looked longingly across the room to the open door and splintered doorjamb. "Where do you think she's gone? To get the Beast?"

  "I don't think so. I don't think she was here on his orders."

  "Why, then?"

  She felt his shrug on her lap. "I haven't figured that out yet."

  "But you didn't shoot her because she's a general, the Red Rider of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse." It was a lengthy title, but Theda used it all on purpose.

  "Right."

  She thought back to those last moments in the boutique and the way Cain had leveled his gun at Kat before deciding to shoot Ami instead. He'd obviously believed at first he could take her down.

  "But Kat wasn't always a Rider," she mused aloud, knowing something beneath the surface was beginning to stink. "Not during the Apocalypse anyway."

  She remembered the generals as the Beast had introduced them to her. She'd just been purchased from Sasha by the councilman who planned to torture her to death for his own sick pleasure. It was an act of treason to rob the Beast of Religion-monger Number One, but Prusser had done it, obviously thinking his money had paid for Sasha's silence as well.

  Except Sasha the double-crosser had let the Beast into the specially constructed chamber at just the prime moment and Theda went from being a snuff party favor to Most Wanted Religion Monger again in a heartbeat. General Daniel had been the one to lay the smear down on her tongue that sent her into blissful unconsciousness. She'd awoken in the rehabilitation sanatorium to discover Ezekiel had elected to murder
everyone in the chamber in order to save her from further torture. And a fresh wave of Hell began all over again. Recalling that experience made her squirm all over again.

  "The Beast introduced me to them and they were all men," she murmured.

  "Ah, generals Daniel, Gabriel, and Michael. I served under Daniel." His tone took on a wistful note.

  She thought of the mousey-haired general he spoke of with such note of nostalgia, the one Ezekiel trusted enough to save her when he knew he couldn't. In the end, Ezekiel had murdered him--or so he'd thought--under the Beast's orders.

  "So if they were the Beast's Horsemen and he protected them because of their position, then Kat shouldn't have had any shields at all. She wasn't a rider." She was grasping at straws, wanting to believe the woman could be hurt, and she knew it.

  "I've been around a long time," Cain said, sighing. "I know protection when I see it. It comes with a certain cockiness that just isn't paralleled in folks who have a healthy fear of dying."

  It gutted her to think the bitch had some shield to keep her safe when she caused such devastation all around her. Even so, Theda wouldn't give up the train of thought because something nagged at the back of her mind.

  "So you're saying that because she took General Daniel's post as the Red Rider that she must've assumed his protection too?" She couldn't help the bitterness in her voice.

  "It would seem so," he murmured.

  She chewed her cheek in thought. "Because Ezekiel killed them all."

  "Right."

  "And whoever the Beast posted to the others' commissions no doubt have the same protection."

  "I thought I said that already."

  "No. You said Kat was protected because she replaced someone. You said the generals were protected from possible death." She hummed in thought, caught in the web of the sticky issue. "So if that's true, they can't be dead--any of them. And I don't think they even know they're protected."

  She thought of how Ezekiel had been devastated by his belief that he'd murdered his own sister at the Beast's insistence. She remembered him telling her that he murdered all of the horsemen: generals and soldiers alike as they streamed into the room to surround their master. He'd been gutted over it. That meant that Ezekiel obviously thought they could be killed. That meant he didn't know about the protection. He couldn't have.

  "Ezekiel believed I was Kat at the boutique," she admitted, though the memory of that event still burned in her psyche enough to resent having to speak it aloud. "The Beast glamoured him to believe it somehow, just like he'd let Ezekiel believe he'd murdered his fellow soldiers back before he'd bartered me a safe spot in the sanitorium."

  "You don't think they're dead."

  "Are those bumps on your head clogging your ears or are you just not listening?" She was getting excited now. "They can't be dead." She'd followed the logic as carefully as she could. If the generals had the Beast's protective shield, then they couldn't be killed. If Ezekiel couldn't kill them, then they must be alive. Somewhere.

  "So maybe Kat isn't a general," he said, trying to sit up and failing, falling back with a groan of fluttering eyelids. Still dizzy, Theda knew, but she also knew he was feeling just as hopeful. Kat could be killed; the bitch could die.

  He took a few minutes to recover before he spoke again and it was hoarse with controlled excitement.

  "Maybe she's just a henchman. Maybe she hasn't replaced a general. Maybe she wants to replace a general."

  "And that would mean she isn't insulated from harm."

  He let go a cautious hum, as afraid to hope as she was.

  "What if she has found a way to undo it?" he said. "To kill one of them."

  "Assuming she can find out where they are." She'd known the Beast to conceal the whereabouts of his pawns before. Bridget, for one. "Assuming the Beast would offer her that safeguard."

  "He would if he had a liability on his hands. One he couldn't trust anymore."

  "Ezekiel?"

  "Ezekiel. If he's not cooperating with the Beast then he might be her only hope of winning that protection."

