Chapter 31 #2
“This woman must remain asleep. That’s critically important.” Morse handed Red Coat a vial. “Dose her again if you see her beginning to wake.”
“Uh …”
“She is dangerous,” Morse hissed.
Red Coat shot a nervous look at Peter and Martinelli that seemed to reevaluate them as more than simply kidnapped scientists. “And the other two? What about them?”
“You can protect yourself against two unarmed men, I trust.”
“Yes.” Then—as if concerned that his delivery hadn’t been adamant enough: “Of course.”
Morse leaned in and murmured something that made Red Coat snigger. Then the man swept out.
Peter leaned against the wall behind him, numb. Beatrix’s head slumped onto his shoulder. All his choices, all his cleverness, led inexorably to this.
Red Coat, perhaps worried that two unarmed men might in fact overpower him, moved his chair closer to the door and threw up a shield spell between them. Then he smirked at Peter through it.
“So. Can’t cast anymore.”
Peter said nothing. What did it matter? What did anything matter?
The wizard sniggered again. “Explains a lot.”
Peter closed his eyes, holding Beatrix tighter.
“Not part of the elite now, so you want to stick it to the rest of us.”
Would Morse kill her as soon as the test was over?
“You’re a loser, Blackwell. A loser typic, though that’s redundant, isn’t it?”
Beside him, Martinelli shifted and put an arm around his shoulders. A quiet, powerful show of support. As Red Coat blathered on, Peter let out a ragged breath and whispered, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“I know. Me too.”
Peter’s eyes itched with tears he refused to let out.
Martinelli leaned closer. “Any bright ideas?”
“No,” he said miserably.
“It’s OK, boss.” A second passed, then another. “Look, you’re still the best friend I’ve ever had.”
The sound that escaped from Peter’s throat was perilously close to a sob. “My God, how bad were your other friends?”
Martinelli twitched with silent laughter.
“Hey!” Red Coat jumped to his feet. “Stop that! No talking! You—to your cot,” he barked at Martinelli. “You”—gesturing at Peter—“move yours to the other side of the room and put her on it.”
They did what he said. Peter’s cot was too small for two, so he carried over a chair and sat beside Beatrix, holding her hand, awaiting their deaths. Time slipped by, more of it than it would take to correct and test the weapon.
Then—abruptly—he opened his eyes and discovered he was in his own bed. He stared at the familiar walls of his room, heart racing, and saw Beatrix sitting up beside him.
“Oh,” he gasped, pulling her close. “I had the worst nightmare you could ever …”
He trailed off. There was no forest papered on the walls, no fairy lights. He looked at the bed. It was the one he’d sold just before their wedding to get the maple specimen.
They were in a bedroom that no longer existed. He could hardly believe what it meant. “Are we—is this—?”
“I think so,” Beatrix said. Her voice trembled.
He tried to tell himself it was a miracle they’d landed in dreamside and he should be grateful. But it felt like a blow to the face. To think for one moment that none of what happened had been real, only to have it foisted back on him …
“Did they separate the three of us?” Beatrix asked. “Peter! Did they?” she said urgently when he couldn’t get the answer out fast enough.
“No, we’re all in the same room.”
“I’ve got reds in my undershirt. Three of them.” She gripped his arms. “Invisible. Sewn into the front, near the top. Did Morse find them?”
“No,” he said, hope surging as the outlines of a plan came to him.
But dreamside could cut out on them at any moment. He had to prioritize. “Listen: Morse gave you a sleeping draft. He told Red Coat to dose you again as soon as you show signs of waking. Try not to. Just lie there with your eyes closed and knit something up, if you can.”
Beatrix nodded. Then he made himself tell her the rest—that he’d handed over what Morse wanted. That Morse had another transmitter.
“And I keep thinking of what you said: ‘Do we have principles, or don’t we?’” He looked away. “I was almost certain you would have wanted me to tell him no, and I couldn’t do it.”
“I would have done just as you did,” she said quietly. “If he was going to torture you, I mean.” She slipped onto his lap and laid her head on his shoulder. “How are we here, Peter? How is this possible?”
He put his arms around her, letting out a long breath.
“I don’t know.” He’d thought in the final days of his coma that the Vow-created connection between them was like a train barreling through a tunnel—take away the train, and you could still walk through the tunnel if you chose to do it.
But he assumed he was wrong when he recovered and couldn’t get back.
“If your store of magic or whatever we’re calling it wasn’t quite gone in your coma and you had to burn it up to get out, that might be why we’ve been shut out of dreamside,” Beatrix said. “What if—what if you’re now getting your magic back?”
