“I’ll be right here, darlin’. I gotcha.”
She nodded again, and took a deep breath. It seemed as though she had decided to do it fast, before she could change her mind. He felt her muscles tense. A tremor ran through her body, and then suddenly she was...different. Empty, somehow. Flat. It scared him a little, the difference in her, and he held her tight, his own heart thumping in his chest.
She started to twitch. Her heart rate jumped, and he smelled that sick pleasure Marco had felt tainting her own sweet warm scent. He flinched as she suddenly made a stabbing motion with her hand. He caught her arm, holding it still.
“A fucking healer...not so tough now, are you?” she muttered. Her voice had taken on the cadence of Marco’s. Now the angry tones turned to a lewd purr. “Motherfucking mutie bitch whore...the things I’m gonna do to you when this is done...” Her voice trailed off into an indistinct murmur.
She twitched some more, her eyes darting restlessly behind her eyelids. Suddenly she opened her eyes but they were empty, unseeing. “Always late,” she said abruptly, mild irritation in her -- his -- voice. “Goddamn it, I’ll do it myself.”
Her eyes closed again. She seemed to be pushing deeper within her own mind, her movements now just a slight inner twitch of her muscles, nothing but panting breaths escaping her lips.
Her heartbeat got faster, and then faster again. He smelled the spike in her adrenaline as panic seemed to leak from her every pore. Her breathing grew erratic and halting.
He held her, his whole body rigid with tension, unsure of what he should do. Finally she made an awful sound, a low keen of pain, and his resolve broke.
“Fuck it.” He shook her, trying to rouse her, to draw her out from her mind. “Marie! That’s enough. Marie!”
Her head lolled, her body limp as a rag doll. Her pulse was shallow and thready, and a thin sheen of sweat coated her face and neck. Logan felt a bubble of fear rise up in his chest. “Marie!”
With a sudden convulsive jerk she appeared to come back to herself. She drew in a gasping breath, her eyes wide and panicked as she struggled free of his arms. He let her go and she scrambled off the bed to stand in the middle of the room, her body tensed to run, her eyes dazed.
“Marie...it’s okay, darlin’...”
She seemed to focus on him, at first just a reflexive movement of her eyes, and then he saw recognition enter them.
“Logan...” she said shakily. She still looked pale and clammy and he started towards her again, but she was already running for the bathroom, slamming and locking the door behind her.
He stood outside and helplessly listened to her as she first retched up the pizza and then gasped with dry heaves for endless minutes.
Finally it seemed over. He heard her brush her teeth, and then wash her face.
She came out of the bathroom, avoiding his eyes, and got back in her bed, drawing her knees up to her chest again, hugging them tight.
Her eyes darted to his, and then away. “Don’t look at me like that,” she said testily.
Relief washed over him, and he had to smother his smile.
“Like what, darlin’?” he asked mildly.
That earned him a glare. “Like you feel sorry for me or something. I can take care of myself.” God, she was adorable -- looking defenseless as a kitten, pale and shaking, and still trying to act tough as nails.
He sat down on his bed, and then lay down, folding his arms behind his head, carefully regarding the ceiling. “I don’t doubt it, darlin’.”
He could feel her eyes on him, trying to judge if he was being sarcastic, and he kept his face deliberately neutral.
He stayed silent, listening slowly to her heartbeat ease, her breathing slow, smelling that prickly defensiveness start to fade. She hadn’t liked being vulnerable -- he of all people could understand that. She slid down in her bed until she was lying down also, staring up at the ceiling as well.
“He’d done it three times before,” she suddenly said. “Freddy -- the one that smelled like peppermint. Someone just called him up, out of the blue. Said he’d heard good things, and he’d advance him fifty thousand in good faith if he’d handle the sales, and then ten percent commission on every sale.”
Her mouth twisted bitterly. “It was a big step up for him. Before that it had just been petty stuff -- enforcement for loan sharks, fencing stolen guns, numbers rackets, occasionally holding stuff from Florida for awhile until mules could pick it up. He was worried at first that it was a set-up, but he really wanted the money. He liked money almost as much as he liked hurting people.”
Logan slowly turned to face her, but she kept her eyes on the ceiling. “The first one was a girl. A little older than me, maybe. She had the collar on. Freddy...hurt her, and got in trouble for it. Almost lost the deal because of it.”
He had held his breath when she mentioned another girl, but she turned to look at him, and shook her head. “It was a couple of weeks ago, and she was blonde. Her mutation was something about making pheromones, or something.”
She turned back, staring sightlessly at the ceiling as she continued to recount the horrors in her head. “The one after that was just a kid. Eight years old, maybe? He cried a lot. No collar for him. They didn’t say anything about what he could do. Maybe he wasn’t even a mutant.” Her voice wobbled. “The buyer didn’t ask many questions.”
She took a deep breath. “The one before me was a teenage boy. No collar...but they said to make sure he didn’t get anywhere near an open flame.”
“We’ll get them back, Marie.” He could hear the snarl in his own voice, and hoped he wasn’t scaring her more. “Whoever has them...I promise, we’ll find them and get them back. All of them. And we’ll make these bastards pay.”
If she heard him, she gave no sign. Her voice was flat again when she continued. “Freddy started to think, after the girl. The people he was getting them from, he didn’t think they were the ones who hired him. Just another level of middleman. He thought maybe he could cut them out. The pickup was always in some new location. They’d tell him a few days beforehand when it would be, but only called him with the location a couple of hours before. The last time, with the teenager, he doubled back and followed them. He thought they’d go back to some place where they were keeping them, but they got on a boat instead.”
She sat up again and looked at Logan, her eyes once again looking much older than her years. “The next pickup was supposed to be in three days. If your friends were taken three days after me...”
Logan couldn’t help it, he started pacing restlessly. “Do you know anything else about the boat? The name of it, or anything that could help us track it?”
She shook her head. “Just what it looks like, and where it was docked. Not a real marina or anything, just a boat ramp in Delaware. I think I could find it. And I know what the two guys looked like -- I would know them if I saw them again.”
Logan clenched his fists in frustration, the claws starting to slip before he pulled them back with an effort. Three days before they could do anything, three days that Kitty and Jubes would be in the hands of these bastards. And if it came to nothing...if the boat docked at a different ramp, or it wasn’t Kitty and Jubes, or if they got wind that Freddy and his crew were dead...
A million different things could go wrong, and the odds of things going right seemed slim. But it was all they had to go on. She was all they had to go on.
He sighed, and sat down next to her. She let him put his arm around her, only tensing briefly before she relaxed and leaned into his body. “You did good, kid. I’m sorry I hadta ask it of you.”
Her voice was wobbly again when she spoke. “What if we can’t find them? What if they’re just...gone?”
He couldn’t suppress the growl that welled up from his chest at the thought. “We’ll find them. And we have help.” He squeezed her against his side. “I think it’s time for you to meet my friends.”
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