CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Rings that Ring
Hours later, I listened to Rhuk’s report while sitting in the living room of my townhouse. I sat on the white couch and stroked the leaves of a potted plant that was propped up behind the couch.
“After they left the station, Dr. Bobby didn’t call him Graham once. He simply called him Charles.”
I felt everything in my chest heave. So, I had that incredible reaction to him because he had my heart and not because I had suddenly developed a taste for terrible men. The whole thing was an enormous relief.
Rhuk continued. “He inquired after Charles’ health, asking if his heart had been acting up. Charles whistled and said that everything was normal. He felt better than ever and he was excited to see the results of the tests they were running that night.”
I frowned, wishing I had someone to look at rather than just hearing Rhuk tell me the sad truth in a voice close to my ear. If only Christian was awake. I drummed my fingers against my forehead and waited to hear more.
The whole story of Charles Lewis made me heartsick in more ways than one. He had been a normal young man. He got a job working at Christian’s home in Scotland. He got to know Christian and Brandon. Without being told the exact details, I knew he came across information regarding Christian’s identity theft. He was contacted by the scientists who Christian called the Argonauts and because he had seen Christian, a grown man, kissing his adoptive daughter, Charles thought Christian and Brandon must be depraved monsters. He exchanged Brandon and allowed their scientists to do anything to him believing that if he did as they told him, he'd save me from a fate worse than death.
Charles hoped he would get together with me since it was my father who was offering me in exchange for immortal blood. It didn’t go the way he hoped and the last time we’d heard of him, he was grappling with a gunshot wound Christian had gifted him.
Even after something like that happened, it seemed that Charles was ever ready to be used by the Argonauts. If not them exactly, then scientists just like them.
I shuttered my eyes closed in pain, pain for him because he believed their lies. Because he didn’t come to my rescue when he could have. And because now the only future that lay ahead of him was one where he got his heart cut out and there was no heart to replace the one we’d take.
I breathed through the pain.
He had made his choices.
“They went to an old hotel called The Lazy Hammock Hotel,” Rhuk said, pulling me away from my thoughts. “It’s not open for business. There are four people being held hostage there. One man and three women. Charles is supposed to be staying there too, but his room is close to the lobby and the security on him is lax enough that it is possible for him to sneak out occasionally. Bobby didn’t show how angry he was at Charles until they were back at the hotel. Then, he really let loose. They had an argument about Charles slipping out when he’s their most important test subject. Charles has been taking the train to a library to do research. He’s trying to find you, Beth. Bobby keeps telling him that the woman who broke into the prison is you, and Charles denies it. He says you could never do any of the things that person did. From their research, immortality does not make people invulnerable in that way. People heal quickly, but they don’t take four bullets to the chest and then immediately move on as if nothing happened. Bobby thinks the person who rescued Christian was human and wearing body armor because the bullets they found were crushed like they’d hit a brick wall, not like they’d hit a person.”
When Rhuk paused, I asked, “You said they had prisoners in the hotel. Did the man I rescued get recaptured?”
“No,” Rhuk said. “Three of these people are not immortal and Dr. Bobby and the other scientists know it. They are people they’ve captured in order to find the man they lost when you set him free from the jail. They say his name is Max and they’re torturing his brother, his wife, and his sister in order to force him to come in. They aren’t even asking them questions about him. It’s just that they told him they’d torture them every day until he turns himself over—voluntarily.”
“Who’s the other person? You mentioned four people at first.”
“She’s a nurse named Indra. She’s very confused about what’s happening. She’s a new addition. They did the cut test on her last night and today they uncovered her wounds. They were inconclusive. Luckily, they are not going to move on to waterboarding. Instead, they’re going to ask her to try to heal the wounds of one of the other women. Goodness knows they all have enough cuts and bruises that they don’t need to hurt any of them afresh, but they will. Then they plan to ask Indra if she can heal it.”
“Are they suggesting that someone can skip controlling the Red Forest, skip matter manipulation and go straight to controlling another living being?” I asked, thinking of Doctor Christian that hung from the rope in the third chamber. That is his skill.
Rhuk shook slightly. “I don’t know, but they’re about to find out.”
“It must be possible,” I said with an irritated shake of my head. “Brandon hasn’t learned to control himself perfectly, he knows nothing of matter manipulation, and yet, he claims he heals others better. Christian corroborated the story. He said he needs Brandon to help him when he gets my heart back. He doesn’t want to do the surgery alone, and frankly, I’m glad he wants someone else’s help. I don’t want to cut him open myself. However, it is interesting that Dr. Bobby has found such a person. Skipped the first two levels and went straight to level three? If they’ve found subjects like that to experiment on, who knows how much information they’ve been able to uncover?”
