The Sovereign Era (Book 2): Pilgrimage (5 page)

Byron Teslowski had been on his way to any athletic scholarship he wanted, and after that, Marc was certain his son would have had a great collegiate career and a record-breaking pro run.

Football, baseball, basketball—it wouldn’t have mattered. He would have done everything Marc himself had worked to accomplish when he’d been his age, except Marc had never had his son’s agility, his strength, his speed, or his endurance.

And then, as it turned out, if some people were to be believed, Byron cheated. He wasn’t a superstar athlete worthy of the drooling attention of the scouts.

He was a fucking Sovereign.

Or so said the Sovereigns themselves.

That was like trusting the goddamn fox to guard the henhouse, that’s what that was. Fuck that.

The lawyers, the Metahuman Affairs people, the turncoat normals from the Donner Institute for Sovereign Studies, they had their reports to point to: Byron Teslowski was a straight-up Standard Class Sovereign with highly developed adaptive capabilities—in layman’s terms, he changed according to what the situation required, which was why he showed off such a wide range of talent when it came to sports.

Of course, the Sovereigns
would
make up shit like that, to justify taking him.

They said his Sovereign ability was what saved him when he was injured in the fight at Charters’ place up at Kirby Lake, too. That a normal human would have died from shock and blood loss. Why wasn’t it good enough to say the kid was talented? That he was healthy, and strong?

What the hell was wrong with admitting he had damn good genes that he inherited from his old man, and from Marc’s old man, all the way back? Was it so hard to believe?

It was an insult. An affront. It pissed Marc Teslowski off to no end.

They had his boy.

Marc pulled the Dooley into the driveway. As soon as he put on the brake, Jeri got out and went for the mailbox. There wouldn’t be anything there except for bills and junk.

Not what she was looking for.

Marc went inside without bothering to wait for his wife. He wanted to get out of his uncomfortable dress clothes, get into jeans and a T-shirt, sit down in his chair, and have a goddamn beer while Jeri threw something together for dinner.

The house was stuffy; close and silent.

Marc tossed his slacks and shirt into a pile next to the bed, pulled on an old and worn pair of jeans, and found a nice loose tank top. So. Much. Better.

On his way to the kitchen, he passed Jeri organizing the mail on the dining room table.

“Nothing,” she mumbled.

“Shocker.” Acid reflux tightened his chest. He clenched his teeth, sucked his lips tight against his gums, and focused on the fridge.

Wherein, he discovered, there was no beer to be found.

Jesus fuck.

“Jeri.”

He could feel her hovering behind him. She was probably waiting to pull the lasagna from the other night out. Microwave leftovers, and no beer.

“Yes, Marc.”

“When did you go to the store?”

“I…I haven’t, yet.”

“Don’t you go on Thursday?”

“I—usually, sure, but I needed to find something for the show, and I knew we had enough to get by until Saturday if we needed to, so—"

Staring at the beer-less inside of the fridge wasn’t helping with anything. Marc turned around and faced Jeri.

"’Find something for the show.’" His lip curled. “Are you kidding me? So you’d, what, look nice and pretty for the cameras while you sat there and said absolutely not one thing?”

“It wasn’t…”

He didn’t want to hear it. “All I ask for—all I ever ask, Jeri—is that this goddamn shitty house is kept up and there’s food in the fucking pantry. Beer in the fridge!”

His fingers curled into tight hooks. It would serve her right if he finally did just off and belt her one, but she was so damn frail, she’d probably snap in half. Not like his own mother, by God. She could take a punch, and more often than not give as good as she got from Marc’s pop.

Marc rolled his eyes. “Who the hell do you think gave a shit if you had a new sweater, Jeri? Seriously”

She looked at the linoleum of the kitchen floor. “It wasn’t for them,” she whispered.

“That’s right, because how would those…” He thought of smart-mouthed Frank in the studio audience. "…lazy assholes know you went out of your way to look nice, for Christ’s sake? Who cares?”

She looked up. He was mildly surprised to see her eyes were wet.

“I wanted to look nice for Byron,” she said. “In case he was watching.”

Marc opened his mouth. He closed it again.

It had not occurred to him that the Sovereigns might let Byron watch
The Azarrio Show
. That Byron might have seen them there. Or would have wanted to.

