Chapter Twenty-Eight
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Sugar and spice and everything vice: we keep telling you it’s what empaths are made of.
Maybe it’s time for more folks to learn it for themselves.
—A.G., UNTITLED BLOG
The snow was falling in bigger flakes that melted as soon as they hit the asphalt. At a small gas station off the highway, Grayson sat in the driver’s seat, waiting for the truck to fill at one of the two pumps. Vivian Marist had been the one to send him a video clip from the Leviathan Hotel. He’d watched it three times, but there was no mistaking it.
It was Alex, with his arm around Gretel Macy, winking at the camera.
This was probably another moment where someone with emotions might be having a lot of them.
Grayson went back to his messages, to the confirmation that a boat would be waiting for him about twenty minutes north. Still no response from Detective St. James or Dr. Easterby about meeting Reece at the safe house, but he’d give them a few more minutes.
It was for the best. Director Traynor and Vivian Marist might not have figured out yet what Alex had wanted with Officer Stensby or where he’d gone from Stone Solutions, but if Grayson’s theory about corrupted empaths seeking each other out was right, then Grayson knew what Alex had wanted and where he’d gone.
Polaris.
Grayson would need to head straight there, and Reece absolutely could not come.
He’d just driven out of the gas station, heading for the highway, when there was a soft rustle from the passenger seat. Reece was stirring.
Grayson looked at the truck’s clock, which confirmed what he’d already suspected. He set the phone in the console. “Look who’s waking up.”
Reece made a grunt, then opened his eyes. He turned in Grayson’s direction, a small smile just visible in the streetlights. “Hey, sugar.”
“Being cute isn’t gonna get you out of trouble. You know what you did.”
“Oh, come on, it’s kind of funny,” said Reece. “You’re like a reverse Prince Charming—your kiss puts the princess to sleep.”
“ My kiss? You remember who kissed who, don’t you? You used my lips to knock yourself out and I should’ve left you unbuckled in the back.”
“Way harsh, Evan.” Reece’s tone was warm, and his eyes were still softer than usual. “So we’re not going to make it awkward?”
“That would require me to be capable of feeling awkward. So no. Doesn’t mean I’m not gonna chew you out for pulling yet another stunt like this.”
Reece only smiled softly. “Worth it.”
“Empaths,” Grayson muttered.
“I’m not fucking kidding. Hours of unconsciousness is a tiny price to pay for a kiss.” Reece glanced at the truck clock and blinked.
Grayson looked back out the front windshield. He didn’t need to spell it out. Reece was coming to the same realization.
“Except I wasn’t unconscious for hours,” Reece said slowly, sitting up and bringing the seat with him. “It hasn’t been much more than an hour, has it? Just like the time I was out yesterday afternoon was shorter than that first night.”
Grayson nodded once, and turned the wipers on to brush the snow away.
“Your touch isn’t knocking me out for as long,” Reece said. “I’m getting used to it, like I got used to your voice.”
“You were right, back in Seattle.” You’re right so much more than you give yourself credit for , Grayson didn’t add. “I refused to put an empath through the testing. I didn’t know if it was possible for me to ever touch an empath without knocking them out.”
“But it seems like it might be.”
Grayson glanced at him, then back at the windshield. “Seems like it.”
The truck was silent for a moment, a silence that turned weighty and sad.
“Well, fuck,” Reece finally said, his voice thick. “I’m too close to corruption and it’s not fair to millions of people if I take away one of your weapons against me. I can’t ever touch you again.”
Grayson turned on his wipers to flick away the snowflakes as they landed. He would’ve liked to haul Reece right into his lap, or take him away somewhere where they could lock themselves in until they could touch. But it was never going to be an option for them.
Reece rubbed a hand over his face. “You already figured this out, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.” Grayson shifted, feeling the pressure of the seat against the cut on his shoulder blade that Reece had so carefully treated. “But for what it’s worth, you sure can kiss.”
A bittersweet smile played on Reece’s lips. “Back at you.”
They were quiet for another long moment, in the dark cab of the truck as the snowflakes still fell all around them. Even the road they were on seemed empty, only the occasional engine of another car braving the weather.
Reece finally let out a long sigh. “Where are we?”
“A little bit north of the Horseshoe Bay ferry.” Grayson picked up his phone. “Also, I got some other news. Alex is alive.”
