The Protectors (9 page)

CHAPTER 12

L
yla didn’t die, thank God, but she didn’t wake up, either. She slept, for twenty-seven straight hours.

The first hour was a little tense. Concerned that my efforts might have triggered an unintentional coma, I did a lot of watching and fretting. It wasn’t so difficult to believe; this was unexplored territory. With the exception of Carsten, I’d never subjected anyone to a prolonged break in brain function—coming so close to the five-second barrier might have consequences.

Luckily, after an hour of nervous staring I caught the first flickers of movement. Her eyes moved side to side underneath the lids, a telltale sign of REM stage onset. In short, she was dreaming.

After that, my vigil got a lot easier. Her deep slumber even allowed me to take care of some outstanding housekeeping activities. I drove our getaway car a couple of blocks down the street and around the corner before placing the owner back in the driver’s seat. After buckling him in, I roused the guy with a couple of hard knocks on his window and explained I found him asleep at the wheel as I strolled past the car. He had more than a few moments of disorientation before thanking me and driving off. I saw his brake lights flash and the car lurch forward in short stutters as he no doubt tried to figure out where the hell he was. The only lasting effect of his missing night would be a strange story to tell his wife and friends.

I couldn’t help but whistle on the walk back to the house. Sometimes it’s fun to have superpowers.

Before the sun came up a few hours later, it was time to wake our host as well. Just as prim and proper as I hoped she might be, Mrs. Alice Barstow (husband deceased) was forthcoming about herself and surprisingly accepting of my presence, even before I explained the situation.

“Dear boy, you could have just asked to come in, you know,” she said from the couch after straightening an afghan over her lap.

I nodded and chuckled. “I guess I’m not accustomed to dealing with agreeable people.”

Alice chuffed and adjusted the shawl around her small shoulders. “Welcome to the U.K., then, my young friend. Although not all Englishmen and women are as steadfast as this one,” she said, thumbing in her own direction.

“Of that I have no doubt.”

“So why does a superhero sweep into my home and render me unconscious?”

I was taken aback. “You know who I am?”

Her eyes sparkled. “Of course, dear. I watched the BBC special like the rest of the country. You’re the American who can put people to sleep. I’m only glad you neglected to make my nap permanent!”

“I would never do such a thing,” I said, the irony of the last few hours not escaping me. “As for why I’m here, it involves the person who is currently asleep in your master bedroom. I apologize for the intrusion and the inconvenience.”

She waved a hand in the air. “Nonsense! It’s the most excitement that bedroom’s seen since my Edward passed.”

My face reddened. “Ma’am, I assure you . . .”

“Ha! So easily flustered, you superhero lot.”

Without question, Mrs. Barstow handled forced unconsciousness better than most.

She listened to my predicament and the fact that my guest and I required transportation out of the city, to which she had a solution: borrow her car and be on our way. Since I’d already been leaning in that direction, I expressed my sincere thanks and promised (against her arguments) to compensate her for the favor. I told her there’d be money
hidden under the driver’s seat when the police found her car. My only request was that she not mention me or my traveling companion when she reported the vehicle stolen. She frowned and slapped my hand, as if to say
Silly boy, I would never.

We sat silent for a few moments, as I plotted out the immediate future. The longer I thought, the more limited my options became. I liked her, and she seemed honest, but . . .

My reluctance to open my mouth spoke volumes.

“You don’t trust me,” she said. A statement, not a question.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Mrs. Barstow . . . it’s more like I can’t afford for you to have a change of heart. I’ll have to put you out for a few hours.” I considered potential destinations for a second. “No more than eight. After that, you can call whomever you want, and tell them whatever you’d like.”

She took it like a champion. “Well, then, the stakes are quite serious in order to question the word of an old woman, aren’t they?”

“They are, ma’am.”

She held her head high. “Then do what you must.”

“Well hold on just a second. You’re not going to the firing squad. Would you like a glass of water first? Or a bathroom visit?”

She glared at me, but there was no malice in her stare.

I raised my hands in surrender. “Hey, just asking!”

Her expression softened. “I’ll be fine. I shall lie back and think of England . . . although I assume it won’t be as unpleasant as all that?”

I raised an eyebrow. “It wasn’t the first time, was it?”

“I suppose not.”

She lay on the sofa and positioned a pillow under her head. She exhaled and gave me a beaming smile. “This is the most exciting thing to happen to me in years, you know?”

“Believe it or not, me, too.”

“May I ask you a question?” Her voice was much softer now. I nodded. “The telly says you’re the master of sleep—can you control people’s dreams as well? If so, I would very much like to dream of Edward, if it’s not too much trouble.”

