Enhanced: Brides of the Kindred 12 (The Brides of the Kindred) (44 page)

Mei-Li was distracted from her thoughts
when she heard Kaylee calling for her mother.

“Mere…please, Mamere, it hurts,” she
whimpered.

Six, who had been hunched over the body of
his mother, raised his head and wiped his eyes hastily.

“Kaylee?” he whispered hoarsely. “Kaylee,
hang in there, all right? Mere is…well, she’s sleeping. But I’m here with you
now so don’t worry.”

“Don’t want you—want Mere,” the little
girl said fretfully. “Please, Jax—it hurts so much.
Please
.”

“We’re almost to the med barge.” He took
her small hand gently between his own. “Pere said…
says
that he already
called the Tollegs. They’re waiting to make you well. If you can hold on just a
little while longer…”

“But I can’t. It hurts…
it hurts…”
Kaylee’s
cry of pain seemed to be almost more than the young Six could bear.

He squeezed her hand tightly, his eyes
bright with tears. “Just hold on, Kaylee. Hold on…”

She shook her head and opened her eyes. In
their green depths, Mei-Li could read her knowledge of her fate and she
suddenly looked much older. In fact, for a moment she almost resembled the
young woman she might have grown to be if things had been different.

“I…I want you to kill me Jax,” she
whispered. “Please, it hurts so much. And it’s too late—nobody can make me
better now.”

“That’s not true!” Six insisted fiercely.
“The Tollegs—”

“Mere’s not sleeping, is she?” Kaylee’s
preternaturally bright eyes flicked over to her mother’s face which was still
close to hers. Six hadn’t had time to close her eyes and her gray gaze was
fixed and staring.

“Kaylee…”

“She’s not sleeping—she’s dead. She went
to be with the Goddess. Well, I want to go too. Please, Jax…” She coughed and a
gush of blood so dark it was almost black came from her lips and soaked her
chest. “Please…” she whispered. “It
hurts
…”

“Kaylee,” he whispered. “I can’t…I just
can’t…I promised Mere and Pere I’d take care of you. Don’t ask me to do that.”

“But I
want
to go. It hurts so bad…like
fire inside me. Please, Jax, let me go…”

It was clear to Mei-Li that Six had been
fighting not to cry too much but now he lost the battle and tears poured down
his cheeks. The small hope he’d been nursing that he might still save his
sister snapped like a dry twig. Mei-Li felt his despair keenly—felt the pain
like a knife that sawed at his soul.

“Kaylee, no,” he begged brokenly. “You
can’t leave me, too—you’re the last one left. Please, Kaylee…

“Jax…” It was the last whisper of breath
from her lungs. Then, mercifully, her eyes fluttered closed and she was gone.

“Kaylee!”
Her name from Six’s lips was a cry of pure anguish. He
buried his face in his hands and his shoulders heaved. “I promised…” Mei-Li
heard him groan. “Gods, I promised but I failed. I failed you all.”

“Oh, Six…”
she wanted to say but no words came from her lips and
she remembered she was only here as an observer. His pain ate at her with
sharp, hungry teeth. It was greater than any child his age—anyone at any
age—should have to endure. It was tearing him apart inside, Mei-Li could
feel
it. Now she understood what Yipper had meant when he said he didn’t think Six
could feel this kind of emotional agony and keep his sanity. This level of
distress would break anyone—it was torture worse than any kind of physical pain
and Six had put himself through it for her.

Me—he did this for me—so I could feel
again,
she thought.
Oh God, look what I’ve put
him through! When is this going to end? We’re both going to go crazy if it
doesn’t stop soon!

“Alone.” The younger Six hunched in on
himself, his arms locked around his knees, his face hidden from the awful sight
of death and destruction that had come upon him so suddenly. Mei-Li watched
him, aching to go to him and hold him but she couldn’t touch him—not here.

“Oh, Six,” she said softly. “I’m sorry…so
sorry…”

“Why did you go?” he whispered brokenly.
“How could you all leave me? Take me with you—don’t leave me all alone…”

Alone…

Alone…

Chapter
Thirty-two

“Alone,” a low, rough voice whispered.

