Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
This wasn't a good idea.
There was no part of Voodoo that thought Indigo should be walking, but she’d been insistent, and he’d already put her off several times. If he kept trying to control her choices, then he couldn’t help but feel as though he were no better than the people he’d just rescued her from.
No better than anyone she’d ever had in her life.
Damn.
Her life had been awful, and he couldn’t help but think of Beth Lindon.
While Beth had been kept more isolated and then sold when she hit her teens, they’d both lived through similar childhoods, and when they got Indigo back home, he was going to see if Beth wanted to come visit for a while, because he couldn’t help but think the two of them would quickly become good friends.
Not that he didn't think Rose, Cassandra, and Whitney would welcome Indigo in with open arms, because he absolutely knew they would. Rose had also grown-up suffering abuse, so he knew those two would form a strong bond, and Whitney had been controlled and forced to work continuously, missing out on her childhood, so they’d bond too.
Cassandra might have had a picture-perfect family, with parents who adored her and six brothers who would break anyone who looked at her wrong, with what had happened to her mom, and the ripple effects of it across the Charleston Holloway family, she would also be able to bond with Indigo.
For some reason, it was more important than he would have thought that everyone in his Delta Team family, and that now included all three of those women, accept and welcome Indigo with open arms.
Before even learning about her horrific childhood, he’d wanted her to become part of them, and now that he knew, he would make absolutely sure of it. She deserved a family, deserved to never be alone again, to know that she was worthy and that people would care if she was no longer alive.
“Rest time,” he announced as they approached another stream.
They weren't walking alongside the river because he knew it would make them easier to spot, and he knew that more guards would be coming.
This was as close as Dr. Gardner had ever gotten to him and his team, and he wouldn't pass up this opportunity to get them back. Indigo, too, because she’d also survived the trials.
“We only just took a break,” Indigo reminded him, but he didn't miss how harsh her breathing was, or how flushed her cheeks were.
She wanted to hold her own, he got that, and prove that she was worth keeping around, he got that, too.
But the truth was, her leg was broken, and she was doing more damage to it than was necessary.
“And now we’re taking another.”
“Thought you wanted to keep moving, put more space between us and whoever else is coming. He won't stop. Dr. Gardner is crazy, delusional. He keeps rambling about needing his own army of super soldiers. You, your team, you are that army of super soldiers, and he has to know you're here with me.”
Voodoo wasn't denying any of that, but at the same time, Indigo was weak, sick, battling infections that were healing way slower than he would have liked, and walking on a broken leg just to prove to him that she was worth not tossing aside.
She would also tell him to ditch her as soon as she felt like she was a liability.
“I can go further. I’ll tell you if I can't,” she offered.
“Liar,” he muttered, but he started walking again. If she wanted to be stupid and cause herself more damage, then that was up to her. Indigo was an adult, she was capable of making her own decisions and facilitating that seemed important.
For a while they walked in silence.
Each step Indigo took made him cringe. It was the weirdest thing because he knew that she wasn't in any pain. While she’d winced when she took that first step with the makeshift crutch, that was it.
He hadn't heard her cry or moan or groan or anything.
It wasn't the walking on the broken leg that had him worried, it was the fact that she was still running a high fever, still had wounds oozing pus, and was nowhere close to well.
Actually, strike that.
What had his gut tied in knots was that he hadn't been able to heal her.
Somehow, he’d managed to make her a little better, but Voodoo was pretty sure that had nothing to do with him and his extraordinary abilities.
The IV antibiotics and fluids had helped to ease back the infections ravaging her system enough to get her somewhat functional, the antibiotic ointment he’d been slathering on her wounds, and the near obsessive cleaning of them he’d done had all worked to make her a little less sick.
Medicine was helping her, not him.
That hadn't happened to him in a decade.
Of course, they had a well-stocked medical supply closet at the mansion. He had pretty much everything a hospital would have, and he used it whenever his teammates needed it. But more often than not, he didn't need what any doctor would have to use.
Had something happened to him? Did he still have his ability?