Her face was so kind, so full of hope, I didn’t have the heart to tell
her the truth.

“I’ll do my best.”

She clasped one of my hands between her own wrinkled palms, warm to the touch. “Thank you, dear. And good luck on your adventure.”

I raised one of her hands to my lips and kissed the back. The skin was soft and smelled like honeysuckle. “Thank you, Mrs. Barstow.”

I dropped her and she immediately fell into a heavy slumber, a smile still on her lined face. I watched her sleeping form for a moment before easing off the couch to check on Lyla. She was as before—sprawled out while in the midst of twitchy-eyed REM sleep.

I yearned to leave her in Mrs. Barstow’s bed for as long as she needed, but once again I was starting to detect the far-off baying of sniffing bloodhounds. My dropping an entire city block seemed like a victory at the time, but with benefit of hindsight I was discouraged and irritated. Blanket wipes were a double-edged sword: increased area of effect meant a sacrifice in control—I couldn’t determine how long anyone’s unconsciousness would last. Most of the victims, MI5 and civilians alike, were probably awake within twenty minutes; others, an hour at most—which meant government spooks were already fanning out, searching. Wouldn’t take long for Britain’s internal security force to rebound from our alley rendezvous; although my presence came as a surprise then, it wasn’t anymore. They’d be looking for Aphrodite
and
Knockout, and plan accordingly. It also meant I could forget about the airport, trains to Europe, or any other conventional means out of the country. There was only one method available and one direction to point. It was time to put as much distance as possible between us and the city of London.

I carried Lyla and a couple of blankets down to Mrs. Barstow’s beaten-up Jaguar and tried to make her as comfortable as possible in the backseat. Then I settled in for the long drive north to Scotland.

CHAPTER 13

D
awn and the M1 highway both arrived clean: no clouds and little traffic to slow us down. Running away might not be a heroic endeavor but in this case it was the right tactical and strategic move. As I wound the Jaguar over rolling hills toward Edinburgh and my worries of MI5 lessened, I started to question what I was running
to.
More important, every furtive look into the backseat at Lyla’s snoring body made me wonder something just as important—the condition of who I was running
with.
No matter what choices presented themselves over the next few hours, how many of the decisions to be made were still going to be mine? Bottom line: Lyla could wake at any moment, and I could be a lovesick minion five seconds after the fact. With every stolen glance into the backseat, I half expected to see golden swirling eyes peering back at me.

Her eyes never opened, though, and after six hours on the road I rolled through the center of the capital of Scotland with my faculties intact and under my own control. First order of business was to find someplace safe for Lyla, where she could sleep undisturbed for as long as needed. I drove away from Edinburgh proper, with its massive stone fortress atop the sheer cliff face rising out of the town center, and searched for an area beyond the crowded bustle of the main drag, Princes Street.

The outer ring of the city had plenty of bed-and-breakfasts, and before long I rolled up to the Lairg Bed & Breakfast, a gray-stonework three-story that looked quiet and comfy, and, most important, sat on a
street offering multiple directions for a quick escape.

I parked on the street and took a moment to crack open the heel compartment of my left boot, silently thanking my own laziness at not cleaning it out when I threw all my gear into the leather trunk five years ago. An emergency bundle of cash, crinkled and curved into a permanent wad, lay waiting. I squeezed the majority of the bills through the neck of my empty soda bottle and stuffed it under the front seat for Mrs. Barstow. When the car was eventually towed, the plate would get linked back to her.

There was enough money left over for lodging, and the man at the desk was so happy to be paid up front, in cash, he didn’t even ask to see my ID when I gave him the wad. Yeah, the daily rate was probably a lot less and he pocketed the difference, but hey—can’t put a price on privacy. He was even gracious enough to enjoy a ten-minute catnap slumped over the front counter, which meant no one saw Lyla being hefted through the front door and up the steps to our room.

Again, it does not entirely suck to be me.

After tucking her into bed, the fatigue of the past forty-eight hours pounced on my back like a heavy jungle cat—I hadn’t had any sleep since the plane ride from the States, and only when movement stopped completely did I realize how much I felt like cooked-over ass. Just then, the proverbial lightbulb went off in my head and I bolted from the room down to the front desk. I shook my helpful money-skimming desk clerk awake and asked him about the nearest Internet café.

Within minutes, I trotted through the front door of Cleopatra, a local coffee shop/computer workstation nirvana, less than a mile from the Lairg. To be honest, I was a little shocked Internet cafés still existed—clearly I’d been prejudiced by the American drive to have broadband access in every home—yet here one was, the rich aroma of coffee counterbalanced by the sharp tang of copy paper from an industrial Xerox machine in the middle of the space. In my excitement I had to ask for a workstation twice—at first I thought the kid at the counter couldn’t understand my accent, but realized later it was simply because I was speaking too fast.