Reece stared at him.
Grayson probably could have broken that more gently.
“Your brother is alive?”
Grayson handed him the phone. Reece watched the clip in silence, his eyes huge. “That’s your brother. That is definitely your brother, he looks just like you. He’s alive. Jesus. Are you okay?”
“Obviously,” Grayson said. “I’m not gonna have feelings about it. I’m not gonna have feelings about anything, Reece. Don’t look for them.”
Reece jerked his head up. “Maybe not,” he said, more tightly. “But I was right. You didn’t kill him. You lied to everyone when you told them you did.”
Outside the truck, the night sky was black-and-white. Grayson’s memories were blue, like the West Texas sky, red like sunlit peaks on stone mountains. Red like fire.
“You were right. I didn’t kill Alex,” he said, and it sounded like a confession.
“What really happened?” Reece asked quietly.
Grayson watched the road pass under his headlights, more of the same thousands upon thousands of solitary miles he’d driven since that day he’d been changed into the Dead Man. “Alex and I were taken to a bunker somewhere out in West Texas. To this day I don’t know exactly where it was. The people who took us said my pain was going to bring my real brother back, but Alex said they were lying, that they only wanted to use me to see how powerful they could make him, and then they’d kill us both.”
“Evan.” Reece’s voice was so gentle—not a hint of Grumpy Bear right then, just Tenderheart Bear through and through. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t waste your sympathy on me,” Grayson said. “I don’t feel sorrow. I don’t feel regret. I don’t feel anything.” He moved into the left lane, passed a car. “Alex said he thought he could make me even stronger, strong enough to break us out, but it’d mean trading my emotions away. And I said yes.”
“You let him make you the Dead Man?” Reece whispered.
“ He wasn’t lying,” Grayson said. “And it was my fault we were in that bunker. The change worked, and I got us free, but I hadn’t counted on Alex turning around and lighting the whole place up, thralling every last person in that bunker. In hindsight I should’ve—corrupted empaths don’t really turn the other cheek.”
The sound of the truck’s engine was deep and the night was cold, but Grayson’s memories still held the bunker’s high-pitched screams and fire’s heat. “Outside the bunker, Alex could feel it when the Empath Initiative and Stone Solutions showed up to rescue us, and he was laughing, because it meant dozens of new people for him to thrall. I knew Alex was still dangerous, still corrupted, and I needed to stop him before he hurt them. I had him in that room, at gunpoint. And then...”
Grayson trailed off. Reece waited, and the truck was quiet, just the windshield wipers layered over the engine.
“It happened very fast,” Grayson finally said. “I didn’t have feelings stopping me from using that gun, but I—I still had my memories. And my finger wouldn’t pull the trigger. I wasn’t ready for that and he escaped.”
“You let him go.”
“No,” Grayson said quickly. “There was nowhere for him to go in that bunker, and there was fire everywhere. He was as good as dead.”
“Then why lie about it?” Reece said. “Unless, of course, you lied and told everyone you’d killed your brother because it would keep them from looking for him.”
“That’s not what it was,” Grayson said again. “Maybe your empathy is looking for answers based in feelings but you’re not gonna find them with me.”
Reece looked like he wanted to say a lot more to that, but he bit his lip. “What does your brother want with Gretel Macy?”
“He apparently let her go unhurt, for whatever reason. But now he’s got Officer Stensby and the airsoft manager, Keith Waller, under his thrall, and no one’s seen them since they broke into Stone Solutions, left the night shift security dead, and set another fire in their wake.”
Reece winced.
“Yeah, Alex is my brother, but I gotta stop him,” Grayson said, more quietly. “This is why the world needs the Dead Man.”
Reece held up the phone. “The president of Stone Solutions Canada sent you this. The same one who’s got that broken Dead Man blueprint on a hidden flash drive.” There were too many emotions in his voice for Grayson to pick them all out. “Is this the message from all the empath agencies? Did they tell you that you have to come be the Dead Man—against your own brother ?”
“Yeah, they did, because yeah, I do,” Grayson said. “What happened with Alex taught me that corruption is permanent. I might’ve hesitated that first night in that bunker, Reece, but I learned my lesson and I’ll never flinch like that again. If I have to take my brother down, I will. If I have to take you down, I’ll do it too.”
