“Hoping you know,” Aaron says.
I don’t say anything while Aaron picks his wrecked Harley up, kicks it to life, and nods for me to hop on. I slide in behind him, the soaked leather seat pressing against my naked ass, the engine purring under me.
I wrap my arms around Aaron’s waist and almost—almost—rest my head on his shoulder.
“Anywhere you gotta be?” he asks.
The hospital. The cops. All the places a girl goes after she’s been violently abducted from her home and witness to a multiple homicide. Into the florescent lights and accusing eyes and leading questions. Forms to sign. Perp photographs to pore through. Counselling.
How’d you get free? they’ll ask. How’d those guys wind up looking like they went through a meat grinder?
Maybe I should just tell them the truth.
A biker Prez rescued me.
Oh yeah? How you know him?
And the look they’ll try to hide behind strained smiles. The look that says I did something to deserve this. Maybe I was drunk and invited the wrong guys into my apartment. Maybe I have a history of…oh, yup, there it is. Drugs. Petty theft.
You piss off the wrong people, Miss Lily Thompson? They come lookin’ for you? And you’re a cop? Hmm. Not for long.
A woman doesn’t live this kind of shit down. Especially in my line of work. It remains long after the physical wounds heal, like a curse.
Then there’s this guy.
Aaron of no AKA. The outlaw biker. And all he’s offering is…freedom.
“Take me into the mountains,” I say to Aaron before I can stop myself. “Take me fast into the curves.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
SHIORI
SNAP-SNAP.
A sound close to my ear.
Snap-snap.
I open my eyes. There’s an Absent woman right in my face. Plain, pinched features and tired skin. Wrinkles around her brow and lips. Unhappy, maybe even mean looking. Making me experience fear. I flinch, jerking my head away from her. I don’t like how she’s staring at me. Like she knows something about me. Maybe she knows I was Accepted by the Guardians.
Maybe she’s one of them. A spy sent to live among the Absent. Tasked with catching the faithless and returning them to the Ark.
I’m afraid to speak. Afraid of hearing that horrible clicking sound coming from my lips again. But my head hurts very bad. My mouth is dry, and my tongue’s swollen and stuck to the side of my cheek.
“Water…please…” I say, surprised how weak I my voice sounds.
The woman’s lips twitch. She snaps her fingers twice more in my ear.
Snap-snap.
Then she says, “Welcome back to your mind. Thought we lost you for good.”
“Who knows if the crazy bitch is back?”
A man’s voice. Standing behind me. I don’t like his voice. It sounds…cruel. And I really don’t like him standing behind me, where I can’t see him, but I’m too tired to turn around.
I’m sitting on a metal chair in front of a large metal desk in a small empty room painted olive green that reeks of the same kind of cleaner we used to clean the washrooms in the Arc. I’m wearing loose cotton pants and a long-sleeve shirt of the same heavy material. Both are bright orange.
The woman crouching beside me lifts her head, yells for water, and few moments later a door opens and an Absent man wearing a blue jacket and a blue hat comes in, carrying a small paper cup of water. As the door closes I see outside into the corridor. There are many Absent dressed like the man wearing blue, and others wearing white gowns.
I shudder, thinking of what they’ll do to me.
I no longer desire to experience death.
Not at the hands of the Absent, at least.
“…no…English…” I say, like Priest Gabriel told me to if I don’t want to speak to the Absent. My voice is tiny and soft.
Meek, Priest Gabriel said.
The man standing behind me laughs in a way that makes me shudder.
The woman sighs, hands me the water. It might be poison. The Priests said the Absent love poison. Said we have to be careful. But the sight of the clear water sloshing in my shaking hands makes me ignore their warning. I drink it in one long gulp.
The water is better than any I’ve tasted. On the Ark we had to purify our water and store it in plastic drums. It always tasted of chemicals.
I hand the empty cup to the woman. She tells the man at the door to go get more, and when he does she says to me, very clear and slow, “What is your name?”
“No…English…”
The man behind me laughs again. It’s a wheezy, almost choking sound that quickly becomes a cough.