I logged on to both WebMD and Wikipedia and read all I could
about sleep deprivation. Some I knew already, other pieces I suspected. Quite a bit of the information was worse than I thought: governments employing deprivation as a quasilegal way to soften and interrogate prisoners, idiots pushing the boundaries of human endurance resulting in psychosis, and even extreme examples resulting in fatalities. I knew how shitty I felt from a whopping two days without sleep—but what about Lyla? Three months and never getting more than an hour’s worth each night? My God, that was tantamount to torture.

Although I could only guess at the long-term effects of such an extended period, excitement swelled in my chest with every word I read. The symptoms of severe deprivation read like a shopping list of Lyla’s behaviors: depression, irritability, paranoia, anger, delusional thoughts. All of them pointed to a singular cause for her mental break, and even better, gave me hope.

If her anger and despondence were no more than symptoms of sleep deprivation, it meant two things: one, she might fundamentally still be the woman I remembered, and two, it wasn’t too late. She could be cured . . . she didn’t need to be a danger to herself, me, or the world. But my brief surge of optimism depended on the answer to one simple question: what would Lyla be like after getting the sleep her body so desperately craved? The future of the planet literally depended on that one unknown.

I didn’t walk back to the bed-and-breakfast. I ran.

CHAPTER 14

T
ook until nine o’clock the next morning for me to get the answer.

I’d spent the previous night in the overstuffed bedside chair, splitting time between watching Lyla and trying to keep my own brain from succumbing to fatigue—mostly in vain on both counts. By the time my chair was bathed in uncomfortably warm sunshine, I gave up the vigil and staggered into the bathroom to shave and brush my teeth. The toothbrush froze in my paste-coated mouth when I saw Lyla’s reflection glide past me in the mirror. I spun in surprise, caught my toothbrush on the doorjamb, and nearly gagged myself to death in what would have been the most pathetic superhero demise of all time.

I half expected Lyla to still be tucked away when I turned to the bed. It was empty, though. I hadn’t imagined it. She was making her way, wrapped in the bedsheet, to the French doors that opened onto a small balcony overlooking the cobblestone approach to the Lairg.

“Lyla? Are you . . .”

Just the sight of her made the question die in my throat. She stood at the open doors, peering at row houses across the street. The white sheet entwined her tanned body, falling across her torso like a toga, leaving one shoulder gleaming in the bright sunlight. She was frozen in place like a statue, the folds in the sheet as crisp as chiseled marble. Lyla couldn’t have looked more like her namesake unless Cupid himself burst through the doors to hover around her with a bow and arrow.

I’m not sure how long I stood there, but let’s be honest, any amount of openmouthed, toothpaste-encrusted gaping is too much. Finally,
the spell broke when the statue moved; Lyla’s head rotated to one side enough for me to see half her face. The skin, brilliant. The dark circles gone. And the eyes I’d been so afraid of ? No rotation, no angry glare. One corner of her mouth curled in a grin. My hopes rose as she turned fully in my direction; in a word, she looked . . . tranquil.

“How do you feel?” I asked, voice quieter than I expected.

“I-I don’t know,” she stammered.

“Is that a
bad
I-don’t-know, or a
good
one?”

The smile spread across her features and long, dark lashes batted over hypnotic eyes. “I am well. So well, I’m having trouble putting the feeling into words.”

I blew out a hard exhale.
That’s a good sign.
“You had me worried. In fact, worried might be too weak. Scared shitless is a little closer to the mark.”

Lyla turned back to the balcony, surveying the street. “Where are we?”

“Scotland.”

“More precisely?”

“Edinburgh.”

“For how long did you put me down?”

“You’ve been unconscious for more than twenty-four hours, but I didn’t keep you down. You slept the entire time.”

“But you dropped me, yes?” The question drifted over her turned shoulders.

“Yes.” I dragged a forearm across my foamy mouth and found a seat on the bed. “How much do you remember?”

She turned back and sat in the chair near the doors, the one I’d spent all night on. She clutched arms around her chest as her eyes wandered the unfamiliar surroundings. Wasn’t surprising, given what I’d done to her. Sometimes I forget how invasive the act of shutting someone down really is. Having no control over one’s own consciousness . . . the essence of vulnerability. You feel helpless when you know it’s coming. And after? Well, I guess
violated
is an accurate word. Awful, but accurate.

“I remember enough. The alley. The argument . . .” Her voice trailed
away.

