Chapter 23 #2
Had it stood abandoned since that night?
Yellow crime-scene tape fluttered on the porch where Rowan had sat so many summer evenings, where her mother had almost fallen off while watering the roses—and oh, the roses themselves were dead or dying, brown-rot on their lovely leaves and stems. Dead leaves clustered under the old oak trees, and a fallen branch lay buried in weeds.
The door was broken, barred only by the yellow tape.
She wondered if anyone had cleaned out the fridge, if her books were still upstairs swelling with moisture from damp coming in through the front door and broken windows.
And if there were still stains on the kitchen floor. Big, dark, bloody stains.
No cars behind her, but Rowan started violently as if hearing the blast of an impatient horn. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. More tears spilled down her cheeks.
Got to get going. She checked over her shoulder for nonexistent traffic and pulled out, hoping she wasn’t weaving.
Her vision ran and blurred with both pain and tears.
Navigating through familiar streets, each new change—the Martin’s house was repainted, yards were redone, businesses had gone up and others had faded—slamming into her stomach like a badly taken punch. Each time she lost a little more air.
Oh, Justin, she thought, ignoring the spike of pain his name produced. I’m sorry.
Then she hit the freeway heading south. She would cut east past the state line and feel her way into the land of desert, rattlesnakes, Four Corners, and White Sands. She just had to get close enough to Sig Zero-Fifteen, get herself arrested or caught, and Sigma would take care of the rest.
Then, Rowan could get her revenge.
Four days later in the middle of the night, her breath short and harsh in her chest, the soft maggot-writhing voice whispering, whispering.
Sweat tacky-wet on her skin as Rowan sat up, reaching blindly for a light, any light.
The lamp on the two-drawer nightstand toppled alarmingly before she could find the button.
When it finally clicked, the hotel room resolved itself into horrid pink and beige.
She let out a coughing breath. Justin? Instinctively, she had reached for him again on waking. Why did thinking about him hurt so much?
What in God’s name was wrong with her?
Rowan found herself clutching the phone, her fingers poised above the keypad. She laid it back down, hoping she hadn’t dialed.
There was nobody to call.
If she tried to make contact with the Society, Henderson would have a fit and probably officially throw her out. And Justin… What did he think? Did he think she had betrayed them?
Never. I never would.
But if Sigma started to torture her or injected her with Zed, how long would she be able to hold out? She had no illusions about her capacity to deal with torture. Someone else might be able to endure the unspeakable, but Rowan knew very well she couldn’t.
Though she had, since joining the Society, done some amazing things when forced to. If the other side tortured her before she could get her revenge, she would just have to see how strong she could be.
Rowan examined her hands in the warm, forgiving light. They shook, her fingers almost blurring. “Look at that,” she muttered. “I’m so brave. What am I doing?”
Revenge, the persistent little voice whispered. Revenge. Revenge.
She settled cross-legged on the creaking mattress, pain cresting inside her fragile, aching head again. Something’s very, very wrong. I’m not thinking clearly.
Just then, the sensitive fringes of her mind registered a touch. Light and fleeting, simply a brush against the very outer borders of her awareness, as if someone had stepped into a room and hastily stepped back.
All uncertainty faded. Rowan reached under her pillow for the knife.
She wasn’t close enough to be sure she would be taken to Zero-Fifteen.
There was another installation just thirty miles from here.
She wasn’t even under dampers, was she? She couldn’t remember turning any on, and the funny, naked feeling she always had under them was gone.
The knifeblade gleamed. She jammed her feet quickly into boots, her jeans rasping against bleached sheets, then ghosted on silent feet to one side of the door, knife held low and reversed along her forearm.
She was sleeping in her clothes, only taking her shoes off and sometimes not even that. She might have to move quickly and couldn’t afford the time to get dressed if attacked. Adrenaline washed the pain from her head, narrowed her concentration.
Now she could hear someone fiddling with the doorknob. Air conditioning washed chill over her skin; the unit in the window made a racket which would cover any slight noise. Rowan slowly sank into a crouch, wishing she hadn’t turned on the light.
A dark room for eyes adapted to the hallway’s lighting would have given her an advantage.
The cheap deadbolt was eased open. Which meant someone was very good with a set of lockpicks; not everyone could tickle a deadbolt. The chain was almost useless, held only by one flimsy screw. She had left it open.
That was a violation of procedure. Even a flimsy deterrent was better than none at all.
Now the doorknob began to turn, a millimeter at a time.
Whoever this is, they’re going to get a big fucking surprise.
If it was a Sig, she intended to do some damage before letting them catch her. If it was anyone else…
The doorknob turned. Adrenaline freeze poured over Rowan’s vision, sharp and clear—the nap of a cheap bedspread, the horrid beige carpet, the print of a fruit basket over the useless television, individual scratches left on the painted wall from other people banging luggage carelessly around.
Rowan’s pulse slowed. She was still and quiet as an adder under a rock, buttoned down tightly, not daring to scan outside the door in case the attacker was a psion.
The door released. The attacker waited a moment before opening, an inch at a time.
Chill industrial-filtered air swept across Rowan’s arms as she slashed, legs turning into coiled springs, driving a shoulder into the attacker’s hard-muscled midriff and spilling them both onto cheap harsh hallway carpet.
She struggled wildly, her right wrist caught in a bruising grip and locked, twisted mercilessly until the knife dropped.
Then he grabbed her other wrist and rolled, effectively trapping her.
A sharp twisting psychic attack smashed into her bruised and vulnerable head.
She shunted the force of the attack aside, not even bothering to turn it back upon the attacker. Rowan found her mouth near his shoulder, training suddenly shoving aside fear. She bit as hard as she could, thrashing wildly.
He let out a short barking cry. She brought her knee up swiftly, rolled free as his arm loosened, scooping up the knife as she made it upright.
Threw a kick, catching the man squarely in the face, and catching a glimpse of blonde hair as he collapsed.
Then Rowan was on him again, knife sinking into flesh with a solid sound.
Memory cascaded inside her head. She seemed to remember a blond man clutching her arm as Justin, bloody and battered, raised his hands slowly, one full of a knife blade glittering through a haze of sedation.
The man swore in a vicious whisper. Rowan stabbed again, knife sinking in just as Justin had taught her, the shock of blade meeting bone jarring up to her shoulder. Twist it, break the suction of muscle on the blade, good girl. Just like that.
The man gurgled under her. Rowan got one foot on the floor, her knee in his midriff. She let out a short, sharp breath.
He was in Sigma gear. They’d found her, all right.
A small psshht! sound, a spear of ice buried itself in her shoulder. Ow! What the hell?
Comprehension burst inside her head just as the compulsion broke, shattered by consummation, and Rowan’s body turned to lead.
The drug was quick, a tranquilizer dart loaded with something icy-prickling, lassitude flooding out from its touch.
For one agonized moment before her head hit the floor she understood that she’d been very silly, she was trapped, and she was very, very grateful Justin was safe back at Headquarters.
Sigma had her now.