But the woman frowns. “This isn’t going very well. For you. Understand? Because the first thing out of your mouth is a lie. I know you speak English. How do I know? Because you’ve been in hospital for twenty-four hours, ranting and raving about all kinds of shit…in English.”
The man laughs again.
“…hurt…me…”
“We’re not gunna get a fucking thing from this one,” the man behind me says.
I shrink toward the table, as far away from him as possible.
The woman looks at me oddly. With sadness?
The second man returns with more water, which I drink. The woman settles into a chair close beside me. She has a tight, barely contained energy. I flinch away from her, too, and keep staring at the floor.
The itching sensation beneath my skin is gone, and with it the feeling of being more powerful than the Absent. I’m kneading my hands together, I realize. Then I notice my arm is in a cast and I’m covered in white bandages.
The woman must see me looking at the bandages because she says, “You do that often? Hurt yourself?”
“Course she does,” the man says. “She’s a fucking junkie.”
The woman turns her angry eyes to the man and says, “Kuschy. Should I take this one? You want out of the box? Got the hangries? Maybe go get us a couple breakfast burritos?”
“No,” the man says, sounding ashamed and also angry.
“Good.” The woman turns to me again. I don’t look at her directly, but I’m watching her in my peripheral vision. “Now. Let me ask you once more. Do you have a name?”
I can’t tell her my real name. Names give the Absent power. They’re pathways to the mind and soul.
“Emma,” I say, giving her the name Priest Gabriel told me to give in just this situation.
“Emma? Huh,” the woman says, sounding like she doesn’t like my answer. “You’re from Seattle, Emma?”
Seattle. The name of this place. I shake my head no.
“No? Where you from?”
“I don’t…know.”
“You know. Tell me.”
“I don’t remember.”
“You remember. Tell me.”
She has barbed hooks, this woman, and once she has them set in something she never lets go until she’s satisfied, and right now her hooks are set in me.
“I’m from…the ocean.”
The man makes another choking sound.
But the woman reaches out, quickly, and pushes my black hair behind me ear. I flinch away, but too late: I feel her fingertips brush against my temple. Then she says, “The ocean? Like a mermaid?”
I don’t know what that is, so I don’t say anything.
“Tell you what, Emma. Lets start over,” the woman says. “Do you know where you are?”
“Seattle?”
“Oh, she’s a quick one,” the man says.
“Seattle. Yes. Do you know where in Seattle?”
“No.” Then I look into the woman’s eyes for the first time. She has cool grey eyes that are hard and soft all at once. She doesn’t like me. Doesn’t believe me. But I don’t think…I don’t think she wants to hurt me.
“No? You don’t know where you are right now?”
“No.”
“Huh.”
We sit in silence for a long while. I h
ear the sound of many Absent beyond the door. Laughing and talking. Then the woman says: “Does it help you to understand where you are if I say my name is Detective Sandra Bernard, and the man standing behind you is Detective Al Kusch?”
“No.”
“No?”
“This is a waste of time,” the man named Al Kusch says.
“Detective, or Sandra?” I say, very quietly. “Or Bernard?”
The woman leans very close. “Yes, dear? I didn’t hear you.”
“Which of your three names is correct in this Absent Land?”
“Sandra,” she says, eyeing the man named Al. “Please call me Sandra.”
“Can you…ask him to…come where I can see him?” I ask.
The woman’s eyes widen. “Who? Detective Kusch? Sure, Emma. Of course. Hey—Kuschy. Walk around here so the girl can see you. Although you’re not much to look at…”
Kusch grumbles and steps forward. Sandra is right. He’s a squat, ugly man with a round glistening face and deep-set eyes that are buried so far in his sagging skin I can barely see them.
My skin begins to crawl. I scratch at one of my bandages.
“There. That better?” Sandra asks.
I shake my head no.
The Absent named Kusch groans and puts a flabby hand over his eyes like he’s very tired.
“Detective Kusch bothers you?” Sandra asks, watching me scratch my bandages. “He makes you feel uncomfortable?”