“You weren’t yourself. I think sleep deprivation had a lot to do with it.”

Doubt crawled over her expression. “You think or you hope?”

It was about 25 percent think and 75 percent hope, but her expression told me Lyla’s mental footing was shaky enough as it was. No need to let honesty chip away more of the foundation.

Keep her calm and relaxed.

“Both, but one thing I know for sure—going months without any REM sleep can gum up the works pretty badly.”

It was worth thirty seconds of blinding pain to find out just how much. Reaching out to her mind felt like plunging a long needle into the soft skin between my eyebrows; a shocking jolt when I moved past the threshold, followed by an angry burn, one which transitioned from Ben-Gay to welding-torch intensity in a frightening hurry. The longer I stayed in Lyla’s mind, the deeper that needle was gonna slide into my skull, but I had to know just how much of her breakdown was due to her physical state, and how much was mental. Physical I could help with, especially since I knew an extra-hard push could put her to sleep. If Lyla’s issues were mental, on the other hand, we were one bad conversation away from being right back in that hallway.

As I moved through the gate into the sea of consciousness beyond, my uncertainty gave way to wonder, then overwhelming relief. The maelstrom of turgid thought was simply . . . gone. The surface of her mind was placid and calm. Not everything was clear—her cognitive patterns were still clouded with uncertainty and a little fear—but fishing below the glassy surface of her thought stream was simple compared to the experience in Mrs. Barstow’s hallway. Then, all I could hear were whispers. Now her mental words sounded like they were coming through loudspeakers.

It’s as though an obscuring film has peeled back from the surface of my eyes. Colors, sounds, smells—everything so rich and textured now. Is this how it was before? It
’s been so long, I feel like I’m experiencing everything for the first time. Like I’ve been reborn—why does Scott look like he’s in the middle of a bowel movement?

I looked back through the gateway and saw my own body wound up in a grimace, enduring the spike piercing my forehead. And I’ll be damned if it didn’t look
exactly
like I was taking a king-sized shit.

I let go of Lyla’s mind, and took a deep breath as the pain cut off. I couldn’t tell if the tears welling in my eyes were from agony or relief. Either way, I didn’t care because the sane version of Lyla was back.

At least for now.

“What’s wrong with you? Are you all right?” Her face showed genuine concern.

I waved her off but couldn’t suppress a smile. “A bowel movement? Seriously?”

She paused, uncertain—her brow scrunched up in confusion. “Bowel . . . how . . . how do you know that’s what I was thinking?”

“Two pieces of good news. One, I think you’re going to be fine. Two, I can read minds. Surprise!” I extended my arms with a flourish and gave her my best magician’s “Ta-dah.”

Her eyes narrowed to suspicious slits. She readjusted the makeshift toga across her chest. “Then you and I have a great deal to discuss, Professor Xavier. And unless you want to leave this room in nothing but your underwear and clucking like a chicken, I want to know
everything.
”

Lyla may have looked angry, but I didn’t have to read her mind to know better.

“I’m happy to tell you anything you want to know,” I said and turned to the closet to fetch her white dress. “But over breakfast. We’ll find a place nearby. You’ve slept for more than twenty-four hours . . . you’ve gotta be starving.”

“More thirsty, to be honest,” she said, extricating herself from the chair.

I draped the St. Moritz dress over the bed in front of her. “Might want to change.”

Lyla sniffed herself and groaned. “I’m repulsive. I need to shower first.” She plucked the dress from the bed and moved past to the bathroom.

“Yes. Repulsive. First adjective that comes to mind,” I called out
after she closed the door.

She replied, but her words got lost in the patter of water.

Probably better that way.
Flirting with Lyla, even after five years, was second nature, but I had a stronger imperative, one that hadn’t vanished just because I wasn’t under imminent threat of embrace.

Observe, assess, decide
.

Tucker’s voice haunted me almost as much as Lyla’s potential psychosis. The CIA wasn’t known for its forgiving nature, and they had a helluva long reach. They’d demand more proof than I had right now. And until I got that proof, the best plan was to spirit Lyla away from the Agency and any other prying eyes.

As far as the Goddess of Love went, her astonishing turnaround was more than a couple of steps in the right direction, but I had no idea if it would last. Yeah she seemed fine, but let’s be honest: five minutes after he woke up in the morning, Jeffrey Dahmer’s mind probably looked like a pastoral meadow, too.

Best to just keep near, watch close, and see whether or not the woman I remembered was still the one running the show.

Lyla seemed fine.

Sitting in the bathroom to give her some privacy to get dressed, take a guess which one of those three words affected me the most.