Suddenly the scene melted away and Mei-Li
found herself sitting in a hospital bed with Six—the full grown, adult Six,
sitting rigidly beside her. His eyes were wide and fixed, as though he was
staring at some horror only he could see and there were silent tears trickling
down his cheeks.

“Alone,” he muttered again. “And it is all
my fault.”

Mei-Li found that she was crying too. It
was as though a dam had burst inside her—a barrier she hadn’t even know was
there was now gone. She ached for everything she had seen—ached and burned
inside for his pain. Her heart was breaking as she remembered the horrors he
had been forced to go through at such a young age and the agony she still felt
coming from him.

“Six! Oh, Six!” Turning to him, she got up
on her knees and threw her arms around his neck. The strange flexible metal
device Yipper had put around the backs of their necks was knocked off and fell
with a clatter to the floor but that didn’t matter—all that mattered was being
close to him, sharing his pain.

But though she held him close and cried
until her tears wet the front of his shirt, Six remained rigid in her arms,
neither moving or speaking. In fact, he barely seemed to breathe at all.

Mei-Li looked around anxiously until she
saw Yipper, watching warily from the other side of the room.

“Yipper, what’s wrong with him?” she
demanded. “Is he still stuck in that awful memory? Do something! Get him out of
it! It’s
terrible.”

“I do not know what I can do. No I don’t,
no I don’t.” The Tolleg looked miserable. “I cannot—”

“The memory is over.” Six’s deep voice
sounded rusty and hoarse. “Yet the pain remains as well as the knowledge I have
gained from it.
I understand now.”
He turned a blank, cold stare at
Yipper. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Understand what? Tell him what?” Mei-Li
asked. “Please, Six, just talk to me. Or at least
look
at me. What was
Yipper supposed to tell you?”

He turned his head to look at her and the
coldness in his eyes made her heart freeze. He no longer looked…entirely sane.
And yet he spoke calmly.

“I was the agent of their destruction. The
carrier that made Kaylee sick—that made them
all
sick.”

“Technically the female who gave your
sister the bread was the original carrier,” Yipper protested quickly. “You just
happened to be the first person she made skin-to-skin contact with. That was
all, that was all.”

“That old woman,” Mei-Li exclaimed. “That
old baker woman had a disease she passed to you—didn’t she? I
knew
something
wasn’t right about her. I
knew it.
”

“The Scarlet Plague,” Yipper said sadly. “It
can only pass between hosts who have at least some similar DNA. In this case,
after studying Six’s Memory Cache I believe she must have been a very, very
distant relative from his mother’s side. It passes instantly through even
minimal skin contact but it doesn’t kill the first person it touches—it
colonizes them—uses them as a vector. Yes it does, yes it does.”

“It used me. And marked me.” Six pointed
to the red ring around his left iris. “I knew I felt shame for the mark and
wanted to cover it up but I didn’t realize why until I saw the memory again
after all these years. If I had just let Kaylee eat the
hi-ni
bread
instead of giving it back, we would have been fine. It can only pass
skin-to-skin. If only I hadn’t touched her…”

“But it wasn’t your fault—it was that old
baker woman!” Mei-Li protested. “She even said you looked familiar! Why would
she do that to you?”

“The virus can lay dormant for years,”
Yipper said. “And she probably wasn’t even aware that she’d touched Six at all.
The contact was so fleeting I had to watch the memories myself several times to
even be sure it happened. Yes I did, yes I did.”

“But Six used that light wand thingy.”
Mei-Li made a waving motion with one hand. “I thought it was supposed to kill
anything!”

“Not the virus that causes Scarlet
Plague,” Yipper said. “At the moment of contact it burrows invisibly,
painlessly and almost instantly through flesh until it finds a blood vessel.”

“It probably entered Kaylee’s blood stream
almost the second I touched her.” Six rubbed his hands together in a washing
motion. Mei-Li wanted to ask him to stop but she didn’t think he was conscious
he was doing it. “I killed her the moment I touched her,” he said in a low,
hoarse voice. “The people I loved most in the world and I killed them
all
…”

“Oh, Six, no!” Mei-Li tried to put her
arms around his neck again but he pushed her away.

“Stop.”

“But, Six…” She was crying again, the
tears streaming helplessly down her face. “Six, please—”

“I need to leave.” He stood abruptly,
leaving her weeping on the bed. He turned to Sylvan, who had been standing and
watching quietly in the corner. “Is there a place I could be alone?”

