The Protectors (8 page)

All I could think was:
This can’t be the same woman. The one I’d laughed with, trained with, relied on.
I thumbed away a tear from beneath her eye.

“Lyla, please . . .”

“The world will thank us for it! Every country, every person. It’s like you always say: we’re the good guys. They’ll know it in the end.”

I couldn’t hear any more. My shoulders shrugged her hands off and I pulled away. Her arms remained outstretched, as if begging me to return, but I couldn’t—no matter how badly I wanted to.

She was beyond reason. I couldn’t help thinking of Carsten at the end.

“If you have to tell people you’re the good guy, you’re probably not,” I said.

Her arms dropped and the hopeful face collapsed with them. She said nothing.

“Come back to America,” I begged. “You can stay with me in Colorado. Rest, relax . . . think things through.”

Silence. Her brow lower now.

“Don’t ruin your life by going on a crusade you have no hope of winning,” I said.

Her voice rumbled. “We shall see.”

I stepped back farther down the hall. Her face was hidden in shadow. Where I wanted it.

“Lyla, don’t do anything”—I almost said “crazy” but stopped myself—“foolish.”

“Now who is the one not giving me a choice, Scott? Die quickly fighting a hopeless crusade against the world, or die slowly with you in the mountains?”

She took a step toward me. I still couldn’t see her face.

“Don’t.” More authority in my voice than I felt. I backpedaled a few feet but my heel struck the closet door at the end of the hall. Nowhere left to retreat.

“I do not need to
ask
you to join me, my love,” she said, her voice starting to hum.

My left hand came up.

“Stop. Let’s leave the powers out of this.”

Another step forward. Her mouth emerged from the shadows first, and her eyes flickered on the edge, swirling faintly. I moved my hand higher to eclipse her eyes, but I could still see her mouth. Her lips glistened.

“I no longer want to be alone. Come, lower your hand and be with me.”

The waves started to wash over me, like in the restaurant, but weaker. I wasn’t looking directly into her eyes, but her voice . . . the sweetness of it. The words were like golden honey.

With what was left of my free will, I made a rash decision. I flung out my fist and smashed a framed picture hanging on the wall beside me. Shards of glass sliced into my hand, and the pain gave me a precious few seconds to realize how close to oblivion I stood.

She’d never release me. She couldn’t. I was questioning her sanity, which was the biggest breach of trust I could possibly make. Without trust, she could never have me at her side—not the real me. We both knew that the only way she’d let me leave this house was as her slave. One look at her eyes and I was done.

In other words, it was time to pull out the big guns.

She took one final step out of the darkness and I closed my eyes. I concentrated until I found her consciousness, the button hanging in the blackness in front of me—but then I went beyond. I’d learned over the last few years that the button wasn’t an impenetrable surface; it was a gateway. A gateway I could move through, to explore the other side. As long as I could endure the pain, I could enter someone else’s consciousness.

The first time, I’d thought about it as mind reading, but realized later it was a piss-poor description. Reading is passive, like when you
read a book: you look, the pages give information, but you give nothing in return. This was like
becoming
the book, using the paper and ink to breathe. I extended my consciousness toward her and braced myself for the pain. Throbbing at first, it spiked sharp when I opened the gate and ventured inside.

Chaos. Paranoia. Fear.

Her thoughts . . . my thoughts now . . . were scattered, impossible to lock in. In the middle of the storm, I saw a small window into the hallway. My body stood there, hand outstretched, concentrating so hard I could see sweat beading on my own forehead. I heard Lyla’s words, separate from her thoughts, but in here, they had no effect on me.

Be mine so I will never be alone again. I give you everything . . . accept it and be loved.

The words bounced and echoed in the space, but underneath them, I heard a deeper murmur. Soft, sinewy, it slithered through my consciousness . . . below the words, underneath the cloud of chaos. Concentrating harder made the snaking, twisting thought coalesce.

Kill me.