She studied him.

“Didn’t that occur to you?” Her voice was steady but subdued, like she had to stoke up the energy to let a sentence fall out of her mouth. “Don’t you think Byron would watch?”

Marc shrugged. “Who knows if they even let him watch TV? They probably have him all…isolated, or shut away. That’s what kidnappers
do
. It’s part of the damn brainwashing shit.”

Jeri kept looking at him. Marc disliked the attitude he was reading from his wife.

“Brainwashing him,” she said. “Is that what you think they’re doing?”

Marc spoke as if his wife was a retarded person. “Can you think of another reason your own son wouldn’t write or call for a year, Jeri?”

Another two breaths, in and out, until Jeri looked away and slipped past him. She opened the refrigerator and pulled out the lasagna.

“Of course not, Marc.”

She was not the woman he had married twenty years before. There was little left of the spitfire in the miniskirt he had chased all over the Santa Monica Pier that summer. Something had happened to her, something that made him almost sick to look at her.

She had caved.

Every now and then, though, he could still pick up the slightest hint of sarcasm, or even anger, in her mumbling whimpers. Every once in a while, she dared to stand up to him.

Not often enough for Marc to respect her for it, though. She was too far gone. Too weak.

“What was that?” Let her try to push him today, of all days. Let her try.

She kept her back to him while she fussed with the plastic wrap on the casserole dish. “Nothing.”

He realized he was a little disappointed she had rolled over so quickly. “Right.”

He was still pissed off from the stupid show. Still worked up. He wanted to scrap, and Jeri was worthless as a sparring partner.

He also needed a beer.

“I’m gonna go have a few down the street,” he said. “I’ll eat when I get back.”

He retrieved his wallet and keys from his discarded dress slacks. Jeri met him in the living room.

“Can’t you just eat dinner? It’s been such a long day. What if Byron…”

Marc grunted. “Byron, nothing.” He opened the front door. “Tell you what, Jeri. You sit by the phone.

“Me, I’m gonna go get drunk.”

From The Journal Of Nate Charters – Six

Lina scooped her black T-shirt off the floor and slipped it over her head. I pulled up my pants.

She gathered her bra, panties, and skirt. I picked up my shirt, but I was suddenly lacking the initiative to put it on. I looked at it, there in my lap.

Lina took her clothes down the hall. I heard the bathroom door shut.

Alone in the living room, half-dressed, I felt self-conscious.

I felt stupid.

I put on my shirt.

I put on my socks and shoes.

There. I was all dressed for
The Azarrio Show
again. Just a little more wrinkled.

Lina came back in the living room. I looked up at her.

Her lip twisted. “So.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “What was that?”

“I…” I wanted to shrink into the couch. I felt cornered. “I’m not…I don’t know.”

“I thought…” She looked like she could be as uncomfortable as I was, except for the residual anger hardening her eyes. “Nate, I’ve told you how…”

“I know. I know.” Where had I gone? Where was I? “I didn’t…I felt…”

“You got carried away.”

She sounded like a mother scolding a child. Not my mother, exactly, thank fucking god.

“It’s not like that.” I never liked the sound of my own voice when I whined. I reined it in. “Look. I know you’re…not ready. I…I respect that.” She shifted her weight, and her eyes widened in protest. “I do, Lina. I do.”

“So?”

I shook my head. “I…lost myself. I couldn’t…it’s like I couldn’t think.”

Once I’d said it, it was a lot scarier. I guess she sensed that. She sat down next to me. Not touching, but next to me.

“What do you mean?”

“Like I was more…whatever that part of me that’s…like it is.”

I thought of my father, his beard tangled with leaves and mud and dried blood, wild-eyed and grinning while he used his filthy toenails to rip the intestines out of a guy named Earl Pratt.

“Like…him.”

Lina was emphatic. “You’re not him, Nate. Not even.”

“I’ve got his genes.”

“But that’s not your whole deal,” she said. “You know how it works.”

“Sure.” It took two sets of DNA to make a kid. Birds and the bees and whatever. But half the DNA that made me was…fucked up.
Augmented.
“But sometimes…I don’t know. I just get…submerged. I don’t know.”

Lina studied me. “Submerged.”