“Of course.” The other male nodded
quietly. “Come. I’ll take you there.”

“No,” Mei-Li protested. “No, he shouldn’t
be alone! Not after going through all that! He…he could hurt himself,” she
finished in a near whisper, looking at Sylvan appealingly. “Please…”

The Kindred commander shook his head
firmly. “Don’t worry—I’ll be certain that doesn’t happen. Come, Six.” And he led
the other male away.

Mei-Li watched them go feeling that Six’s
family weren’t the only ones who had died. In reliving the horrible memory and
realizing that he had been the agent of his loved ones’ deaths, a part of Six
had died as well.

And she didn’t know if she could ever
bring him back again.

Chapter
Thirty-three

There was a soft knock on the door and
then a pretty girl with brown hair and green eyes peeked into Mei-Li’s room.

“Hi there, do you mind if we come in?”

Mei-Li looked up from the magazine she’d
been trying to read. It was one of the few paper periodicals still printed on
Earth—a gossip rag she and Claudia always laughed at in the checkout line at
the grocery store. It was full of ridiculous stories that never failed to make
her smile yet for the past hour she’d just been staring at it, unable to even
focus on the smudgy print and obviously photo-shopped pictures.

There was too much on her mind—too many
awful images, too much sorrow and fear for the future. Especially after what
Yipper had just come to tell her…Mei-Li tried to push that thought away. It was
too awful. She didn’t want to think about it now.

It had been a night and most of the day
since Six had walked out after sharing his traumatic past with her. Now he
refused to see her or talk to her—not that Mei-Li blamed him. He had basically
gone through Hell for her and it had been more than he could handle. She just
wished he would
talk
to her about it instead of shutting her out. She
wished…

Suddenly she realized the girl was still standing
there with a questioning look on her face while Mei-Li just sat there stupidly,
her mind working in the same tired, monotonous loops.

“Oh, sorry,” she said. “I’ve just got a
lot on my mind. Sure you can come in.”

“I’m Sophia—Commander Sylvan’s wife,” the
girl said, stepping into the room. “And this is my twin sister, Olivia—but we
just call her Liv. Also, Lauren, our cousin.”

“Hi!” A girl with creamy brown skin and
lovely amber eyes came through the door behind the blonde girl Sophia had
introduced as Liv. She was holding a plate of cupcakes. “Hope you’re hungry,”
she said, smiling.

Then a fourth girl came in—a full figured
redhead who was moving very slowly.

“This is Kat, our best friend,” Sophia
explained. “She looks really tired because she just had triplets not too long
ago.”

“Triplets?” That got Mei-Li’s attention.
“I didn’t know that happened with Kindred wives. I thought they had twins
sometimes but never triplets.”

“It’s rare.” Kat sank down to sit at the
foot of her bed. “Do you mind? I really am still exhausted. But being preggers
for over a year will do that to a girl.”

“No, of course no. Help yourself.” Mei-Li
sat up a little straighter, wishing she was dressed in something besides a
hospital johnny. But how could she have predicted the Mother Ship version of
the Welcome Wagon would come to her room? “Um, did you say you were pregnant
for over a
year?”
she asked.

“Yup and that’s par for the course with
Kindred babies. Something they don’t tell you during the oh-so-romantic
Claiming period,” Kat said a little grimly. “Not that I really had one of
those. My guys and I just kind of got thrown together.”

“Same here,” Sophia said and Lauren nodded
too.

“Well
I
had a Claiming Period,” Liv
said, smiling. “A month up here in the Mother Ship while I was trying to resist
Baird—that’s my guy. But it kind of got cut short due to unforeseen
circumstances.” She shrugged. “We still wound up together though.”

“My Claiming Period was cut short too,” Mei-Li
said in a low voice. “But I don’t think…” She broke off, biting her lip.

“Don’t think what?” Sophia asked gently.

“I don’t think we’re going to wind up
together.” Mei-Li’s eyes were suddenly burning but she somehow found a way to
keep back the tears. She didn’t even know these women. No matter how friendly
and nice they were, she didn’t want to start crying in front of them.

“Keep talking, doll—sounds like you need
to get it out,” Kat said. She motioned at Lauren. “Go on—ply her with
chocolate.”