I nod yes.
Sandra sighs. “How about that breakfast, Kuschy? You feel like getting us some breakfast?”
Kusch looks about to argue, then he gets a gleam in his eye like he and Bernard just shared a secret. Absent can do that. Communicate without words.
“Fine, yeah,” Kusch says. “You said breakfast burrito? Chorizo?”
“Yes. Please.”
Kusch leaves, and my skin stops crawling. I don’t like him at all.
“Ok. Phew,” Sandra says. “Kuschy can be a bit of a jerk sometimes. We don’t have to let him back in the room, Emma. Do you want him back in the room?”
“No,” I whisper.
“Why not?”
“Because he…he wants to hurt me.”
“He does?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
I don’t want to say. But this woman, this Sandra…I think it’s all right to tell her. But first I want to know. I lift my hand over the table, palm out, and hold it toward her. Sandra’s eyes widen a little, and her right hand moves a tiny bit toward her firearm, but when she sees me just holding my hand in the air she relaxes. Then she says, very quietly, “Emma? What are you doing with your hand?”
I ignore her and focus on my hand.
“Emma? Why are you holding your hand at me?”
“I’m reading you,” I say.
“Reading…huh. Reading for what?”
Her mind is there. I can feel it, just like the Priests said I would. She doesn’t want to hurt me.
“I’m reading to see…if you want to hurt me too.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Sandra whispers, her face sad again.
“I know.”
“I wish I could do that. Read people. Know what’s in their minds. That would be real helpful in my line of work.”
“Only Guardians can do it,” I say, flinching as I hear the words. I shouldn’t have said that. Not to an Absent. Even if she reads clean. We’re never supposed to mention the Guardians to anyone. Enemies are everywhere. In Guises.
“Guardians? Who are they?”
I shake my head no.
“Tell me about the Guardians, Emma. Who are they?”
“I don’t…know.”
“Tell me.”
“Please. No.”
Sandra sighs and leans away from me. We sit in silence for a while. Sandra picks at the paper cup on the table. I wonder if I could kill her. She has a weapon. A handgun. The Priests taught us to shoot all kinds of guns.
“How long you been using?” Sandra asks.
“Using?”
“Oh for fuck sakes, Emma,” she says, rising from her chair, gripping my arm and pointing at the marks on my arm.
I should do it now. Pull her toward me and grab her gun. It’s a Glock. I know about those.
“Using? Shooting up? Getting high? How long?”
She’s talking about the Purification. How could she know? And then I say: “I need some. Please.”
“That’s not how this works. I know you know that.” Sandra releases my arm and sits down very close beside me again. Then she says: “But I tell you what. I see there are some things you want. You want to be away from Kuschy? Fine. Can’t say I blame you. You want to get high? All right. We have something pretty damned close what you need. You stop bullshitting me, start telling me the truth, and I’ll keep Kuschy away from you and I’ll call in a doctor to bring you a dose. Got it? After that…you’re on your own, kid.”
“You have Essence?”
“Essence, smack, H, whatever. We got approximations of it.”
The thought of feeling the Essence in my blood makes me tremble.
“I don’t care about what you did. Out on the highway. To that man,” Sandra says. “That’s for another time. You know what I care about? What I want you to tell me about right now?”
“No.”
Sandra reaches into a file on the desk, spreads a half-dozen photographs across the table. Photographs of two dead girls. Each have their eyes burned out. But only one I recognize.
Amelia.
“Tell me about these girls, Emma. The girls you talked about when you were…not well. The girls you said had their eyes burned out. You know these girls, Emma? I know you do. Now tell me. Who are they? What happened to them?”
I’m crying. It feels strange.
Water from my eyes? What a strange thing.
“Tell me,” Sandra says, “Or god help me I’ll lock you in a room with Detective Kusch for a fucking week.”
My entire body’s shaking. Deep, racking sobs tear through me. Sandra hands me a small, soft piece of white paper. I look at her, not understanding.
