The Change (Unbounded) (14 page)

I liked him. I liked him a lot. There was no tension, no hidden agenda, no sexual desire emanating from him. He was a lot like my brothers, despite the fact that they looked nothing alike. My eyes felt suspiciously moist. “I’m pleased to meet you, Laurence. I really am.”

He took my hand again and leaned forward, his face nearly touching mine. “I know. They’re all a little too intense, but you and I will get along just fine. As soon as we’re settled in Oregon, I’ll set you up in business. There’s nothing better than being in control of your own destiny, and as long as they hold the purse strings, you won’t feel that way.”

Impulsively, I hugged him. “Thank you.”

He smiled and winked at me, the fat on his face jiggling slightly. “Enough of that. I’m a married man. You’re going to love my wife, by the way. She’s a sweetheart.”

Something about the way he said it made an impression on me. “She doesn’t know, does she?”

“I’ll have to tell her soon.” He smiled, but this time his expression was infinitely sad. “I’ll introduce you as one of my many cousins. Won’t be far from the truth, I’m sure.” He patted my shoulder. “You’re a lot more like your grandmother than I thought. But I like you anyway. Come on, let’s go find the others. Take my advice, though, and don’t back down. Fight for what you want. Even if it’s not important.”

He was a curious man. Affable and friendly one minute, sad and serious the next, and definitely not afraid to show his emotions. Maybe he was too young to have developed the habit of hiding them.

Too young. When did I start thinking of a hundred and ten as being young?

In a sitting room adjoining the kitchen, we found Ava and Dimitri together on a couch, Cort in an easy chair, and Ritter pacing along the shuttered window. Stella was on the loveseat next to an arresting white-haired man, who was older than I’d expected but much more handsome. In his younger years, he would have been a heartthrob; now he was the epitome of old-fashioned stateliness and grace. Stella snuggled in the crook of his arm, one of her smooth hands lying atop his wrinkled, age-spotted one in casual intimacy.

“Ah, this must be the famous Erin,” Bronson said, coming to his feet and extending a hand.

“You mean infamous,” I said with a smile.

He chuckled. “Or soon to be. Goes with the territory.”

My stomach lurched as our hands made contact. On the outside he appeared at rest, but touching him showed me his pain, as though it were my own. I drew my hand away, trying not to yank it. My imagination must be working overtime.

“Well, I have to be off,” Laurence said.

Ritter opened his mouth, but Laurence beat him to it. “Don’t worry. I’m armed, and I’m taking two of the guys. They know the score.” He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “Bye, dear cousin. We’ll talk later.”

I watched his bulk amble from the room, wishing I could go with him.

“When are we leaving?” I addressed no one in particular. Ava was talking to Dimitri, and Ritter gazed sullenly out the half-open blinds on the window, so my gaze settled on Cort who at least appeared happy to see me. “I want to call my family before we go. See how they’re doing.” What I really wanted to do was tell them about the Hunters and about Ritter’s family so they would be more careful, but I couldn’t say those things over the phone, and that meant some kind of a visit.

“We won’t leave until late tonight,” Cort said.

Ritter picked up his machine gun from the windowsill and turned in my direction. “Time for your lesson.”

“Can’t that wait until Oregon?” I asked.

“No.”

I was going to argue the point, but Ava nodded. “I have to agree with Ritter. You never know when you’ll need to protect yourself. Our encounter with the Hunters has proven that. We have things well enough in hand that we can spare Ritter for a while. You might even be able to arrange a quick visit with your family, if you really must.”

At first I was startled that she had guessed my true intentions, but then she’d spent a good deal of time studying me. “Okay. Let’s train,” I capitulated with bad grace. “I’ll go change, but you have to remember I was shot a day and a half ago, and burned nearly to death before that. I’m not exactly feeling my best.” This was a lie. I actually felt quite well.

Ava smirked at me. “Don’t worry. Ritter will go easy on you.”

I sighed. I’d seen what his “easy” entailed.

“You know,” Stella mused aloud. “Eventually your family may want to consider moving. That way, you would be able to visit them more readily.”

At once I felt lighter. It would take time, but maybe my life could be put back together.