Lauren leaned forward and offered the
plate of cupcakes. There were several varieties and they all looked amazing but
Mei-Li really wasn’t hungry at the moment—not even for junk food. She took a
dark chocolate cupcake though, just to be polite.

“Thank you,” she said, trying to smile.

“You’re more than welcome.” Lauren smiled
back. “I have a shop on the ship here. I used to have one on Earth and I was
thinking of opening one down there again—you know, franchising? But of course
now that we’re at war with Earth…” She shook her head.

“God, yes—the stupid war,” Kat groaned.
“Now nobody can go down and visit family or shop. I mean, you can get most of
what you need on the Mother Ship but there are still a
few
things…”

“Plus we just miss being able to go home
if we want to,” Liv said.

Lauren sighed. “Mostly I miss my mom. I
wish I would have brought her back up here to stay before this all happened.”

“The worst thing is, some people are still
trapped down there. We have friends—Tess and Garron—who are stuck in Asheville hiding out from the ‘authorities’.” Kat rolled
her eyes. “Meaning the stupid new ‘Earth Protection Bureau’ the idiots in
charge just formed. Thank goodness the Kindred Commander down there is waiting
it out with them so at least they’re not all on their own. According to our
other friend, Becca, he’s a good guy.”

“Anyway, that’s one of the reasons we came
to see you—since you’re new on the ship and we’re all pretty much stuck here
now—we thought you might need some friends,” Sophia said.

Mei-Li felt her stomach drop. “That’s
really nice but…you might not
want
to be friends with me.”

“What makes you say that, hon?” Lauren
asked.

“Because, it’s my fault—the war, I mean,”
Mei-Li admitted miserably. “My dad is on the World Council and apparently he
got really freaked out when Six came to claim me and carried me away to Z4. I’m
pretty sure he started the whole thing—or influenced it to start.”

“Honey,
everybody
freaked out,” Liv
assured her. “It was all over the news.”

“I’ve tried talking to him,” Mei-Li said
quickly. Indeed, though it was the last thing she felt like doing, she’d spent
nearly the entire morning talking to her dad on the viewscreen.

“Did you?” Sophia sounded hopeful. “What
did he say?”

Mei-Li shook her head. “That things have
gone too far to stop. That he’s not the only one who wants to end the
arrangement with the Kindred. I’m sorry…” She looked up at the ring of
disappointed faces surrounding her bed. “God, I’m
so
sorry. I screw up
everything I touch.
Everything.”

“Okay, now, don’t start playing the blame
game on yourself,” Kat said, taking one of Lauren’s cupcakes. “Just tell us
what you mean by screwing up everything. I have a feeling you’re not just
talking about the Kindred/Earth situation.”

“Which we
don’t
blame you for, by
the way,” Sophia said quickly. “I mean, you couldn’t help being claimed by a
Dark Kindred.”

“And I’m guessing you couldn’t help
falling in love with him, either. Could you?” Liv raised an eyebrow at her.

“N-no I couldn’t.” Mei-Li was desperately
afraid she was going to start crying now. To distract herself, she took a big
bite of the chocolate cupcake in her hand.

Immediately her mouth was flooded with the
sweet, slightly bitter taste of dark chocolate.
The taste of Six’s kisses,
she
thought and then she couldn’t help herself anymore. Her eyes welled up with
hot, miserable tears and a muffled sob escaped her.

“Oh, sweetie!” Sophia was beside her at
once, putting an arm around her shaking shoulders. “We’re so sorry! We didn’t
mean to upset you!”

“It’s n-not y-you,” Mei-Li somehow managed
to stutter through her tears. “It’s this.” She held out the cupcake with the
bite out of it.

“Oh no, does it taste bad?” Lauren asked
anxiously. “I mean, I’ve had a few batches that didn’t turn out just the way I
wanted them to but I’ve never baked a cupcake so bad it made anyone cry
before!”

“No, no,” Mei-Li tried to reassure her
through her sobs. “Not crying…because it’s bad. Crying because it tastes
good…like…like
him.”

“I don’t get it,” said Kat blankly.
“Sorry, doll—take a minute to cry it out and then maybe you can explain.”

