The men all stayed there, ready, as Finney waited for the giant to be gone.
“Rogers,” Finney said without even turning his head towards him in the slightest, “make sure you keep a close eye on Mr. Klaus. I don’t think my showing my hand is the end of it. He may yet call my bluff.”
“Understood, Mr. Finney.” And with that, the team of troopers faded back into the hidden sconces they seemed to occupy. Finney was never sure of where they kept themselves, just that they were around.
The strange Brit leaned back in his chair and crossed one leg over the other. Despite Klaus’s warnings, he knew there was something more to this Vanessa Springer shifter. He wasn’t sure exactly what. But now, with the very vocal opposition from Klaus still ringing in his ears, he was even more determined to find out what exactly it was.
Chapter Thirty – Vanessa
“You really saw him?” Jessica asked. “You saw Richard?”
“Yeah, I think so. I think…I mean, if it wasn’t all just a dream.”
I’d shaken her awake when I came to, wanting to let her know her husband was still safe. At least, well, I thought he was safe. To be honest, I still wasn’t completely sure it hadn’t all been in my head. But, God, how could it have been? It felt so real, so genuine. The feel of Peter’s lips on mine, the feel of his strong arms. That kiss hadn’t even been like it was when we were first together. There was something more powerful than what I’d first felt when we were younger.
Now, as we sat there on her bed, the last of our afternoon light streaming in through the tower window, she looked into my eyes. I knew she was searching them to see if I really believed it happened or not.
“Do you think it was, though? A dream, I mean?”
I shook my head, the tips of my fingers coming up subconsciously to my lips again as I smiled. “No, I really don’t think so. I think it was real. I think they’re all safe.”
“At least for now,” Jessica added.
“Right,” I said, nodding, my grin fading away as her words brought me back to reality. No matter what had happened while I was napping, no matter what magical kiss or connection I’d felt between me and Peter, or that I’d seen Richard and Jake safe and healthy, it didn’t change the fact that we were all still in danger. “You’re right.”
“But that doesn’t mean this isn’t cool,” she said, laughing. “I mean, if it’s real.”
I turned away and got up from the bed. Not knowing what else to do with my confinement, I began to pace the area between the beds, avoiding the little table they’d brought in earlier for our lunch.
If the dream hadn’t been just a dream, and it really was real, what did it mean? Could I communicate with Peter anytime I wanted, even when I was awake? Was the weird link between us, like the one I’d felt back in the Curious Turtle, somehow growing stronger and more intense? I mean, I knew there were strange connections between mates, like twins sometimes claimed to have, but nothing like psychic powers. That all just seemed ridiculous, like UFOs or unicorns.
Suddenly, though, it occurred to me how silly I was acting.
Hadn’t I been the one who’d gone to Peter with stories of giants and immortals just three months ago? Of his being able to turn into a different creature than he could normally?
He was the one who was supposed to be shooting these ideas down, doubting their veracity. Not me. I was supposed to be the wide-eyed believer at this point. The one who’d wanted to listen to old wise women about the powers of our blood. About the long forgotten myths that had been only passed down by word of mouth from old woman to old woman.
Despite myself, I let out a low chuckle, shaking my head.
“What?” Jessica asked, getting up from her bed.
“Oh, nothing,” I said, still shaking my head as I waved a hand.
“Come on, tell me,” Jessica said, looking around the room. “Not like we have anything better to do.”
“Well, it’s just that, I realize now how this all must have sounded to Peter months ago. This is just getting bigger and weirder to the point where I’m even doubting myself on whether or not it can be real. For me to just practically show up at his door and start telling him all this stuff, I must have sounded like a crazy person to him. Like I’d disappeared for fifteen years and ended up in a nuthouse somewhere.”
Jessica grinned. “You know, I felt the same way about shifters being real the first time I saw them. The first time I saw my husband turn into one. I had no idea he was anything other than human, and to see him suddenly shift into a wolf was a little, um, disconcerting.” She walked over, pulled her chair back from the little table, and took a seat. “At this point, I’m pretty much resigned to the fact that I don’t know everything and probably never will. There’s a huge world out there and I’ll never really understand it all.”
“Must have been a shock, seeing him like that.”
“Yeah, it was. I ran away from him when he was distracted in a fight, told him he was a freak and a monster.”
“Well, it still worked out, didn’t it?” I asked, going around to the other side of the table and retaking my chair from lunch. I pushed the plate full of half-eaten food away as I went to sit. “In the end, I mean.”
“Not before I ran straight into the arms of a crazy psycho who wanted to torture me to death.”
“You guys seem to have a problem with that, don’t you?”
She laughed a little. “Seems like it, doesn’t it? Thank God Frost Security was in town or else I’d be pushing up daisies already.”
We sat there for a few moments, not saying a word to each other. Jessica, though, was the first one to speak again.
“Hey,” she said tentatively, like she was testing the water of a bath with just her toes. “Here’s a thought.”
“Go on.”
“What if we try and experiment? Why don’t you, you know, try contacting him again. Maybe it’s not a one-off thing? Maybe you can, you know, actually reach him.”