Five minutes later, Ritter led me down to Stella’s walkout basement. The whole floor was one open room, with a long line of windows and glass doors along the far wall. Another wall was lined with combat instruments, and still another sported a wooden mannequin with knife cuts marring both its body and the cork wall behind. There was a punching bag, a wrestling mat, and in the corner, looking very out of place, a pool table.

Ritter gave me a flat smile. “Everything but a shooting range. But you know how to shoot, don’t you?”

“A little.”

“More than a little.” He strode to a black duffel near the rear wall by a drinking fountain, reaching inside to pull out a pistol. “This is yours. When we get to Oregon, I’ll train you on the other guns as well, and show you how to take care of them, but this will do for now. It’s a nine mil, but it’s compact, so you can carry it at all times. Use your purse, a shoulder holster. Whatever. We have a bunch to choose from in that bin over there. Next time a Hunter attacks, you’ll be ready.”

I scowled. I didn’t feel comfortable enough with a weapon to carry it around, but more importantly I didn’t like him telling me what to do. “And if I don’t want to?”

“Please, Erin.”

I hadn’t expected that. Though the expression on his face hadn’t changed, there was a sudden shift in the way he held his body, and I knew the attack had shaken him. Not because there had been so many Hunters or the manner of the attack, but because he hadn’t expected it. He hated surprises. I was beginning to suspect Ava had made me train today only to assuage his conscience, to give him something to focus on.

My anger died, and I decided not to remind him of how many gun owners had their own weapons turned on them. “About the other night, after the shooting,” I said, checking the chamber of the gun to make sure it didn’t have a bullet inside. Some people carried guns loaded, but I preferred to be two steps away from firing. That meant I’d have to rack before pulling the trigger. “Thanks for staying with me.”

“It was my pleasure.” He looked at me through half-lidded eyes that sent an involuntary heat surging through me as I remembered the heaviness and warmth of his hand on my bare stomach, the relaxation in his face. His smell.

Not good.

He turned from me and grabbed two bo staffs off the wall. “Set the gun over there. We won’t need it today.”

He stood in the middle of the room waiting for me but didn’t seem to be in a hurry to begin. “About your family,” he said. “Stella’s suggestion to move them may sound simple now, but it’s more complicated than you realize. Eventually, your parents will have to move again and again, so their new neighbors won’t catch on to the fact that you never age. They’ll have to become accustomed to calling you by yet another name, and when your face becomes known among the Emporium Unbounded and the Hunters, they’ll have to worry about the lives of your siblings and their grandchildren. They may feel they have to choose.”

I hadn’t thought about Chris and Lorrie. Would they be willing to uproot their children? My parents wouldn’t want to leave them. Was constantly moving fair to my family? I glared at Ritter, hating him for being my conscience, for making me see that my parents were better off where they were. Better off without me.

He tossed me a staff, and this time I went after him with force, not holding anything back. Why should I? It wasn’t as if I’d really be able to hurt him. Yet. For now he was too fast and too good, but the day would come. Until then, he was skilled enough not to hurt me as I made my wild, uncontrolled attacks.

Or so I hoped. I was really tired of getting hurt.

After twenty minutes, he put away the bo staffs and tossed me a black stick about two feet long. “This is an escrima stick. We’ll start with one, but eventually use two.”

We went at it again. Overhead strikes, under strikes, use of the butt to hit your opponent in vital places. Sweat dripped from my body, but I was determined not to stop until he told me to. It was a matter of pride. Pride like the kind that had forced me to leave college. I longed for curequick, but knowing its addictive properties kept my craving manageable. I settled for sips of water from the drinking fountain, and absorbed whatever I could from the air. I was glad I’d had the bacon for breakfast.

After the sticks, we worked on hand-to-hand combat. My skin was tougher today, and though we worked strenuously, there were no beads of blood. He corrected my technique every few minutes, but he didn’t seem to tire or become angry at my repeated mistakes. “Good,” he said, as I blocked a blow that would have leveled me during our first session. Instead it only shoved me into the wall. “Of course, you’ll need to twist out of there immediately after the block. You can’t afford to be pinned against any solid surface.”

