Rachel Caine - Devil's Due

The stroking of his hand on her hair was almost hypnotic. "It's all a game to them. Percentages," he said. "Anthrax to get you sick and vulnerable, and keep you running scared. They'd planned to check you into the hospital and get it done there, but Eidolon kept disrupting things, forcing their hand. I didn't carry through on getting you in bed, but it didn't matter, they had a backup plan. When you finally did collapse, when you were unguarded—they took you."

She stared at the photographs. The details of an invasion of her body, clinically photographed.

"I dreamed," she murmured. "I dreamed of lights… This was it, wasn't it? It wasn't all treatments for the anthrax. The feeling of violation."

He didn't answer. There didn't seem much point, she supposed. It was right there, in the pictures. The doctors with their tools and their completely scientific rape of her body. "How many times?" She felt as if there was a huge weight on her lungs, suffocating her. Like the old wives' tale of waking with the cat on her chest, stealing her breath. This could not be true. Could not be happening.

"I don't know. As many as it took to make sure, I suppose." His voice sounded raw. Bloody. "You're just a tool, Lucia. Just a body and a genetic code and a place in history, standing where they need somebody to stand, for the greater good." The weight of sarcasm he gave the last two words made her shiver. "And our baby's going to be exactly the same."

She stirred and looked up. Her hair had fallen over her face, and she pulled it back out of the way. "Our baby?" He kissed her. Not on the lips, on the forehead. A burning kiss of anguish and apology. "I can't be sure without a DNA test, but yeah. They took sperm samples during the tests in the prison hospital, before they told me what I was supposed to do. That was what they wanted from me. Pretty much all they ever wanted. Their backup plan, in case I— got difficult about things. I guess just anybody wouldn't do. Had to be me."

They sat in silence, surrounded by the fallen photographs, wrapped around each other for comfort, until Jazz rapped on the door and asked if everything was okay in there.

Lucia straightened, wiped her face free of moisture, and forced a smile to her lips. McCarthy, bleached of color by the lights, looked awful. She didn't expect she looked any better. "Nobody else needs to know," she said. "You and me. Nobody else."

"Jazz—"

"No. Nobody . Promise me."

"I promise." He gave her a wan, empty smile. "The least I can do."

"No," she said. "The least you can do is think of yourself. Whatever that is. Leave. Stay. Hate me. Love me. Do what's in your heart, Ben. Whatever that is, just do it. Quit making decisions based on what you think I want."

His eyes opened wider, and for a second he didn't move or speak. She wasn't sure if he was thinking or just feeling stunned. And then, without saying a word, he kissed her. A hot, damp, desperate kiss, tasting of tears. Wild, distilled passion. His hands rose to cup the back of her head, urging her closer, and his tongue nudged her lips apart.

She let him in.

Our choice, she thought, with what little conscious thought she had in that moment. One pure thing. Just one.

He broke the kiss with a tearing gasp and buried his face in the hollow of her neck. The moan that came out of him moved through her like a holy visitation.

"What the hell was that?" she asked, shaky.

"What I want."

She wanted to stay there forever, in the safe red light, suspended in the warmth of this moment, but she reached down and scraped the pictures together, and slid them into the envelope. He straightened up and put his hands on her shoulders, then her face. Thumb tracing her damp, swollen lips.

"Make it your choice, Lucia. Let them chew on that." She held the proof of her weakness in her hands, and the proof of her strength in her heart. "We will," she said.

They were all staring when she and McCarthy returned. Jazz opened her mouth to ask, but Lucia stopped her with a look. "Our business," she said. "It's nothing to do with anybody else. Right, Sirnms?"

He cocked his head to one side. "As you wish."

"I want this over. I want us out of your business, the Cross Society's business, Eidolon's business."

"That's never going to happen," Simms said, "as long as the Cross Society and Eidolon are in operation. Especially now." He gave her midsection a fast but significant glance. She sat down at the table and put the envelope in front of her. A silent reminder of just how high the stakes were now.

"Then we shut them down. All of them."

"You can't," Borden argued. "The Cross Society does do good, you know that! Look how many people you've saved because of the leads they gave you. You can't just—"

McCarthy, who hadn't spoken, turned toward him, fists clenched.

"What, now you want to beat on me?" Borden cried. "Fine. Let's go. I'm sick of your macho cop bullshit—"

"James, don't," Jazz said. For her, the response was mild.

"Yeah, James, don't," McCarthy echoed. "Be a good little lawyer and shut the hell up about what doesn't concern you."

"Back off, Ben." Jazz was up, suddenly, standing between them. "You want to take whatever this is out on somebody, hell, bring it on, I'd love to kick somebody's ass today. Might as well be yours. I'm pissed as hell at you, anyway."

"I don't need you to fight for me, Jazz!" Borden spat.

"Against Ben? You're kidding, right?" She held up her hands and backed out of the way. "Fine. You guys arm wrestle for biggest jerk in the room. Let us know who comes out on top. We've got bigger problems than this."

She was deadly serious. The tension in the room cranked steadily higher.

"Now." She turned back to Lucia. "You were saying…?"

Simms, significantly, perhaps, hadn't said a word. He wasn't watching the brewing confrontation. His eyes hadn't left Lucia, but she had a sudden eerie feeling that he was seeing through her, beyond her, into some limitless and terrifying distance.

What did I just change?

"You're a constant," Simms said slowly. "Eidolon would like to kill you, but there's no time line I can see in which you don't survive and—" he caught himself and glanced at the others " — and carry out the task that the Cross Society intended. In other words, unlike the rest of us, your fate is assured, Ms. Garza."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that you are a fulcrum upon which we can move the world." He looked grim suddenly. Tired, and every moment of his age, "You can do anything you want to do. And I hope you understand how grave a responsibility that is. I created Eidolon to help me understand what I was seeing, to right some of the wrongs in this world. And I learned that when you act with knowledge, fate reacts against you. The more good we did, the more evil there was, as if it was being bred specifically to counter us, like antibodies. I wanted to stop. I established the Cross Society to work at cross-purposes to Eidolon, to try to undo some of the terrible consequences." He sagged further in his seat. "The world works on balance. I understand that now. There can be no greater good, because once it is greater, it is no longer good."

They were all silent, watching him.

"There is something you can do," Simms said. "Destroy it. Bring it down. You are the only one who can do that."

Borden shot up again, eyes wide. "You can't."

"She can. She will. More than that, Mr. Borden, she should ."

"I can't be part of destroying the Cross Society!"

"Don't have to," Jazz said. "Eidolon's the one who's got the upper hand. We go after them, right, Simms?"

He nodded. "Right."

"Problem solved." Jazz stood up. "L. Ben. Let's get busy."

Borden moved toward her. Intimately close, trying to hold her eyes. "What about me?"