His snort was bitter. “I tried about fifty times to cast a spell a few days ago. I really don’t think so.”
“What were you doing before you fell asleep?”
“Just sitting with you.”
“Oh.” He could feel her brow furrowing against his chest.
“You’re on my cot and I’m in a chair next to it.
Holding your hand.” He paused, struck by the irony that four months earlier, their roles had been reversed.
Then—like a flash of lightning—he remembered what she said she’d been trying to do as she held his hand in the hospital day after day.
“Beatrix—is there anything you did before you fell asleep that could be pumping magic into me?”
“I don’t—” She pulled back to look at him, eyes wide. “Wait, I was trying to overcome the sleeping draft. I was attempting to send a flood of magic through every inch of my body. If you’re holding my hand, maybe it is going to you.”
His mind raced. “Maybe I could teleport us all out.”
She nodded.
“Better Martinelli than me, though,” he added. “I might have enough magic to burn up the red but not to make the spell fully take.”
“What about the transmitter?” Her eyes welled. “Is there any way to stop them?”
“I don’t know where it is. You can set it off from anywhere.” He sighed. “It’ll be hard enough to get out of the room—I don’t see how we’re going to get the transmitter, too.”
They sat for a moment in silence, Beatrix’s arms around him, her expression somber.
“I think they’re going to set it off in Canada,” she said. “They’ve been telling reporters that we fled there. They’re probably trying to start a war.”
He frowned. Even if Draden could convince the world that Canada knowingly let two fugitives in, he surely couldn’t use that as justification for bombing the country—wreaking destruction unmatched in human history.
“Tell me again what Whitaker said to Morse when he thought the weapon wouldn’t be ready,” he said.
“Something like, ‘We’ll have other chances. We can try a later event.’”
“Event. What ‘event’ is happening tomorrow at noon?”
“I don’t know.”
He rested his head on hers. Draden’s men were going to set off the weapon at an event, or during an event, and they wanted it to utterly destroy everything within five miles of the payload stone.
That was all they knew. Even if they got out of the complex altogether—even if Martinelli could quickly connect with someone in a position of authority who would listen to him—their chances of stopping this massacre seemed awfully close to zero.
Beatrix pulled back and looked him in the eye. “I love you, Peter Blackwell. Whatever happens, I love you.”
He swallowed over a lump in his throat. I love you too seemed completely inadequate. He took her hand in both of his. “It is an ever-fixed mark,” he croaked.
“That looks on tempests”—her voice wavered—“and … and is never shaken.”
“Love alters not,” he whispered, “but bears it out even to the edge of doom.”
A tear rolled down her cheek. Heart breaking, he reached out to wipe it away—and sat up with a jerk, booted dayside, gasping and bereft. Next to him, Beatrix lay deeply asleep on the cot. Her hand hung limply off the side. He must have let go.
Well—as little as he wanted to be here, he knew what he had to do.
He kept his head down, trying to survey the room without looking like that was his aim.
Martinelli lay on the other cot, turned away from him.
Red Coat sat in his chair, eyelids heavy.
A new sheen on the walls, including the spot where the chute let out, showed a shield spell was now in place to block teleportation.
Peter shifted to the edge of the cot, putting his back to the man to conceal what he was about to do.
He slipped his hand down Beatrix’s undershirt, feeling nothing at first but the cotton fabric, and then—his heart leapt—the scratch of leaves.
He tugged all three out, carefully, and slipped the invisible reds into a pocket.
Behind him, Red Coat barked out a spell to drop the barrier separating them. He turned and saw the man rushing over.
“What are you doing?” Red Coat yelled.
“Sitting with my wife.”
“She’s waking up, isn’t she? You’re trying to hide it, aren’t you?”
“No,” Peter said, caught between relief and dismay. “No, I’m just—”
“Shut up. Get over there.” Red Coat pointed to where Martinelli was lying, and—when Peter hesitated—snapped into a spellcasting stance, a clear threat.
Peter looked over his shoulder as he went, watching the man force more sleeping draft down Beatrix’s throat. Here was his chance to pass Martinelli the leaves, but what if Red Coat gave her a fatal dose through sheer incompetence?
The man straightened up, stoppering the vial. It still looked mostly full. Peter sighed in relief, turned and bit back a curse as he realized Martinelli was sound asleep. “Hey,” he whispered, shaking his friend’s shoulder.
“Wha?” Martinelli blinked up at him.
“We’ve got—”
“No,” Red Coat barked. “No talking! Go back to your seat, typic.”