Rhuk stayed silent while I thought.
“What else do we know about Indra?” I asked. “What kind of person is she?”
“Uh, from the questions they are asking her, she was once interviewed to be one of the medical personnel who performed the operations done on Christian. She didn’t agree to help them once she understood what they were asking for. If she had agreed, she would have been one of the people you gunned down in the prison. She’s been under hostile questioning and she’s shown remarkable resilience, refusing to give them what they want. Now they’re cutting her.”
“I like her,” I declared, knowing that a lot of people break, tell things, and agree to anything once they’re threatened.
Rhuk nodded and I felt that the gem agreed with me. We’d have to fetch her out of the hotel, once we’d made a plan.
“What’s Charles doing now?” I wondered aloud.
“Dr. Bobby is performing a cut test on him. He has failed every cut test they’ve given him. They’ve given him one a week since he took your heart. They’re doing them on his upper arm and he has a line of scars.”
“Where is the hotel they’re using?” I did a search on my phone and found the address. The image search showed the plainest building I’d ever seen. No one would wonder what was going on in a dull beige building. I doubted people noticed it when they walked by it.
“I don’t know if you should go there, Beth,” Rhuk said. “I mean, you could go and you and I could move enough matter that we could accomplish everything you want, but the place is rigged with so many explosives, it feels like there must be an easier way.”
“What do you mean, it’s rigged with explosives?”
“Dr. Bobby has a bomb guy he calls The Incinerator. Well, he makes everyone call him that, even though they all gag on it. He’s unstable and they’re all aware that if they anger him, he’ll burn them all alive. After what happened at the jail, Dr. Bobby is terrified someone will sneak in and lay waste to his team for the third time. There is an explosive rigged to every door. When I say every door, Beth, I mean every door. Only the doors from the bathrooms to the bedrooms have nothing on them, but those doors themselves have been removed. Every other door has to have a code typed into a cell phone to open it, and it is armed again after it’s closed. The Incinerator is in the process of rigging the windows the same way now, except there’s no code to open those.”
“It would be so much easier to pick off Charles if he simply called me and agreed to meet me somewhere… anywhere,” I fumed. “Was I charming enough that he’d call me?”
Rhuk swung a little on my earlobe. “I think he’ll call.”
“Why?”
“You are very beautiful Beth, much more beautiful than a diamond, but that isn’t why he’ll call. He’ll call because you mentioned Beth Coldwell and Christian Henderson. He will call you just to ask you questions about them. He’s very curious.”
“He might not be very free to call me if he’s under lock and key at Dr. Bobby’s hotel. Charles isn’t immortal yet. Even if he was, he probably wouldn’t risk the bombs on the doors for something like a phone call to me. It sounds like they’re rigged to start a chain reaction to bring the entire building down if even one of them goes off.”
“Exactly.”
Stolen novel; please report.
I leaned back and put my feet on the coffee table. “I’ve got to hand it to Dr. Bobby. The bombs are ever so clever. They’ll keep everyone where they’re supposed to be without the need for full-time monitoring. If anyone tries to escape, it will kill all of them without killing an immortal. If they torch the whole place, no one will be able to tell what they were doing in that building.” I smiled wickedly. “No one will be able to tell if a woman wrote ‘help me’ in her own blood all over the walls.”
“Why would someone do that?” Rhuk asked innocently.
“Yeah, tell us the story,” one of the other diamonds asked.
I rolled my eyes. The other diamonds in my earring still thought they were pencils. They wanted to write everything down like it was for a school project. Well, they didn’t need to hear about my dumb escapades, but if they felt that way, I could help them along.
I popped my earring out, then I got a piece of paper and an inkblot. I freed the diamonds from their settings and dropped them in a pile on the piece of paper.
“Draw me a blueprint of The Lazy Hammock Hotel, boys.”
Hopping to, the diamonds raced to the inkblot and rolled their angles in the ink. Rhuk was more spherical in shape, so it couldn’t make such a fine point with the ink. Instead of drawing, it ordered the others around, which I knew it enjoyed.
I watched as the lines came into place and the shape of the building started to develop into something that made sense.
At that very moment, Christian sauntered into the room.
