Chapter 24 The Wrong Effect
The first thing I became aware of was movement.
Not the sharp, jarring kind that suddenly snaps someone awake, but something steady and rhythmic, like being rocked.
Warmth followed, a solid, encompassing heat pressed around me on all sides.
And for one blissfully ignorant moment, I thought I was back in my bed at the hotel.
Half-tangled in blankets, half-dreaming, safe enough to let my mind drift without clawing its way back into my body.
Then my cheek moved against something firm, not a pillow, something that rose and fell beneath my face. A deep vibration thrummed through it that I realized was a heartbeat. One that was slow and calm, like the person carrying it had decided panic was for other people.
“Oh,” I murmured.
The sound seemed to echo in my own head with an exaggerated slowness, like my thoughts were wading through honey.
My eyelids fluttered, heavy and uncooperative.
When I finally managed to open them, all I saw was darkness broken by silver light filtering through leaves overhead and moonlight dancing across branches.
Trees. Forest. Badlands.
Memory came rushing back all at once, sharp enough to make my stomach lurch.
The voice that wasn’t Atlas, the powder exploding green across my face, hands lifting me.
The panic as I watched the snap of something terrifying and lethal moving through the woods.
But my mind was also whirling, finding it difficult to hold on to the details, the clear edges…
like things were fuzzy. Jesus, was I drunk? !
I gasped and shifted my body, which responded sluggishly as semi-awareness snapped into place, and that was when arms tightened around me.
“You’re awake,” a deep voice said. Wow, just how deep was that voice… I didn’t know, but I would happily drown in it, that was for sure.
I groaned instead of answering, the sound dragging itself out of me as I stretched and my fingers curled into warm fabric beneath my hand.
There was a scent there too, not gun oil, metal, and sweat like most men who lived on the base, but something more natural.
Like rain on stone, like crushed herbs, like the air just before lightning cracked the world open.
Something woodsy… not Woody, that was that cowboy from Toy Story…
I wonder what happened with him and little Bo Peep…
She most likely ran off with Buzz. Now there was a toy… Jesus, focus, Alex!
“Who’s Buzz?” he asked, making me gasp in horror when I realized I had said all that aloud.
“Mmm, no one special… oh darn, now I feel bad… he was special to Andy.” It took immense effort for my eyes to shift up to see his face. One wearing a frown so deep it could have cracked his face… now that would be a shame.
“Would it?” he asked, making me realize I had just done it again, damn it.
“Well, you are pretty,” I replied, instead of trying to take the last five minutes of madness back. His eyes widened at this as if shocked before repeating the word.
“Pretty?”
“Yes, like flowers,” I replied, my voice coming out too high-pitched for the quiet around us.
“Like flowers?” he asked in disbelief.
“Don’t you like flowers?” I asked, but before he could answer, I asked, “Mmm, Did… did we move the floor?”
The arms around me went very still.
I blinked and looked up at him again, my vision swimming slightly, and all my eyes seemed to focus on was Theron’s jaw, strong and sharp in the moonlight.
I forced them to move higher, and his face was angled downward as he looked at me with open disbelief.
As though I had just spoken a language he did not believe mortals possessed.
“You should not be conscious, let alone speaking in riddles,” he said.
I frowned, the expression taking far more effort than it should have, like my face was a puzzle piece I had to fit into place.
“Well,” I replied thoughtfully, lifting my head an inch before letting it fall back against his chest, “I am… So… Surprise, yey me!”
For a heartbeat, he just stared at me. Then his brow creased, concern cutting through the remnants of fury I could still sense coiled tightly beneath his skin, fury held in check by something within him.
He slowed to a stop, the forest quieting around us as if it, too, was listening for what I would say next.
Or waiting to see what the King of the Badlands would do with the strange mortal in his arms.
“What did they give you?” he asked, his voice held a hint of concern. “What did you take?”
“Take? I don’t steal, I will have you know of good auth…
oritity… that I am an honest person. You had fire surround me to tell you that, and by the way, F…
U… Y, or is it I…? Anyway, that was mean and very, very scary.
I don’t like fire until it is crackling nicely in a fireplace with stockings at Christmas.
Hey, do you celebrate Christmas? I’m sorry, can you repeat the question?