“Just go to sleep?”
“Sure, why not? I mean, that’s how it worked the first time, right?” A grin on her face, she reached across the table and touched my hand. “And like I said before, girl, what else are we going to do?”
I laughed, shrugging my shoulders. “You know what? You’re right. What else are we going to do? Make a Ouija board?”
She gave me a nod. “Let’s get to it, then.”
I went over to my bed to lie back down. I closed my eyes as I hit the pillow, trying to calm all my frayed nerves and release all the stress from my body—which was definitely not easy, especially on a day like today.
As I lay there, my eyes tightly shut against the light of the room, counting my breaths and trying to clear my thoughts, Jessica began to rummage through the nightstand.
I opened one eye and looked over at her. “What’re you doing?”
“Trying to find one of these,” she said, passing me a silk sleeping mask. “Figured a hoity-toity place like this would have one.”
I took it and slipped it down over my eyes. Blessed darkness descended, plunging me into the black. Perfect midnight.
“Better?” Jessica asked.
“Better,” I said, nodding.
“I’ll leave you to it, then.”
I don’t know how long it took me to finally go to sleep, how many minutes or hours before I crossed the veil between the waking world and whatever place I could connect with Peter, but I eventually did.
Like slipping into a warm pool of water, darkness seemed to envelope me, suspend me as I released myself into its grip. It felt weightless at first, then I felt a gentle tug on my mind, like I’d somehow strayed out into the strong current of river that was taking me downstream. But there were no rocks here, just a perceived rush of movement, as my consciousness seemed to drift from my body and sail out to a great, unexplored sea.
All above me and around me, even below me, a billion stars seemed to shine. They shined brighter than any night sky I’d ever seen, mo
re points of light than even the milky way could provide as it stretched over the earth on a clear, crisp winter night.
Somewhere below me between my feet, a bluish-green light began to grow, pulsing and expanding. All around me, the stars remained stationary. But below me, that pulsar of a blue-green began to grow exponentially.
I stared in awe, watching as the light became clear and defined. It wasn’t a light or a star. No, the pulsating light was Enchanted Rock.
And, my mouth hanging open in shock, I realized it wasn’t growing.
Instead, I was rushing toward it.
Chapter Thirty-one – Peter
“Oh, man,” Matthew said, wiping an exasperated hand down his face. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
“I just…I can’t believe it,” Richard said, staring at me.
“Guys, this is just crazy,” Jake added, looking at his mate Elise. “Right? It’s crazy, right? I’m not the only one that thinks this?”
Ashley bit her lip but didn’t speak.
“So none of you believe me?” I asked, looking at everyone. “I mean, come on, do you think I just snapped?”
“Well, Richard did mention you were wearing Vanessa’s lipstick when he went in there, boss,” Frank said, rubbing the back of his neck. “And that ain’t exactly normal, you know?”
Exasperated, I sighed and turned to Richard. “Would you tell them I wasn’t wearing it? That I had it on my lips like an imprint from a kiss?”
Richard raised his eyebrows as he looked around the room. “He is right. If he had put it on himself in some sort of mental break–”
I groaned and Richard shot me a look.
“I said ‘if,’ Peter.” He turned his attention back to the remains of our pack. “If he had put it on himself, I don’t know how he would have done it. He doesn’t exactly carry any around or anything, and it looked exactly like a kiss. I mean, from what I could tell.”
Stupid me, I’d wiped the damn lipstick stains off before we’d come in here. I’d always hated it when Vanessa would plant one on me like that, back when we were growing up, and it’s something that had never gone away. It wasn’t that I somehow felt feminine, it’s that it just felt foreign to me. Like I hadn’t chosen to put it on. I felt the same when someone had too much lotion on when we shook hands.
But now as I looked around at all the disbelieving eyes in the room, I realized I was getting a dose of how Vanessa must have felt as she tried to tell me about what she’d experienced at the Jaeger-Tech facilities. And it certainly didn’t feel good. In fact, it felt like I was being gaslighted by everyone.
Out of the corner of my eye, though, I watched as Elise Moon timidly raised her hand as she looked around the assembled group.
I turned to her, holding my breath. I was always used to being taken at my word, but here I was, holding out hope that someone, anyone, would toss me a line.
“I believe you, Peter,” Elise said, all eyes on her.
“You serious, babe?” Jake said, snorting a little. One look from her, though, and he shut his mouth.
“Me too, Pete,” Mary said.
“Same here,” Rebecca said, stepping forward a little. “I realize I’m the newest one in our little pack, besides Vanessa I guess—whom, Peter, I absolutely adore. But I don’t see why this is so strange to you guys. You guys aren’t exactly normal, you know? There’s no scientific evidence for why you should be able to exist the way you do. Like, only silver hurts you? What is that? A freaking allergy?” She paused and cleared her throat. I’d almost forgotten she was a teacher, but now she was right there delivering her own little lecture to the remaining members of our pack.