“Now, if I remember correctly,” he said with his award-winning charm and his gray-green eyes twinkling. “I fell unconscious on the floor over there. I was dressed impeccably. Why, praytell, am I now wearing nothing but briefs and a housecoat?”
“Yes, but darling,” I said in a joyfully condescending tone. “That was March 23rd. Today is April 11th.”
His face fell, but at that moment, he noticed what I had my attention on. The tiny diamonds skittered across the paper like insects while the hexagonal prisms wrote like floating pencils.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m having my earring draw a schematic of The Lazy Hammock Hotel. Charles Lewis has a room there on the first floor.”
“If he’s on the first floor, why do you need a map of the whole place?” he asked as he slid his arms around me from behind and kissed the side of my neck.
“Because it’s not a normal hotel. It’s a mess. Full of explosives and other hostages. This is all based on information I got tonight. Isn’t that why you woke up? Because you sensed a change in the air?”
“Actually, I woke to the sound of Trinity speaking to Brighton in their bedroom. Did you know their bedroom shares a wall with ours?”
“No. I didn’t. I haven’t been over to their place much.”
“Why not? You’re supposed to be enjoying the companionship of your friend.”
“I know, but she’s busy. When we lived together it was exactly the same. She’s always had people over and I don’t like to be surrounded by that many people. I just didn’t have the luxury of retreating to the house next door. Don’t worry. I’ve been seeing her a lot. I’ve just got her to come over here. The whole thing has been luxurious.”
“Except, she’s white-hot mad at you now.”
“I know. Charles has been pretending he’s Christian Henderson, except he’s calling himself Graham and he hit on me on the train. Of course, I let him. I gave him my phone number. I even asked him if he was Christian Henderson because you’ve got to put good bait on your hook if you want to catch the big fish. Or a snake, in Charles’ case. Trinity saw me and her temper is like a rocket. She thinks I’m cheating on you.”
“Yes. The sound of such a thing would have raised me from the dead, but I’m relieved. Not just because you aren’t cheating on me, but it is a huge weight off my chest that you found that wormy piece of trash.” He shrugged his shoulders. “The word snake is still too good for him.”
I nodded and brought myself closer to him, hooking my arm around his. “How did it go in the Red Forest?” I asked softly.
“Well, I’m a mess. My cells did whatever they wanted without me disciplining them. Your cells are probably doing the same thing since you aren’t wearing your face.”
“Honestly, I just don’t like looking like someone who isn’t me. I keep my Holly face on during the day, but at night, when I’m not expecting anyone, I just want to relax and be myself.”
He grabbed the ties on his housecoat and tied them up. “You still haven’t explained why I’m dressed like this.”
“Oh, I just like playing dress-up with you. I put you in all your clothes, tried on different styles, and eventually landed on black briefs as my favorite outfit for my Christian doll to wear.”
He yawned and rejected my explanation immediately. “I don’t believe you.”
“Fine. I stripped you the second day to see if it would wake you up. It didn’t and I never bothered to re-dress you. You look good naked.”
“That’s more like it. Did you sleep next to me in the bed?”
“Sometimes. Mostly, I fell asleep on the carpet down here. I’ve been trying to figure out how to control another living creature. I’ve been practicing with an aloe vera. It’s shocking how quickly I fall asleep attempting it. And the carpet in the living room has such a thick pile, it’s almost as comfortable as the bed.”
“And you’re still in love with me, darling?” he asked, trying to sound like his question was an after-thought rather than his primary focus.
I stalled, making him sweat as long as possible. Then I looked up, down, to the sides, and finally at him. “If I was going to fall out of love with you, I would have done it when you ditched me when I was seventeen. Since then, I’m not sure if I could fall out of love with you even if you told me to get lost, even if you told me you could never love me back, even if you got together with someone else and rubbed it in my face. I know you’re not supposed to love someone that much. Everyone will tell you it is a mistake to pin all your hopes and dreams on one person, but I’m not actually sure if it’s all my hopes and dreams that are pinned on you. It’s all your hopes and dreams. I want to help you with whatever you need. Whether that gets me anything or not is really beside the point. I’ll love you forever.”
He kissed me and for a moment he lost himself, opening his robe and pulling me against his bare chest. It was beyond thrilling until he realized his predicament and withdrew himself, replacing his housecoat.
“I have to get your heart back,” he looked down at the recently completed map of The Lazy Hammock Hotel.
The diamonds sat in a line like tiny soldiers behind Rhuk with the long ones in the back.