” I don’t know which part of all I said made him look at me like I had two heads, but he only responded to the last part.
“Did you take anything?”
I considered this question very seriously. There had been something green. Something glowy. Something… rude. I mean, who goes puff in a stranger’s face? Very rude.
“It was pretty,” I said slowly, lifting one hand and gesturing vaguely in the air between us, my fingers wobbling slightly as though I were conducting an orchestra only I could hear. “But not a mushroom I’d eat.”
Silence.
“I’m sorry?” he said.
I nodded solemnly.
“Green. Glowy. Like a fungus. But way meaner than any mushroom I ever saw, and I grew up playing Mario games.”
Something flashed across his face then, and he swore under his breath in a language I didn’t recognize. A string of words that sounded like stone striking stone.
“That plant should have rendered you unconscious,” he muttered, more to himself than to me. “If my kind had taken it in, it would have.”
“Well, that sounds boring,” I replied, emphasizing the word boring. “This is much more fun.”
That earned me a long look as though he were seeing me properly for the first time.
Not as a bargaining chip… oh chips and dip, now that was the midnight snack of champions…
er… where was I? Not being thought of as a complication.
But as an innocent human mixed up in a world I didn’t know.
I was an enigma he had not accounted for, and Theron didn’t seem like a man who enjoyed dealing with the unknown… oh well, then this should be fun.
Without warning, he bent and set me gently on my feet.
I swayed immediately, the world tilting sideways in a way that made me laugh before I could stop myself, my hands shooting out to catch at his arms. He steadied me instantly, one large hand firm at my waist, the other lifting my chin with surprising gentleness.
Careful enough that it didn’t feel like control, it felt like he was making sure my neck stayed attached to my body.
Because I liked having my head on my neck, it made for a good place to stay.
Moonlight spilled into the clearing we’d stopped in, pale and full, bathing him in silver.
Up close, I could see the way his skin shimmered faintly, not quite stone, not quite flesh.
But like marble warmed by life beneath it.
His eyes were impossibly green in this light, softer now, curious rather than burning, like oxidized copper polished to a lethal shine. Not green like those stupid mushrooms.
He tilted my head slightly, studying my pupils.
“Hello, handsome,” I said with enthusiasm.
His hand stilled.
“You are not meant to be… flirting with me,” he said slowly, and the pause before the word flirting made it sound like he had never used it in a sentence before.
I grinned up at him.
“I’m not flirting. I’m observing, and you are a Smokey Bandit.”
“A what?”
“Well, I don’t really know, but I mean hot…
fire, smoking. Okay, we will just go with 'handsome' then. It’s got to be said.” I reached up, entirely without permission, and brushed my fingers along the line of his jaw.
The skin there felt warm and smooth, then, beneath my touch, something harder surfaced briefly before receding again like a secret showing itself and then deciding it wasn’t ready to be told.
“Oooh,” I said. “That’s new and very cool.”
He didn’t stop me. In fact, he seemed momentarily unsure what to do at all. As though the choices were either to restrain me, which would be cruel when I could barely stand, or to let me touch him, which was apparently a scenario he had never considered.
“This reaction,” he said carefully, “is… unexpected.”
“That’s a shame,” I replied, tilting my head. “I think your kidnappers would’ve had more fun if they knew this was an option when you had them snatch me away.”
A sound escaped him then, low and startled, halfway between a laugh and a breath of disbelief.
“And your recent abductor no doubt didn’t plan for this,” he added, dryly as he looked me up and down.
“Nor did he plan for you, you little rage monster you,” I said, gripping his chin and giving it a playful shake, making his eyes widen in shock.
But then, I suppose no one had ever dared to act like this around him before.
Ha, no wonder I was having so much fun! “Rude of him, trying to trick me,” I agreed solemnly, as if I were filing an official complaint.
The tension eased between us then. Lighter, almost fragile.
Like a glass ornament that could shatter if either of us breathed wrong.
He lifted me again, this time without urgency, and I wrapped my arms around his neck automatically, resting my head against his shoulder as though that was where I belonged.
As though my body had decided his was the safest place to be without consulting my brain first.
He stiffened for half a second, then resumed walking.