Under My Skin (18 page)

His first stop was a local pub. Cecelia remained in the car while the rest of us strolled down the street to the pub. I wouldn’t have recognized the business if the door hadn’t opened to reveal the drinking and smoking patrons inside. With a glance at the guards, General Dagon walked in alone without guards, without Quinn.

I wanted to shout out, “Why are we here?” But the General was in control now and I’d have to remain silent until he
let
me speak.

The bartender said nothing to me when the General sat at the counter. The General directed me to peer at the bartender. He was a shorter fellow with bushy eyebrows and a receding hairline. Would he serve me wine?

Still silent with men chatting around me, I presented the bartender with my bar code to start the tab. After that, the wine flowed. My smart mouth did as well.

Someone murmured behind me. “That’s General Dagon’s daughter, that Elise girl.”

So they recognized me. But none of them questioned why someone my age would be sitting at a bar with a bottle of expensive wine and a glass. They didn’t fight back when my lips moved to say rude jokes to people. Even though I couldn’t smell it, I could just imagine all the toxic smoke from the cigars and cigarettes around me. My hair would stink by the time he released me.

“How nice,” he said to one of the barmaids. “Only took me a few minutes to find the ugliest person in this place.” The General laughed while the girl threw dirty looks in my direction.

“Stop it.” I grasped at a split second of control, only to have it snatched away.

“Stop what?” he replied as a whisper. “
You
said that to the barmaid, not me. You’re Elise Dagon now.”

Shame fueled my anger. How dare he do this? Was all this meant to punish me? I boiled inside my head until I snapped. I was angry enough to flex the General’s fingers around his drink—but nothing more. It wasn’t fair for me to endure all these people staring at me.

By the time midnight arrived, I stumbled out of the pub. Mentally, I cringed with each step I took, trying not to imagine how I would survive the consequences of his actions in the morning. Quinn and the two personal guards, who waited near the door, stood at attention. Quinn’s expression was grim, but he didn’t move. I lingered at the entrance for a moment. Was the General even sober enough to find the car?

Other vehicles blocked the available spots along the street so the driver had to park farther away. I spotted the solar-car three blocks to my left. Quinn and the guards followed me without words.

We passed closed-up storefronts. A home or two. The only light to illuminate the night came from light posts along the street. Since they used solar panels to draw their power, the dimmed lights didn’t keep the darkness at bay. Even though my fear intensified, the General continued to walk. From the corner of my eye, I barely saw the shadows shift, the movement of the oncoming attack. Fear slammed into me, but my body didn’t respond in kind. Was I too drunk to react?

The shadows converged on my position. I waited for the first blow and for my body to fall, but instead of finding death, I became the harbinger of it.

With every single movement the General made, I was the unwilling passenger on a ship headed for death’s port. My body whipped around, and, before the man even struck me, I shifted and blocked the blow with my forearm.

I wanted to cry out. To duck and run away from the attacker who continued to swing at me. The General’s strikes were fluid, like a dancer slicing through the air. Like a skillful marionetteer, he moved me to defend myself. With the whirlwind blocks—some of them slightly delayed, the opportunity to punch back never came to mind. But then, out of nowhere, the General slammed my open palm squarely into my attacker’s chest. The man sputtered and fell back, clutching himself.

Briefly, I caught sight of Quinn, defending himself with his knife. The Master of Blades brought his attacker down and then swept the leg of another.

The General wasn’t done yet either. Another foe came for him. Dagon wasn’t deterred by the multiple attackers. I sensed his eagerness when he swung into a spinning kick that threw one of them into the nearby wall.

The kick opened my side to an attack. The first man grabbed my arm and used his other hand to try to slit my throat. In one smooth movement, I twisted his arm behind him, reached behind me, and pulled out a las-gun from a holster strapped to my back. Without blinking, General Dagon shot him point-blank.

My hand switched targets. A second shot snapped in the air. Sparks burst out and blood sizzled on the concrete. With only his eyes visible through his dark green mask, another attacker sank against the wall with wide eyes. Was he shocked the General had attacked him in my body? Maybe he’d assumed I’d scream and recoil. That’d I’d be easy pickings in the middle of the night. Under normal circumstances, that would’ve been true.