“Christ sakes, Emma. It’s a tissue. Y’know? To wipe the snot off your face?”
I wipe my face like she says. Amelia. Dead. Her eyes burned out. Lying on the beach. She left the Ark just last week. Vanished. She bred an infant Guardian, and then she vanished. “Embraced by the Everlasting,” Priest Gabriel had said. “Ascended to heaven and Him for her blessed service.”
They killed her.
Burned out her eyes. Bred her. Then killed her and threw her body in the cold ocean.
And there were others over the years. Many others. It happened often…always right around the time the baby stopped needing its mother for sustenance. The Vessels Ascend. That’s the role of a Vessel. To breed a Guardian, and to Ascend into the Everlasting.
I heard them take Charlene’s eyes.
I was ordained to be the Ark’s next Vessel.
A long, keening wail escapes my lips.
“Emma? Emma what’s wrong?” Sandra’s on her feet, not touching me but almost, and she’s saying, “Do you know her? This one? This girl? Who is she? What happened? Emma? Stay with me. Come on now. Stay with me. What happened to her?”
I try to speak, but my sobs block my throat. “…she…I didn’t know…Amelia!”
“Amelia? This girl’s name was Amelia? What did they do, Emma? What did they do to Amelia?”
“They…Bred her…and…the Ark…”
My words dissolve into another wracking sob. I lean forward and put my forehead on the table, no longer caring what the Absent do to me. No longer caring about whose side I’m on, or the war, or my everlasting soul.
The Priests killed them. All of them.
My family.
“Bred her? Who? Who bred Amelia? The Guardians? Who are the Guardians, Emma? Tell me. Breathe, okay, breathe, slowly now…yes, yes…it’s okay, no one can hurt you now, Emma. I p
romise you. No one can hurt you here. Now tell me. Where is the Ark? Is it in the ocean? Is the Ark in the ocean and that’s why you were on the road? You jumped from the Ark and you swam, didn’t you, Emma? You swam to escape the Guardians because you were next? Am I right? Please?”
I nod.
Sandra pales. “Holy mother of shit,” she says, which makes me flinch and sob again. Then she lifts my arm, points to the needle marks. “They did this to you, didn’t they? The fucking bast…the Guardians?” She releases my arm and says, very slowly, “Tell me about the Ark, Emma. What kind of boat? Where? You have to remember. For Amelia. Can you do that? You’re safe here. But…they have other girls, don’t they? Do they have other girls?”
I nod. My skin begins to itch and I can’t help it, I reach up and dig my fingernails into my arm so hard I bleed.
“Fucking hell, Emma. Jesus fucking hell. Stop that!” Sandra snatches my hand off my arm, takes a long breath and says, “You have to tell me now. We can help them. The other girls on the Arc. You’re safe now. But they’re not. You understand? They are not safe. We can help the other girls but you have to tell me where the boat is, what it looks like, who the Guardians are—”
The door bursts open. Three men wearing black outfits storm into the room.
They’ve found me.
“Hey!” Sandra yells, leaping to her feet and leaning over me like she’s shielding me from something. “What the fuck do you think—who the fuck—get out of here! Now! Get out of this box right this instant, or so help me—”
“Stand down, Detective Bernard,” one of the men says. “You’ve done a fine job questioning the suspect. We’ll continue from here.”
“Like fucking hell you will,” Sandra screams.
And then I know.
Sandra was wrong. I’m not safe here. She can’t protect me, and from the look in her eyes I see she knows it as well.
“Get the fuck out of my interrogation room,” Sandra screams. “I was just…she nearly—”
“C’mon, Sandra,” the man named Kusch says. “You’re outgunned.” He’s leaning at the door, looking right at me as he speaks. I feel his eyes piercing into me, making my skin ripple and crawl.
“There are more girls!” Sandra shrieks. “And she knows where they are!”
I loose a keening wail and start scratching at my bandages. Blood flows from the wounds and the insects are crawling and I feel the clicking buzzing sounds rise in my throat—
The All Encompassing: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 1) Page 27