  Chapter 13

  The implication of that sent a chill down Theda's spine. She had suspected the Beast had an agenda for Ezekiel, and the fact that he went to the trouble to try resetting his programming through the isolation chamber made it all the more suspicious. Knowing the other generals might well be secreted away somewhere under the guise of unfortunate murders made it even more probable. If the Beast had offered Kat the post with all the protection that went along with it, then surely that confirmed the theory.

  "It's all just supposition, anyway," he said. "She sure seemed protected. If I hadn't believed that--trust me--she'd be dead and we wouldn't be sitting here waiting for her to come back and turn us into her personal ball and paddle."

  That was a sickening thought, and despite Ezekiel possibly being of more use to the Beast, she just felt even more desperate.

  "Why the fuck is he so damn important, anyway?" she said, raging. "The Apocalypse is over. The Beast won. What does he need Ezekiel for?"

  "Armageddon." Came Cain's quiet answer.

  She flipped him the bird, furious that he would even answer with something so ridiculous. "Come and gone."

  "Not nearly. Don't you remember your scriptures, Theda?"

  Scripture. All of it, everything she'd ever learned had been useless because none of the prophecies had occurred the way her father had taught that it would. Repent had been his biggest message, trying to fear-monger everyone into thinking their religious practices, their tithes, their constant cramming of their beliefs down everyone else's throats would be their one redemption. When all it had really been was a way to encourage regular attendance to feed the coffers, to grab for their money, to swell the numbers so that the cycle could be repeated. No doubt the last thought of all those Christians watching as fellow Muslims, Jews, and Buddhists ascended was that they should have bought their Porsches, their vacations, their Olympic-sized swimming pools.

  "A lot of good Scripture has done me so far."

  He chuckled, infuriating her more. She glared at him.

  "The Rapture, then Armageddon. Remember?"

  "Remember? It was all a shitload of metaphor and brimstone. I stopped listening years ago, never mind remembering it."

  "Convoluted, isn't it?" he said, nonplussed. "So many fingers in that pie." He looked down at his and rubbed them together in a way that made her curious.

  "You?"

  "Just a little. I might have been around since the beginning, but I haven't been everywhere. I only know so much. There were a lot of writers, all with their own code."

  "And you were one of them." Even she heard the disbelief in her voice.

  "Yes. But only one. The first three books, thank you."

  "Why not just write it clear then, if you were one of the writers? Fuck." She sucked the back of her teeth, frustrated. "All that cloak and dagger symbolism. Wars have been fought over the meaning of it all."

  "It had to be that way. If it was easy to interpret, then the Beast would read it as easily as he would a Stephanie Meyer novel."

  "No worries about anyone understanding it then. You all did a Hell of a job. What does that have to do with me, though? What does it have to do with Ezekiel?"

  "Surely you remember the trumpets, Theda. The four angels who marshal the horsemen to torment mankind?"

  "Again: already done and over."

  "Not even close. What if Ezekiel is one of them? What if all of the generals are?"

  Then they were screwed, is what she started to say, but something captured her voice and she wasn't able to do more than lean her head back on the bars. Such a mess. Such a fucking mess that she knew she would never get out of this alive. And worse than that, no one else would either. Not unless they had some pivotal role, and she couldn't recall many men who would be given pivotal roles. Once again, stuck here and abandoned meant more of the same torment. Didn't matter what she did – didn't matter what any
of them did – there was no hope for mankind. It was just far too late.

  Despondent, she sighed, thinking she would have been better off just blissing out in her concrete den, waiting ignorantly for the end to appear in a wash of Hellfire and brimstone.

  Ignorance truly was bliss.

  "Like I said, though. It's all supposition," he murmured when she didn't speak again. "So take it all with a grain of salt."

  "And a whole lot of firepower," she said, trying to lighten her mood. It did little to assuage the despair.

  She ran her fingers across the lump on the top of his skull. The hair was matted with blood and she raked it free where it was less injured. "I was worried about you."

  She felt him shift on her lap so that his fingers could creep to her chin. There was a light stroking that traced along her jaw line, then the touch eased away as he dropped his hand into his lap. "I've had worse." His gaze shifted away as though he couldn't bear to keep her eye.

  She tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention again. "Worse than being beaten unconscious."

  "You should have seen me during the Crusades. I had my skull bashed in then. Left on the battlefield to die." He chuckled darkly but still wouldn't look at her.

  She found herself imagining the brutality of the Crusades, thought of him falling beneath some soldier's mace or sword, horse hooves clambering over top of him. Stupid religion again. Worthless destruction for nothing.

  She shuddered without meaning to and gasped as her ribs protested in response.

  She felt his hand grapple for hers and she tangled her fingers into his. She squeezed as she waited for the pain to subside. He didn't so much as grimace to show she was hurting him. But she must have been.

  "Better?" he asked.

  She nodded, thinking of the boot that had sent her through the door. "I'm not sure if they're broke because she kicked me, or because the door was harder than me."