I nodded. “It’s stupid stuff, too. Like, my mother will ask me to do some chore or something, and all of a sudden I just feel so…angry.” I frowned and shook my head. “Like I just want to break shit. Tear into something.”

Lina nodded slowly. She seemed less angry now. Her heartbeat had slowed, and her skin was cooler, drier. “So that’s how you felt with me.”

Her voice was perfectly flat.

“Like you wanted to…break me.”

“No!” I wanted to touch her; I reached out my hand and stopped short of her arm. “Not…exactly.”

She sat back, which put her a little farther away from me.

“I think I get it,” she said.

We sat there. I stared at nothing.

“Lina.”

“Yep.”

I didn’t want to ask. I couldn’t not ask.

“Why don’t you want to make love with me?”

She let her head fall to rest on the couch back and closed her eyes. “I’m just not…I’m not there yet. I told you before.”

“Not there.” I pushed through swirling, irritated jealousy. “Not there with me, you mean? Right?”

She opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling.

“Why don’t you ask what you want to ask, Nate.”

Fine.

“You’ve done it before. You’re not a virgin. Why not with me? What’s different about—Lina, c’mon. Look at me.”

She turned her head to me.

“Why not me?”

She sighed. “I’m not a virgin. You’re right. I’ve had sex exactly one time. It was…I don’t know. It probably shouldn’t have happened. It wasn’t…” She huffed. “How much of this do you want to know? I mean, really? You should think about it.”

I swallowed. “It was Car.”

“Yes, it was Car.”

It hurt to hear it out loud, but I’d half believed it for so long it didn’t hit me like I guess I’d thought it would.

“Okay.”

Now she reached for my hand, and I let her take it. “It was right after his folks died. He was a mess. So was I. It just…it was like…comfort. It wasn’t a love thing. It wasn’t even a lust thing. It was…I don’t know. It was what happened.”

I’d managed to put this information into some safe zone in my head. I felt a little numb.

“So…but…you and I…it
is
a love thing. And it’s a lust thing. Isn’t that…” I shrugged and realized I sounded a little silly. I smiled ruefully. “Isn’t that all the right stuff?”

She smiled back. We were a notch closer to having a nearly normal conversation, like two people who could and should be able to talk about anything together.

“It should be, yeah,” she said. “I wish it was.”

Something occurred to me.

“You said you were a mess, too. But it wasn’t because of Car’s parents.”

She glanced to one side and bit her lip. “No.”

I waited.

She looked at me and spoke in a rush. “I’m gonna tell you something I should have told you already. I’m sorry I didn’t. We’ve had…other things to deal with this last year. I didn’t want to add to it.”

“Okay…”

“But, you have to promise me, Nate—you can’t freak out. This is my thing, and I’m talking to Dr. Creighton about it, and I’m working through it, along with the whole cabin thing; I’m figuring it out, but it’s something that takes time. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“You have to say it, Nate.”

After confirmation that she and Carson Meunetti had had sex—that Carson knew her in a way I still, after almost a year, didn’t—I didn’t think there was much left to freak out over.

I nodded. “I promise not to freak out.”

She took a deep breath.

“Okay. Okay.” She exhaled hard. “Okay.” She looked at me.

“So, right before the day of Car’s parents’ plane crash, we were all at a party at Preston’s. I got…I got a little messed up, and…I came really, really close to being raped.”

She closed her eyes, took another breath, and opened them again.

It was her turn to freak out, so I figured it was my turn to be the stable one. I found another slot in my skull for this new information.

“Really close, you said. So…it didn’t happen?”

“Not, like, technically. You know.”

I understood perfectly.

“Okay. So, this guy. He’s, what, off in jail or something? He can’t get to you now, right?”

As if he’d have a fucking chance, with me around.

“He got taken care of,” Lina said. I could tell that wasn’t the whole truth.

“What does that mean…?”

“He never bothered me again. He wouldn’t.”

“He’s…wait, he’s not in jail? He got away with it?” The safe zone was dissolving around this new knowledge. “How’d he get away with it?”

“You said you wouldn’t freak out!”

“I’m…” I checked myself. “I’m not. Sorry. But, who is he? What happened?”

She shook her head. “No, Nate. Please. This is something I’m working out. I’m trying to handle it. My own way.”