“What did you do?” I managed to whisper. He
allowed
me to speak.

“What needed to be done,” the General replied. My chest heaved from the exertion.

I didn’t know these men. Six people dressed in dark green lay on the ground. All of them dead from the General and the bodyguards’ actions. But I still had their blood splattered on me.

“Are they dead?” I asked.

“What do you think? I can’t believe how out of shape you are.”
He snorted. The General stepped over the fallen men and walked over to the guards. Then he placed the las-gun back into the holster. Only Quinn and one guard, who hugged his bloodied arm, had survived. The third man lay still on the ground.

Thank goodness Quinn wasn’t harmed, but he didn’t look like the same man I’d come to know. His eyes were venomous—cold. He’d killed like the General had.

“Are you able to stand, Corporal Bennett?” the General asked.

“Yes, sir.” The injured man barely managed to speak. “But Lieutenant Gaines...”

The General gave Lieutenant Gaines a mere side-glance. “He served his purpose tonight.” My face spread into a frown at the men on the sidewalk. “This was way too easy. Kennedy’s getting sloppy. All I had to do was waltz out of the pub and they followed like they’re fresh out of boot camp.”

He kicked one of them with my black boot.

“That’s enough!” I snapped. “He’s dead already. You don’t have to do that anymore.”

“They tried to attack us,” he replied to me out loud. “Why do you care?”

This whole incident was a trap and a lesson for me. The General wasn’t drunk at all. He was quite sober and used me to draw his enemies out of the shadows. For a second there, maybe I did forget who I was talking to. I continued to fume while he gloated over the people he’d killed. I wanted control back so much it registered as pain.

The General continued. “I should’ve just setup a crude sign on my front lawn and tied myself to it. At least, that would’ve been a challenge.” He turned to the Corporal. “Get back to the estate and have Desdemona check you out in the medical ward. Then I want you to report to Fort Hanford with instructions for General Kennedy to meet me face to face. Now that he’s tried to assassinate me, I want to make sure he’s aware I’ve survived.”

“Yes, sir.”

Quinn helped the man stand while the General pulled out a personal-comm unit from my pocket. “This is General Dagon. I need the enforcers here immediately. I have an incident to report.”

My night didn’t seem to end. First the strange night at the pub, and then the attack not long after. Just when I thought I had a chance, he kept pushing me to the point where I expected myself to vanish and never wake up again.

Eventually, I drifted away to what could be called sleep. By morning, I woke to a bruised body that belonged to me again, but my soul had been wounded and tarnished.

I glanced at my hands and flexed the fingers. I’d killed two people last night. I knew the General had done it, but he’d used my body, my hands. And I couldn’t do anything to stop him. Even though I was a prisoner, I should’ve kept trying.

What had I become? Was I the same girl my parents knew? If I freed myself, would I want them to see me like this? The local population knew me as Elise Dagon now. General Dagon’s successor. They had to think I was as evil as he was by now.

“Did you get hurt in any way?” Quinn strode up to me and took the hand I examined.

What I wouldn’t give for him to hold me again.

“Just my self-worth.” My voice didn’t sound as confident. “How did you know it’s me?”

“The General ignores pain. He never talks about it.” His warm hand checked my wrist, then turned my hand over, revealing the palm. His thumb ran over my pulse point to the tips of my fingers. I sucked in a breath as he decreased the space between us. “I knew the attack was coming. And all I could do was protect you from what he had planned.”

He was close enough for me to make out the fine lines in his face. The curve of his perfect lips. Did he ever think about kissing me?

“You did your best.” My heart raced. This wasn’t the time or the place to think about what was happening between us: a relationship or something else I didn’t want to think about. Was he touching me like this so that I’d help him find his brother? “This is all for Pete, isn’t it?”

Quinn stiffened and released me with a nod. He took his place by the door.