“Maybe all of you have just been, I don’t know, yourselves for so long that you don’t seem really strange or weird. You get up, you live your life, and you go to bed. But I got news for you—all of you are freaking weird. I mean, I’m saying this as someone who’s in love with a freaking werewolf. A. Were. Wolf. Do you know how bizarre that is? So, yeah, Peter, I believe you. Because, at this point, why the hell not? I’ve seen stranger things than ESP or psychic projections. My boyfriend can shift into a wolf the size of a small car.”
Matthew was standing there, his mouth hanging open a little, and Mary, the rest of the guys, and I exchanged looks.
“Are we really that weird?” Frank asked.
His wife Ashley put an arm around his waist and nearly coiled herself around him. “Yes, honey, you guys are. But we still love you.” She laughed a little. “And, for the record, I believe you, too. Is it somehow more believable that you’re going insane and putting on women’s lipstick than Vanessa sending ghosts into your head? I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure Peter’s the most solid out of all of us. If he’s cracking, what chance does that give us of staying sane?”
“Fair point,” Richard conceded. “Alright, I’ll bite. I believe you, too. Okay?”
“Alright, then,” I said after another glance around the circle. “Good.”
“Well, that was iffy,” Vanessa whispered in my ear. Or mind. Or whatever. “Almost thought for a moment there that they weren’t going to believe you.”
“She’s here,” I said, grinning. “She’s back.”
“I’m not a fucking ghost, Peter,” she said, coming around in front of me, traced again in that same green, shimmering outline. “And I’m not a spirit, either.”
“Okay,” Richard said, breaking away from the circle. “How can we use this?”
“Easy,” I said. “We can get all the information we need from her. Right, Vanessa? They didn’t blindfold you or anything, did they?”
She laughed, the sound like music to my ears as she went and leaned back against the wall. “They’re cocky, Peter. Really cocky. They don’t think they need anything from me, and it’s clear they’re sure I’m never getting out of here. They probably don’t see any sense in covering anything up, especially with the way phones are being blocked.”
“Well,” I said, “let’s lay it all out. You tell me, and we’ll start to compile everything we need. Sound good, everyone?”
Over the next fifteen minutes, we went over the layout of the building, as much as she’d seen at least. We covered the height of the towers; the main entrance and egress points; and the number of soldiers on the ground, vehicles, and armaments.
Vanessa was a professional thief and had an eye for the kind of intelligence we needed for a strike this large. Her mind was like a steel trap when it came to this kind of stuff, just soaking up information without even having to really expend any effort.
When we got to the schematic of the building, though, she started to get testy.
“No, that wall goes this way three inches, then turns right.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, glancing up at the outline of her face. She was scrunching her nose up in that irritated way that said she just wanted to do it herself. “This way?”
“No,” she said, reaching down and grabbing hold of my hand, “this way.” As she touched me, I felt my extremity begin to move of its own will, just like earlier when I was in Jessica’s office and she’d put my hand over my heart.
“Do that again,” I said excitedly.
“I can’t believe that worked. Hold on.”
She took control of my right hand and began to sketch out a detailed map on the pad of art paper we’d found in Jessica’s office, my arm flying up and down as I traced it out with a draftsman’s eye for detail. Or, rather, a cat burglar’s.
“Holy shit,” Richard said. “I didn’t know you could sketch.”
“It’s not me. She can, I don’t know, control my arm somehow. Direct where it’s going.”
“Does it feel weird?”
“Little bit. Kinda tingly.”
With Vanessa’s help, the map was done in a third of the time it would have taken the original way. She mapped out guard movements, areas she thought were guarded, patterns, and so on.
“I think that’s it,” she finally sa
id, releasing the use of my hand back to me. “Feel okay?”
I flexed my forearm, clenching my right hand into a fist to make sure that everything was in working order. It still tingled and prickled a little, like when your leg falls asleep, but it seemed everything would be all right. “Think we’re good.”
The guys all crowded around the map, gazing down at it. Matthew gave a low whistle.
“Seen emergency exit plans that looked worse, that’s for sure. You did good.”
“Thanks,” Vanessa said, before smiling tightly and looking away as she remembered that only I could see her. A moment later, she tugged on my hand and pulled me away from the group, surprising me with how much strength her incorporeal body had. It was like I was completely unable to resist her.
Of course, that had always been my problem, for good or for ill.
“Where you going, Cap?” Jake asked as she dragged me around the corner.
“To the office, I think,” I replied. “Be right back.”
As I we turned into Jessica’s little hideaway, I could hear my pack snickering. I ignored them.
“Shut the door, please.”
I closed the door quietly. “What’s going on? Everything okay?” When I turned back around, she’d already hopped up on Jessica’s desk and crossed her legs.
“Other than the obvious?” she asked, her foot bobbing in time to some unseen music. “Look, Peter, I’m scared. I…I didn’t tell you about what happened earlier. They’re planning to do something here with us. Experiments. Apparently they’ve been doing them for centuries.”
Over the next few minutes, she told me everything she’d learned from our mutual friend Mr. Finney. It wasn’t good or reassuring. When she got to the last part about the batons, though, she had to jump up from the desk to try and calm me down.
“Peter,” she said, her voice serious. “I don’t need you like this. Not now. Listen to me. Here, look in my eyes.”
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