Metawars: The Complete Series: Trance, Changeling, Tempest, Chimera (22 page)

“You’re attracted to William?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, in a big way.”

“And he’s attracted to you?”

“In an even bigger way.” To emphasize her point, she curled her fingers toward her thumb, creating an O that she gradually expanded to an impressive diameter. Her perfectly plucked eyebrows arched suggestively.

“So what’s the problem?” What’s the problem? Pot, meet kettle.

“Me!” Another plaintive wail sliced through the room. She sat up and bounced fully onto the bed, facing me with her legs folded beneath her. “I could be screwing him silly right now, but I left. I can’t believe I left! Why did I do that?”

Deciding that the question was rhetorical and not something I could even pretend to answer, I reached over and patted her knee. I wasn’t good at this. My sex talk consisted of jokes and innuendoes shouted between my fellow waitresses, at any of my various jobs, about the men they were sleeping with—size and positions and endurance. Those conversations never got serious.

Renee had come to me for advice, and I’d be damned if I sent her away without saying … well, something. “Renee, sweetheart, why did you leave?”

She looked so lost in that moment, so much like the little girl I remembered. “Because I don’t want William to be just another lay. I did the slut thing, T, and it got me into a lot
of trouble years ago. Everyone wanted to bang the blue girl. I want this to be different. I want him to be different, you know, and not just screwing me because I’m blond and sexy and have big tits.”

“Do you really think William likes you because of your breasts? Because when I see you two together, he’s looking at your face, not your boobs.”

A proud sort of smile cleansed some of the angst from her expression. “I just want this to be different. I mean, we’re heroes now, not just people.”

“Becoming heroes again doesn’t mean we completely stop being the people we were a week ago. No one switches personalities like that. We don’t stop being basket cases just because we have code names and uniforms and superpowers.”

If only a personality switch was so easy—then I’d have no trouble accepting my leadership role. I wouldn’t be terrified of letting everyone down because I was still a ten-year-old hiding from the bad guys. I’d be able to throw caution to the wind and just be with Gage—history be damned—without fearing what he’d think of me later. None of us would walk around with the invisible chains of our pasts weighing us down.

We each had pasts affecting our nows, and I was only just seeing it clearly.

Some leader that made me.

“Have you slept with Gage?”

Her point-blank question started me. My heart beat a little faster. “No, I haven’t.”

“Do you want to?”

“I think so.”

“Why haven’t you?” No accusation in her question, just an earnest sincerity—as if my answer would illuminate the reasons behind her own hesitation.

Instead of some convoluted reply, I surprised myself by letting the truth tumble right out of my mouth. “Because I have a hard time trusting men, and the last guy I slept with sold me out to the cops on burglary charges and got me twelve months in jail.”

She blinked. “Really?”

“Yep.”

“Were you guilty?”

“Mostly of being stupid, hence my self-imposed vow of celibacy. Dancing and drinking with a guy doesn’t carry the same emotional weight as sleeping with him.”

“I don’t know, T.” Her mouth twisted into a grimace. “I think I’d rather be a slut than a cock tease.”

I bristled, a flush heating my cheeks. “Dancing for a few hours and buying me a drink doesn’t give any man carte blanche to fuck me afterward, Renee. You were a stripper. Did you sleep with everyone you danced for?”

She blushed this time, coloring to an odd shade of purple. “That’s not the same thing.”

“No?”

“No, and I’ve seen Gage looking at you when you don’t see him. Do you seriously think that he’s capable of screwing you, and then screwing you over?”

My head jerked as if I’d been slapped, nudging me closer
to the limits of my temper. Renee saw in Gage the same things I saw in William. So why did William actively pursue what he wanted, while Gage played this strange dodge-and-dance with me? I hadn’t a clue.

And Renee was waiting.

“Do you think William will do the same to you?” I asked. “Screw you, and then screw you over?

We were coming at identical dilemmas from opposing sides, protecting our bodies and our hearts from the exact same thing—being hurt. For children who’d watched our loved ones die, who’d been ripped from the only lives we’d ever known, and who’d struggled to survive in a harsh, unforgiving environment, the reaction seemed shockingly normal. Those things were our pasts, though, not our present. We were all together again, doing what we were born to do, and it felt right. Renee and I—and indeed, the four handsome men in our lives—had to stop using the past as an excuse. The past was gone, slipping away.