“Good job,” I complimented. “Rebuild the earring.”
Christian watched the diamonds skitter and stop to obey me and the look on his face was as delighted as if he were watching a ballet on Christmas Eve. The gems stacked themselves, tumbled, and fell, aware a greater god was amused by them. They wanted to give him a show and he could see them, even if he couldn’t hear the cute sounds they made. Rhuk allowed the show for a full minute before bringing the smaller diamonds to heel and allowing us to get back to more serious matters.
“I’m impressed you can command all that,” he praised.
“Nah. I have only given them my permission to do as they please.”
Christian looked at the blueprint like he’d looked at so many blueprints over the course of his long life that he was sick of them. “There are too many bombs for anything. Who have they got rigging them?”
“He’s called The Incinerator. If we end up having to go in, and there’s a good chance we will, I think we should cut the electricity to the building, so no one can film us, and drop down through the ceiling,” I suggested. “Once we’ve got everyone out, we should set off the explosives ourselves.”
Christian didn’t say what he thought of that plan and only asked, “And if Charles won’t come with us?”
“He can stay inside and burn up with the rest of the building. We’ll pull my heart out of the ash and be done with it.”
Rhuk made a quiet ahem sound that only I could hear. “I may not have mentioned that every person has an explosive attached to their person.”
I groaned.
Rhuk continued, “They’re wireless rings that have been put around their necks. All four prisoners, except Charles, have them. We can deal with them, but you need to hear all the information first.”
I picked my reassembled earring off the table and secured it in my earlobe. “Please continue, Rhuk.”
“What’s it saying?” Christian begged, hating to be left out of the information drop.
Rhuk was about to tell me more when my phone rang. I put up a hand to stop Rhuk from continuing as I answered the phone. “Hello.”
“Is this Holly?” the deep voice on the other end asked.
“Yes. Is this…” I had been about to say Charles, but I paused and filled in the space with “Graham” in a way that was almost natural.
“Yeah. What are you up to?” he asked.
“I’ve been playing with my chess piece, trying to plot my next move.” It wasn’t exactly true, since I’d left dolomite Rhuk back in Nhagaspir, but it was a good line.
“Are you playing chess alone?” he asked.
“Why? You wanna play chess with me?”
“I was thinking we could meet for coffee tomorrow. Are you busy?”
I frowned. A coffee date wasn’t good enough for my purposes. Meeting him in the middle of the day would make it harder for him to go missing unnoticed. Not only that, but I couldn’t guarantee that I could seduce him hard enough for him to want a second date with me. If it wasn’t now, I might be picking my heart out of a pile of ash after I burned down the whole building. I actually didn’t want to risk the fire. It was better to do things one at a time.
“I’m busy in the afternoon,” I lied, using my best rich-girl voice. “Can’t we meet for dinner?”
A chuckle sounded low in his throat. “Where?”
I almost heaved a sigh of relief. He thought I was so impressed by him that I wanted to skip a stop on the dating roadmap. Straight to dinner.
I suggested a steakhouse and said I’d make a reservation for eight o’clock.
“All right,” he said, sounding satisfied. “I’ll meet you there.”
I ground my teeth together and refocused myself. There would have been no need to murder him if he hadn’t been so eager to jump down Christian’s immortal throat and take whatever he could grab.
“I can’t wait,” I said, my voice threatening to crack, but I licked my lips and my voice came through clearly.
“Until later,” he said and hung up.
I tossed my phone across the counter with a crack and tried to focus on my breathing.
Christian knew my discomfort. He came up behind me and placed his hands gently on my shoulders. “That was Charles? Should I call Brandon?”
I nodded.
“If he can make it here by tomorrow, that would be great.”
Christian rushed to reassure me. “You don’t have to kill him yourself. If you can lure him somewhere, I can take care of it for you.”
I smiled weakly. “How can I let you do it when you’re so very tired of killing?”
“This is different. It will be over in a snap. It’s my fault anyway. I should have shot him in the face instead of in the leg.”
“They would have just gotten someone else.”
“Okay. Not only that, but we wouldn’t have to cut his heart out if he hadn’t been willing to cut mine out first.”
I leaned over. “Rhuk, during my date, I want you to keep a sharp eye on Trinity. I don’t want her seeing anything and coming at me with accusations of what an unfaithful wife I am. Can you watch her for me?”
I felt the earring brush smooth and cold, like a cat’s nose, against the side of my face. “Absolutely.”