For demonstration, he faked an uppercut to my abdomen that probably would have meant the end for me in a real fight. We stood inches away. I could taste the hint of mint in his hot breath, see the glistening of the skin of his neck, face and arms. Emotions waved over me. Possessiveness. Desire. I wanted to run my hands over the tautness of his chest. I wanted to taste his lips, his cheeks, the softer-looking skin in the hollow of his neck.

Where did that all come from?

I clamped down on the emotions. Had becoming Unbounded messed up all my hormone levels? Or was I simply attracted to Ritter in a way I never had been attracted to any man before?

Whatever it was, I didn’t like it.

I steeled myself for what might come next. I didn’t know how I’d react if he touched me. My skin was already on fire. I tried to think about Tom, but all that did was make me feel angry, betrayed. Tom may have taken himself out of the running, but that didn’t mean I would fall into the arms of the nearest available killing machine, no matter how deathly sexy he might be. I didn’t need Ritter or Tom. I would have dozens of lifetimes to find someone else. If I even wanted anyone else.

Ritter moved closer, his hands reached out. Instead of touching me, they went above my head, removing something from a shelf above my head. A leather holder containing two knives.

“These,” he said, hoarsely, “are something else you shouldn’t be without. Guns make a lot of noise, especially without a silencer, and they’re harder to hide, but these you can strap around your thigh like this.” He touched me then, settling the leather over my stretch pants. “Works especially well if you’re wearing a skirt.”

I wasn’t sure if he was teasing or not. Frankly, I was glad for the layer of cloth between us, but only because I was afraid of how I would react to his fingers on my flesh. He didn’t look at me as he fastened the buckles, and I knew he was avoiding my stare.

“Come over here,” he said, backing toward the mannequin in front of the cork wall. “I’ll teach you some basic moves. You’ll be keeping these knives. I already talked to Stella about them.”

So I learned the basics of knife-throwing. I was worse at this than at combat, and even Ritter’s calm was beginning to show a few cracks as yet another knife bounced off the wooden dummy without penetrating. “You’ll have to start working out your arms. You’re simply too weak.”

That jab hurt more than I wanted to admit. I glanced at the clock someone had so kindly hung on the wall. It was past one. “That’s what I’ve been doing for the past four hours.” I shoved a knife back into the leg sheath, nearly cutting through my pants in the process. “I’m finished here.”

We glared at each other for several long seconds before he nodded. “I have things to do anyway before tonight. Go ahead and say goodbye to your family, if you must. But don’t go to their house. Take Cort with you wherever you decide to meet. He’ll make sure you’re not followed.”

“Fine. But I’m agreeing only because I
want
to take Cort, not because you’re ordering me to.” I knew he didn’t exactly deserve my anger, but my hormones were raging, and I was sick of being taught to kill by a man who was half dead inside.

He sighed. “You are just like your grandmother.”

“My
fourth great-grandmother.
And we are nothing alike.”

I stomped up the stairs in a rather childish fashion, but I didn’t care what Ritter thought. In the kitchen, I stumbled into Cort. “Finally,” I said, “somebody sane. Take me away from here.”

He smiled, his eyes roaming with interest over my sweaty body. “I don’t know about sane, but I’m game. Everyone else is busy. No one has need of a scientist right now.”

“I do. Besides, according to Ritter, you’re my appointed babysitter if I want to see my family.”

“Couldn’t think of a better way to spend my afternoon than with you. How about lunch first?”

“Sounds great.” Beautiful. Normal. “Give me ten minutes to shower.”

“Tell you what, take twenty and dress up. I want to take you someplace nice. Besides, you’ll need time to come up with a disguise in case we run into someone who might recognize you.”

In my room I had a message on my cell. From Tom. I played it back, a knob of anxiety cranking inside me.

“Erin, I’m sorry I missed your call. I do need to talk to you. It’s very important. Look, I’ve done some checking and no matter what you do, don’t trust those people. They aren’t who they say they are. Call me.” A hesitation and then, “I’m sorry about what happened at your house. I can explain everything. I—I love you.”