“But isn’t it just so convenient for Stone Solutions and the Empath Initiative that it’s always you?” Reece’s eyes had narrowed at the corners. “How nice for a bunch of cowards who want someone to hide behind and don’t care what happens to you in the process.”
“This is what the Dead Man does. I’m just a weapon—”
“No,” Reece said sharply. “I don’t care what all those assholes keep telling you. I know it was written all over that manual on that flash drive, calling you a perfectly engineered weapon for these predators , but you’re more than a weapon, they’ve just always been afraid of us.”
“Don’t take that comment for more than it’s worth,” Grayson said. “Traynor told me about that new theory and it’s obviously wrong—”
“What do you mean, new theory? It’s not new , it was right there in that manual,” Reece said, over Grayson’s protest. “And you’re not a weapon. Weapons don’t have compassion and kindness, but you still do. I know you do, because it’s keeping me off that ledge of corruption. You are keeping me off that ledge. Understand? So you have to be careful, because if anything happened to you, I don’t know what I’d do.”
Grayson didn’t know what to say to that. Reece was so intuitive, even about Grayson; unusual for him to be wrong like this. Maybe he just couldn’t bear the thought of a human weapon, even if that’s all Grayson was now. “I do try to be careful,” he finally said. “But it’s not always gonna be an option. Sometimes I’ll have to do things, or go places, where there’s danger.”
“Ugh, is this about to be your big and I can’t take you with me because I can’t put you in danger too speech?” Reece sounded extremely disgruntled. “I’m surprised it took this long. You know you could have just found a hotel room in Horseshoe Bay while I was knocked out and left me there when you had the chance.”
“Unconscious and alone? When you’re more on edge than ever, and got a bad habit of running straight into danger?” Grayson shook his head. “You’re too close to becoming fully corrupted, and if you turn, it’s gonna put countless others in danger. I wasn’t gonna leave you all by yourself when I want you to be—”
The streetlight rippled through the truck, lighting Reece in the shotgun seat, because after thousands of miles of the same Dead Man roads alone, something had changed.
“When you want me to be what?” Reece prompted.
When I want you to be safe.
“I—” Grayson’s tongue tripped again. “When I, uh. When I want you to be at the safe house.”
He looked back at the road. That was what he’d been going to say all along. Of course it was. He had a temporary passenger; nothing had actually changed.
Reece folded his arms.
“It’s a better spot for you to be than a hotel,” Grayson said. “It’s fully stocked with food, clothes, everything you’d need to lay low for a bit. Even vegan candy.”
“I’m not that easy,” Reece said.
“I had some clothes in my size delivered too,” Grayson said. “You can swipe another one of my hoodies.”
“Hmph.”
Grayson had one more card to play, but he’d wait until they made it to the pier.
They drove in silence for a few minutes, the dark forest rushing past on the right, the black ocean on the left.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Reece finally said. “I know you’re the Dead Man, but you just found out your brother is alive—”
“I told you, Reece,” Grayson said. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking I can have feelings. I’ll tell you again: Alex was the most dangerous corrupted empath I’ve ever met. I’m gonna stop him, and if it comes to it, I will stop you too. Nothing will ever change that.”
Reece huffed.
“You gotta be careful around me,” Grayson said. “Do you know what the word careful means or do I need to define it for Bad Decisions Bear over here?”
“Oh, please,” said Reece. “How can you tell me I need to listen to you and be careful when in the same breath you’re telling me you’re the biggest danger around?”
“Because what did you just do in the back of a pickup truck with the biggest danger around ?”
There was a moment of silence.
“Well, shit,” Reece muttered.
Victor Nichols typed frantically into the phone as the pilot, Tasha, took their helicopter south, toward Vancouver.
“Sir,” Tasha started tentatively. “Are you sure we shouldn’t go back to Polaris?”
“Quite sure,” he said curtly.
“But I heard the alarm—and the others have no way off the island—”
“Just fly the fucking helicopter where I tell you to,” he snapped, and she fell silent.
Nichols finished his message and sent it out.
Polaris was compromised by Alex Grayson.
He’s alive.
I told you the Dead Man would betray us.
He’s a failed experiment, as dangerous as the empaths themselves.
No more stalling; we take him out now.
Five minutes later, a single-word response came in.
Agreed.