Down deep, maybe even below her own train of conscious thought, Lyla wanted to die. I was astonished. Worse, the shock made me lose my connection.

The force of reentering my own consciousness dropped me to my knees. My eyes opened briefly as I collapsed, and I caught a glimpse of her swirling gaze. I squeezed them shut as hard as I could and growled out a long, steady rumble from the bottom of my throat to mask the sound of her voice. Still, the closer she got, the more I risked her strongest influence, pheromones. If I rushed her, tried to be physical in any way, the first time I took a breath would be my last as a free man.

I extended again and put my mental finger on the button . . . gave the tiniest bit of pressure . . . enough to make her woozy.

“Stop! Last warning!” I shouted.

“Drop me now and you had better keep me down,” she said, no hint of wooziness in her voice. “When I wake, I won’t give you a chance to defend yourself. If you run, I will put my plan into motion . . . governments
will
pay for hunting me, people
will
die!”

“You won’t do it! I know you, Lyla!!”

She was stepping closer. I could feel the waves intensify, coming at me like sonar pulses of warmth and pleasure. I wanted so badly to give in to them, lay myself bare so I could feel
everything.

“You don’t know me now! I’m so angry . . .” She began choking on the words. “So filled with hate . . . I need it to stop, or I will hurt people. You saw me in the alley!”

“I won’t kill you,” I said.

Her voice grew louder, more defiant.

“You’ll do what you have to do! You’ll save innocent lives . . . protect others. It is
who you are
!” she roared.

Same old Scott. Always worried about the innocent,
she’d said in the restaurant when I’d sat down at her table. Now I realized why she’d allowed me to find her. Not because she missed me, not for curiosity, and not for old times’ sake. She brought me to London because locked away in some part of her hyperactive, broken mind rested the most important truth of all. I was the only one who could help her, and if I wasn’t willing to do so, God help me, I was the only one who could stop her.

“You’re not too far gone,” I squeaked before taking in a final gasp of air.

She took her last steps, reached down, and jerked me to my feet. Her arms pistoned me against the closet door at the end of the hall.

“Don’t let me become a monster.
Do it now!
”

I cringed in her grip, eyes pinned shut, craning my neck away from her face. I held my breath and tried to fight her raw power. She spoke once more, and I felt her breath against my face.

“You’ll be mine in seconds, my love. Do it of your own free will, or I will embrace you and
force
you to do it. Kill me and save the world. Last chance.”

My finger rested on her mental button.

Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love. Full of hate and ready to set the world on fire.

“Kill me!”
she screamed.

I screamed back, pushed the button, and gave her what she wanted.

PART TWO

CHAPTER 11

I
know from experience that if you hold someone’s consciousness down for five seconds, it doesn’t get back up. Funny thing about those seconds—they last a really long time. Part of Fate’s twisted sense of humor, I guess: the most important moments in your life tend to move in slow motion. Five interminable seconds between life and death. And no matter how fast reality
actually
moves, your brain moves quicker.

One second . . .

How many commandments have you broken?

One of my favorite college drinking games. For every one of the Ten Commandments you’ve broken, the modest punishment was to shotgun a beer. One of the problems with the game (and there were several): if you were a modest offender and had only broken, say, six of the ten, by the time you’d slurped down six beers, you were well fueled and champing at the bit to go break the other four. Not exactly what God had in mind, I’m guessing.

Hell, one of the best parts of the game was to listen to all of the Bud Light scholars try to
remember
the Ten Commandments, let alone discuss them. A lot of bleary eyes turned to me on those nights for help, not because I was Mr. Religion or anything but mainly because I held my liquor better than most. I’d end up repeating the list five times per game and usually wound up as judge and scorekeeper to boot.

If
I take a pen home from work, is that stealing?

One by accident? No. A box of ’em? Yes.

If I bet on Sunday’s Dolphins game, but I place the bet on Friday . . .

Yeah, uh, still not keeping the Sabbath holy.

If I tell my boyfriend he’s the best lover I’ve ever had, and he’s really not . . .