“I just…I just…” Mei-Li took a deep
shuttering breath and blotted her eyes on the floppy sleeve of her hospital
gown. “I’m sorry,” she whispered when she’d finally regained some control. “I’m
crying because Six…when I kissed him it tasted…tasted just like this.” She held
up the cupcake again.

“Seriously?” Kat’s eyes widened. “Wow,
I’ve got some hot Twin Kindred husbands but neither one of them tastes like
chocolate when I kiss them.” She looked thoughtful. “That’s probably a
good
thing
actually. When I crave chocolate, I get pretty desperate.”

“Afraid you might resort to cannibalism,
Kat-woman?” Liv gave her a tiny grin.

“Be serious, girls—she’s means it,” Sophie
said sharply. She turned back to Mei-Li. “So his kisses tasted like chocolate?
Really?”

Mei-Li nodded. “And now…now I’m never
going to kiss him again,” she whispered.

“Oh, now—don’t say that,” Lauren objected.
“I mean, you’re both up here on the Mother Ship, right? You’re bound to get
back together.”

“Lauren’s right,” Liv said. “If he’s
Kindred and he claimed you, he won’t be able to leave you alone.”

“Yes he will,” Mei-Li said dully. “After
he takes the shot of emotion blocker serum our friend is brewing for him.”

“What?” Sophia exclaimed. “Sylvan said
something about somebody losing their emotions but I thought it was
you.”

“I
did
lose my emotions but Six
brought them back. Only in order to do it…” Briefly, Mei-Li told them
everything that had happened since she’d woken up on the Mother Ship a day and
a night ago. “And now Six has decided that he can’t deal with the emotions he
set lose inside himself when he brought back
my
emotions,” she wound up.
“Not that I blame him—what he remembered was
awful.
And he’s feeling it
three times as badly because of the way his body reacted when his original
emotion damper implant was removed.”

“Whew!” Kat mimed wiping sweat from her
brow. “That’s a
lot
to take in.”

“It is,” Mei-Li said. “And the worst thing
is, he won’t even
talk
to me or see me at all. I heard about his plans
from Yipper—that’s the friend who’s making the serum,” she explained, seeing
the blank looks on their faces.

“Well why is this Yipper guy agreeing to
make the serum in the first place?” Liv demanded indignantly. “He should say
no—it doesn’t sound medically ethical at all.”

“Liv is a nurse,” Sophia explained.

“Yipper’s doing it because he’s afraid the
awful memories Six has will drive him insane—if they haven’t already,” Mei-Li
explained in a low voice. “And I understand his reasoning—I really do. I saw
the terrible things that happened to his family and I felt just a fraction of
the pain he was feeling. It was horrible—the most intense mental anguish you
can imagine. And Six is feeling it times three.”

“Is he
still
, though?” Liv asked.
“I mean, not to sound insensitive, but how long does this emotions times three
effect last after the implant is removed?”

“Even if he’s only feeling it times one…or
normally
or however you want to put it, he watched his whole family
die,”
Mei-Li said. “That’s intensely traumatic. I can understand him wanting to get
rid of those feelings.”

“But with all the negative, he gets rid of
the positive too. He’s going to be losing how he feels about
you,”
Lauren
pointed out.

Mei-Li looked down at the half-eaten
cupcake in her hand. “I don’t know that he feels
anything
for me
anymore. Or if he does, it’s probably just hatred for making him go through
that horrible memory.”

“Bullshit,” Kat said bluntly. “Look,
pardon my French, doll but if there’s one thing I know it’s that once a Kindred
male starts having feelings for you they don’t just go away. I speak from
experience too—one of my husbands was determined that he was no good for me so
he did his best to convince me he didn’t love me just to break us all up. Later
he admitted he was head-over-heels the entire time.” She shook her head.
“Completely infuriating but they can be like that sometimes.”

Mei-Li felt a small spark of hope begin to
grow in her heart.

“So…you think he might not hate me?”

“Why would he hate you?
You
didn’t
force him to remember those awful memories,” Liv pointed out. “That was his
choice—and as terrible as the consequences were, he’s a grown man. He needs to
live with the results of his actions.”

“Yes, but now he associates me with
them—with that awful trauma,” Mei-Li said.

“Then you make him associate you with
something
else,”
Lauren said. “Something much
nicer
, if you know
what I mean.”