If only actions were as easy as words.

“You’re right, T,” Renee said.

She shocked me by stretching out her torso and flinging her arms around my shoulders. I hugged her back—a little unnerved that she was still sitting four feet away and her spine looked like pulled taffy—grateful for the embrace. We’d have to answer the question by ourselves, and she seemed to have come to a happy conclusion. What it meant for William in the immediate future, I didn’t know; I just hoped he enjoyed himself.

As for Gage … I cared about him, more than I wanted
to admit. His kisses made the weight of the world fall off my shoulders and everything seemed easier. We’d be on the verge of something wonderful, and then he’d put up an emotional wall I couldn’t breach and only show me the parts of him he wanted me to see. He was hiding something about his past, which frustrated the hell out of me. He knew I was a convicted felon—my absolute worst secret.

What could be so awful that he wouldn’t tell me?

My imagination could certainly fill in the details, but I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to have to pry the answers out of him, either. He trusted me insofar as the job went. He just didn’t seem to trust me with his heart and the painful secrets he kept deep inside.

Frustrating didn’t even begin to cover it.

I did know one thing for certain, and it was an answer to Renee’s question. It hit me while she untangled herself and bounced to her feet, giggling at something in her head as she strolled to the door. After she’d gone, I let the answer bubble to the surface and my certainty in its truthfulness made me smile—Gage would never screw me over.

He might not be as open as I wanted, and I thought I could accept that for now—we’d known each other less than a week, after all. We had time to work out the kinks. And boy, we’d work them out sooner or later. I’d found a man I was very attracted to and who’d earned my trust by saving my life. I wouldn’t give up on him.

I had no particular destination in mind when I left my room, and my wanderings took me out under the night sky. In the middle of the property was a small park—although
park
was a kind word. It was a strip of grass among cement sidewalks, with a small sapling and an iron bench. I gravitated toward it for no real reason and sat down on the rusty metal. Wind whispered through the small leaves of the sapling like white noise. Perfect for sitting and trying to think.

I used to avoid thinking, which landed me in too many bars on too many binges—once this was preferable to pondering my miserable existence and trying to piece together the mess I’d made of my life.

No need to puzzle out my present life. It had been laid out in front of me in big letters that spelled out R-A-N-G-E-R C-O-R-P-S. My life and my future, without a doubt.

The mess lay now in how to protect my friends against an enemy we couldn’t see and couldn’t fight, and to find meaning in it all at the end of the day. Every time we claimed victory over one of Specter’s attacks, an innocent died. It wasn’t the way we wanted things; it was just how they happened. Specter needed a weakened mind. He could not inhabit a dead body, and when a body died around him, it weakened
him
. Created a need for a long rest. It gave us time—cold comfort for his victims. Our victims.

“Teresa?

My attention shifted to the sound of Gage’s voice. He walked toward me, a purple apparition (a color I was truly starting to hate) under the light cast by nearby lamps. Fatigue slumped his shoulders, but he walked with purpose, arms crossed loosely over his chest. My heart sped up at the sight of him, the conversation with Renee still ringing in my ears.

“What are you doing up?” I asked.

“Looking for you. What are you doing out here?”

“Avoiding sleep, I guess.”

He sat next to me. For an instant he faded out of sight, blotted by a dark smudge of purple. I blinked hard; he reappeared. Just my imagination coupling with fatigue.

“What’s the matter?”

“Just thinking,” I lied.

“About what?”

“William, actually.” Gage flinched—interesting. I tilted my head, ignoring the strange, swirling sensation in my guts. “What? Jealous I wasn’t thinking about you?”

“No, it’s just that I saw him a few minutes ago heading toward the gym. He seemed … frustrated.”

I snorted laughter. “I bet. Doubt he’ll stay that way once Renee finds him. We just had a very strange conversation about sex and relationships, and I think she made a good self-discovery.”

“About?”

“What she wants.”