My melancholy mood continued as I planned the rescue of Quinn’s brother. No matter how I felt, it was the right thing to use Dagon’s power to help someone. Even if that meant I had to ignore these growing feelings for Quinn. No matter how hard I tried to not think about him holding me close, I kept smelling the spiciness of his soap—a mixture of clove, orange, and coconut. Every time he passed me, I recalled the way he hugged my back.

Focusing on the task at hand was a welcome distraction. Once we found Pete, I learned a simple written order wouldn’t suffice. General Dagon admitted him, so I had to be the one to release him in person. Over the next few hours, two things had to take place: I had to grant Elise Dagon access to Peter Belfry, and I had to make arrangements for my trip without alerting Rebecca or Cecelia.

When I discussed it with Quinn, it sounded a lot simpler.

I spent the next morning at the comm-console with Quinn as my guard, writing my letter for the General’s alternate identity.

“How did you get rid of Cecelia?” he asked me once I reached the study.

“That one was too easy. I asked her what her punishment would be if she wasn’t found with me.”

“And?”

I shrugged. “Nothing at all. It’s not as if Rebecca can punish or beat her or something. She’s the backup.”

“Seems a bit too easy to me.”

“I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. I don’t want a reminder of the situation we’re in, and neither does she.” With the
Tactics of Combat
in hand, I got into the network. “Time to wrap all this up.”

While I finalized our plans, Quinn got chatty and asked me where I came from. “A small town in the south. Along the coastline—and you?”

“My parents are from another island to the north. Not a nice one either.”

I paused in the middle of my search in the medical database. “They came to Myria willingly?”

“Compared to my homeland, the northern part of Myria does have a lot to offer.” His voice became wistful. “The southern parts are pretty much what I’m used to seeing. But, like we both know, the ocean isn’t always bluer on another island.”

The search bar continued to fill the screen, and I thought about all the vids I’d seen about the islands beyond Myria. The weather was harsher. The lands less fertile for growing food. How bad could it be for people to come here? To a place where the Guild used people’s children to live forever.

“Do you regret coming here,” I asked him, “to Myria?”

“No.” His voice changed to reflect he might’ve been smiling. “I had a decent life until the Guild captured me to become a Water Bearer.”

I stopped briefly. “I’m sorry about that.”

I wanted to ask him more, but I was almost done. Soon enough I’d have to pull off the impossible.

No more than twenty-four hours later, we put our plan into action. Quinn arranged to leave the estate for the day and left early in the morning. Next came my part. Thanks to my incessant need to try to stay awake, my first request came naturally.

“Des, could you give me some sleeping medicine?” I rubbed my face and tried to give her a weak smile. “I need some sleep, but lately I’ve been too scared to try.”

The General’s nurse nodded as she cleared my bedding. “Let me get these fresh linens on the bed. Then, when you fall asleep, you can get some rest on something clean.”

Fifteen minutes later, I had two red pills in my hand. I feigned taking them and then took a generous drink of water.

“I know you’ve been feeling under the weather lately,” Des said softly, “but after you try to get some sleep, you might feel refreshed to try to...survive another day.”

She left me alone in bed, with Cecelia lounging on the couch. The General’s Second Water Bearer had finished her breakfast, and she leisurely enjoyed her lemonade while playing games on her wrist comm-console.

By the time I was ready to create a diversion to dump the goods, Cecelia gulped down the last of her drink. Ugh. Time for plan B.

I leaned back in bed with the pills in my fist. As I pushed them under my pillow, I glanced at Cecelia. “Could you order some tea and dessert for me? Maybe something sweet to eat.”

Cecelia made a face. I’d never asked her to fetch me food. “You don’t know how to do it yourself?”

I shook my head. “I don’t have a personal-comm unit.”

Cecelia rolled her eyes, but she complied. Her voice was contrite when she ordered the apple cobbler and tea, but I guessed if the General showed up, she didn’t want to show disobedience in his eyes.

Five minutes later, Des arrived with the tea and cobbler. “How are you feeling? Tired yet? Those are pretty fast acting.” She placed the tray with the cobbler on the bed and left the tea service nearby.

“Sort of. I’ve never taken sleeping pills before.” I faked a yawn, not a bad one either.