I think God sees the value of little white lies. And on a side note, you should consider an upgrade . . .

By the end of the game, the whole group is hammered and the scores all look the same. Everybody covets, everybody lies, and nobody
always
honors their parents. Back then, most of us had cheated on our girlfriends/boyfriends—the college version of adultery—and we sure as hell used the Lord’s name in vain when they found out. And during an all-night Organic Chemistry cram session (when you’ve blown off half the semester’s lectures) even the best of us lose faith and question whether there’s a God up there listening to our desperate prayers.

But we never had a score higher than nine.

Thou shall not kill. Easiest one to remember, hardest one to break. Little words with gigantic impact, but ironically a quiet one: the words are so sacred, so unassailable that normal people brush them away without thought.

Of COURSE I haven’t killed anyone.

The Sixth Commandment is so obvious, it’s silly. When the scorekeeper brings it up, you laugh.

Until you break it.

Then you’ll be amazed how tough it is to laugh at anything ever again.

Two seconds . . .

Carsten’s death—pardon me, Carsten’s murder—taught me a lot of things. First, “thou shall not kill” is only four words long. There’s no “unless you have a good reason” addendum. No “it’s him or me” clause. No matter what justification others try to ascribe, everything still boils down to those four words.

After Carsten died, people went out of their way to convince me it wasn’t my fault—God’s will, I was just the instrument, it was his time, self-defense, blah-blah-blah. I heard them all perfectly fine, I just didn’t listen. I was too busy attaching the lead ball and heavy chain to my ankle—which I proceeded to drag along behind me for the next five years. Another lesson learned: if you’re responsible for someone’s death, you carry the guilt with you always, like really hideous luggage.

The extra weight pulls on you constantly, plus has a nasty habit of whispering in your ear whenever it wants, instantly transforming good times into bad, and bad ones into nightmares of despair.

Cardinals won the World Series? Congratulations! Murderer.

That cute girl was definitely flirting with you. Think she’d still be interested if she knew you were a killer?

Your dad died? Well, at least he no longer has to deal with the disappointment of having you as a son.

Guilt is like having your worst enemy for a best friend. He walks along beside you all day, every day, and he never shuts up. The passage of time might throw a gag on the little fucker, but he chews his way through it with glee, and he loves giving the finger to all those people who spew the god-awful “Time heals all wounds” nonsense.

I’ve got news for you, my friends . . . time heals nothing. The reason things don’t hurt so bad after a while is that you get used to feeling shitty.

Three . . .

Then after you’ve spent five years carting around that heavy, miserable son of a bitch, a beautiful woman looks at you with sad eyes and says, “Does it make you feel better to know your burden is shared?” You reply, “Not even a little bit,” and it’s the worst kind of lie, because
you’re lying to yourself. It does feel better.

To know the person you loved once upon a time feels the weight, too.

To know you’re not alone.

To finally hope—what time can’t heal, Lyla just might.

Deep under the murmur of a Swiss restaurant, beneath the sounds of men in body armor, beyond the persistence of your own panicked arguments, you hear a soft click, a chain unlocks, and a lead ball rolls away.

Powerful stuff, self-forgiveness.

Four . . .

I stand in a dark hallway, one second from killing a human being. Again.

The lead ball’s rolling back toward me, now the size of a boulder, with jagged spikes like a World War II ocean mine. My old friend Guilt peeks out from behind the metal behemoth and he can barely contain himself. With a smile like the Cheshire Cat, he’s holding the manacle at the end of the chain, clicking it open and shut, open and shut. His gleaming eyes tell me all I need to know: I put those shackles on, they’re never coming off.

I look at Lyla’s unconscious body and consider her threats to enslave me, but they pale next to my gremlin with the big metal ball. I picture myself chained to the mine as it yanks me below the waves. The weight drags my clawing, screaming body down into cold, dark depths, where I finally understand a fundamental truth.

There are worse things than being enslaved.

I never get to five.