“And you? What do you want, Teresa?”

“I don’t know anymore if I have a choice in what I want.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“We can do so much more than what our parents did, Gage. Their lives became about policing the Banes and protecting innocent bystanders more than actually using their powers to benefit the world. Ethan can summon the winds. He could bring rain to deserts, warm winds to a freezing crop. The Rangers have always been about saving, not about helping.”

“Saving has its place. We saved those men at the construction site. Saved their lives.”

“You’re right.” Being a Ranger meant being a rescuer, being on call to save lives and protect from attack. But our lives had to amount to more than that, had to be part of something bigger than the next Bane strike. It was what I’d been searching for my entire life—a purpose to fill the void that even Gage’s friendship couldn’t touch. “There’s got to be more. I have these powers for a reason, and it wasn’t to pull men out of rubble. There has to be something bigger.”

“You know,” he said, tilting his head to one side, “you’re beautiful when you’re being idealistic.”

I grinned. “Soak it up, because I tend to err on the side of cynicism.”

He studied me with his flecked eyes—eyes I desperately wanted to see in their full silver detail, instead of tinged lavender—taking in details without passing judgment. Only I wanted him to judge me, damn it. I wanted his opinion. Wanted to know what he was thinking.

“Gage, for the first time in my life, I’m part of something. You know what it’s like to be an outsider, we all do.” A tingling sensation began in my stomach, and it wasn’t from the conversation. Crap. Familiar symptoms in a new problem, rearing their ugly heads. Concentrate. “These powers of mine have a purpose and an intent, and I can’t ignore it. Even if what I’m here to do is die saving the rest of you.”

“You’re not doing to d—Teresa, you’re trembling.”

I was. When had that happened? I tried to stop and couldn’t. No cramps this time; just an overwhelming chill
sending tremors through my arms and legs, across my torso and up to my scalp. A million ants crawled over my skin, dancing senseless patterns that tickled and scratched. Why now? Why the hell now?

“Teresa?”

He grabbed my hand; I barely felt it. I blinked hard and rubbed my eyes. The purple had settled. I saw only a vague outline of his head in the murky color veiling my vision.

“Gage?” My own voice sounded strange, fearful and choked.

“What is it?”

I turned my head, seeking some other shape or building, and saw nothing. Even the vague outline of Gage’s head—if I’d even seen it the first time—was gone. No spots of light or dark, just a deep violet shield. My heart thudded hard.

“What, Teresa, what’s—?” He inhaled sharply. “Your eyes.”

I groped blindly for him, and his other hand squeezed my shoulder. “What about them?”

“I don’t—they’re completely purple. No iris, no sclera, nothing, just purple. Teresa, can you—?”

“I can’t see. I can’t see a damned thing.”

There is nothing quite as frustrating as going temporarily blind when your top priority is locating and stopping a killer. I don’t do helpless easily or well, and sitting on an exam table while people talked around me raised my frustration level to a dangerous high.

“Her body is building up an excess of energy again,” Dr. Seward said. He stood somewhere to my immediate right.

“But that doesn’t make sense.” Gage, on my left and holding my hand. “She expended a lot of power yesterday, both at the rescue site and upstairs. How can it be building?”

“I don’t know, Cipher, I really don’t.”

“I mean, we can’t just sit up on the roof and hope she goes nova again without killing herself.”

“No, we can’t do that, especially with news copters flying in and out of our airspace now. She will have to release the pent-up energy eventually, and it will have to go somewhere. My fear is that the stress to her body will cause a seizure, or worse.”

“Like a heart attack?” I asked.

“Possibly. Seizure, heart attack, aneurysm. We spoke about this yesterday, remember?”

I rolled my eyes. “Kind of hard to forget. What was I supposed to do? Not save those people at the construction site?” Fabric rustled, and I wondered if Seward was shaking his head.

“Not helping someone in need isn’t an option for most Rangers. I should know that by now, and it’s pointless to ask you to go against your nature. But as a physician, I can’t simply stand by and watch you kill yourself.”

“Do you have a better alternative?”

“I have a colleague at Johns Hopkins who’s had moderate success with cryogenic stasis—”