It wasn't that it didn't work on other people who had received Dr. Gardner’s experimental drugs because he’d healed all five of his teammates before.
It just didn't seem to work with this particular woman.
Had something been changed in the drugs over the intervening ten years that made her immune?
That didn't seem to make sense since Dr. Gardner wanted a team of super soldiers, then he wanted one of them to be able to heal the others.
Once they got back home, he was going to have all seven of them, him, his team, and Indigo, get some blood samples taken so Whitney could analyze them, try to figure out why Indigo couldn’t be cured. Figure out if something was wrong with his ability.
Figure out how he did what he did.
For ten years he’d wondered how it worked, and when they’d gotten Whitney, realized she was on their side, he’d thought that those answers were within reach.
Only she had no idea how his healing worked.
Worse, she’d told him that was never supposed to be a side effect of the drugs. That they were supposed to help him heal himself, not other people.
Lost in thought as he was, keeping only a sliver of attention on his surroundings because he knew that they likely wouldn’t be alone out there, he wasn't paying as much attention as he should be.
So he wasn't prepared for Indigo to cry out.
Spinning around, Voodoo reached for her, but didn't catch her in time, and she crumpled to the ground, the makeshift crutch falling down beside her.
“Sorry,” she whispered, her hands massaging somewhat tentatively at her broken leg.
“Pain?” he asked, concerned that the infection was somehow messing with her system and letting her feel pain she would usually be immune to.
“No. Of course not. It just … gave out,” she said, seeming surprised, although he had no idea why. Her leg was broken, and she didn't seem to be comprehending that.
“Because you shouldn’t be walking on it,” he rebuked, nudging her hands out of the way so he could take over. “Here, let me take a look.”
“Do you think you can heal it more? I don’t want to slow us down, and I'm scared more of them are coming.” As she spoke, her gaze darted about as though she expected one of those men to come rushing at them at any second.
“No one is close by, I'd know if they were,” he assured her. While she nodded, she didn't look convinced. Placing his hands on her leg, he tried to do what he normally did, but from the way Indigo was watching him, it wasn't working.
“I don’t feel that warmth this time,” she told him.
“It should be working, it always works.” He huffed. Concentrating, he tried harder, but since he didn't know how he did what he did, didn't understand the mechanics behind it, he didn't really know how to force it.
Never had to.
This was the first time it hadn't worked.
“I don’t understand,” he growled. “I don’t know what's wrong.”
“It’s okay, Voodoo.” Indigo pressed her hands over his, squeezing lightly.
But when he looked up to meet her gaze, he felt like it was anything but okay. Every time he put his hands on someone, he wanted to heal them, there was never any doubt about that. There had even been times with his team, with the women they had fallen for, where he wanted it even more.
This was on another level, though. He wanted to prove to Indigo that she could count on at least one person, that he would never let her down.
Only he was letting her down. He wasn't healing her, and he didn't know why.
“I'm sorry,” he muttered as he shoved to his feet and stalked a few feet away, needing some distance as he tried to handle his emotions, the feelings of failure that he’d dealt with since childhood, but that had dissipated when he realized he had been given an amazing ability.
Voodoo didn't know if his teammates wished they could give back their enhancements, but he had relished his, it was everything he’d ever wanted from the time he realized his parents cared more about saving others than raising him.
Now the one thing that made him special, made him better than his parents, was gone, and the woman who was going to pay the price for that was slowly wriggling her way inside him.
January 22nd
8:58 P.M.
Why had she been complaining for days now about being too hot?
Now, as Indigo lay on the ground inside a new cave, this one smaller, darker, and danker than the last, it was cold that plagued her.
Normally, she was fairly good at maintaining an even body temperature, which she knew was supposed to be one of the enhancements that came with the drugs. She’d spent countless hours being studied in that lab, tested in ways that she couldn’t help but feel were supposed to break her.
Mentally, not physically.
Dr. Gardner wanted his super soldiers to be physically strong, but he also wanted to destroy them psychologically so he could rebuild them in the image of what he expected them to be.