Wisteria (Wisteria Series) Page 11

  Wisteria came in. “You look much better.” Placing her sword beside him, she knelt down in front of him. A large, dark bump protruded from her temple.

  “Your face is swollen.”

  She seemed to ignore his observation. “I got you some more food.” She had brought another tin of that revolting pink tinned meat.

  Even though it was revolting, he was eating what she’d been bringing, because she claimed that was all she could get. Felip was a much better steward, but he felt there was no benefit in complaining.

  As she placed her hand on his neck, he wanted to grab her hand and remove it from his person. He’d told her hundreds of times that he hated being touched, but he was starting to not mind her doing it. His feelings for her were forbidden and would do her more harm than good in the end.

  “You’re less cold than you were.” She tried to smile.

  He could see from her eyes that she’d been crying. She’d never seemed happy in this place. Bach knew a lot of that had to do with him and the way he treated her. He should’ve been nicer, but how nice did one need to be to a Terran? Plus, he had never needed anyone and especially one who could be made into a Thayn. He hesitated and reached out to touch her hand. He found that he could not. Even though he knew he could trust her, he still couldn’t bring himself to touch her, a Terran, the way he wanted to. “What happened to you?”

  Her hands trembled as she picked up the sword. “We need to leave as soon as you can. We’re not safe here.”

  “I am not in danger any longer.” Bach knew full well that he was beyond any risk of danger from the dungeon dwellers, now that he had rejuvenated.

  “Yes, you are,” she insisted. “As soon as you think you can travel, we have to go.”

  “Wisteria.” He heard the Terran archer call out to her. “Come outside.”

  Immediately, she got up and turned to leave him again. He reached over to pull her back. “Wisteria.” He felt her pulse racing in her wrist. “There is nothing those people can do to me now, but I will leave when I am ready.”

  “I hope so.” For a moment, it looked like she believed him and her pulse slowed.

  “Wisteria,” the archer boy, Garfield wailed. “Hurry!”

  “I need to go to him.”

  “To him?” Unable to hide his repugnance, he let go of her. “Go.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” Squinting angrily at him, she bent to collect her sword. As she bent close to his face, he realized that he wanted to kiss her. What is wrong with me? He watched her leave and became aware that she’d made her choice. It was just as well, he didn’t like the feelings she invoked. He just needed to get back to his cohorts. Bach was alone. Fine. He’d start to prepare himself to leave alone, and the first thing to do was a round of deep meditation.

  Sometime later, there was a knock at the door and then the Terran, Garfield, burst in.

  Bach studied the boy as he walked in uninvited. Why Wisteria would want to spend any time with him, Bach couldn’t understand. He was a Sen-son and clearly better in every way. Ignoring the Terran boy, he closed his eyes to continue his deep meditation.

  “Nun?” the Terran whispered.

  “D’cara,” Bach swore, without opening his eyes. “What?”

  “What are you doing, standing on your hands?”

  “Meditating. It helps me heal faster,” Bach replied as he balanced on his right hand. “What do want from me?”

  “Okay…Look, they know you’re sick and they’re going to put you down, man. You need to—”

  “Do I look sick to you?” Changing hands, he now balanced himself on his left hand.

  “No-no—” Garfield stuttered. “So, we should be planning how we’re going to get out of here. I’ve a few ideas.”

  “I do not need your ideas. I am fine now, and I will be gone in an hour.”

  The boy he remembered as Garfield did not respond as he stood looking bewildered.

  “I am certain this will make you extremely happy.” He couldn’t allow his jealousy over the Terran girl to interfere anymore and the thought definitely pleased Bach, as he needed to find his cohort. Perhaps Enric had gotten them all to one of their rendezvous points.

  “You’re not listening.” Garfield squatted down in front of Bach. “You need to go now—not in an hour. Sammy is coming down here with a couple of blokes to cut your head off.”

  “If they come for my head.” He flipped onto his feet and turned to the boy. “I will be waiting or not. Either way, I will be out of here in an hour.”

  “I’m going with you. I spoke to Wisteria and she said so.” Now the Terran boy seemed agitated.

  “Wisteria?” Bach looked over at him and frowned. “She does not speak for me and it seems she likes it here. I cannot imagine why she would ever want to leave you.” He did feel angry still that she’d chosen this boy over him.

  “What is wrong with you? You’re going to leave us here?” he pleaded, not sensing Bach’s sarcasm.

  “You mean you do not want to be eaten by your friends?”

  “How did you know about that?” Garfield didn’t hide his surprise.

  “How else could forty people trapped in a city get enough food? There are no animals in here with you. And no one looks like they are starving.” How could they value their own lives so much, yet descend to eating each other so quickly? This amused Bach.

  “I didn’t eat anyone.”

  “Terran? Who you did or did not eat is something you are going to have to take up with whatever higher power you serve.” Bach headed toward the door.

  “You can’t be serious! You’re going to leave her here? Don’t you care about what happens to her?”

  “She is not my concern.” It hurt Bach to say that because he knew it wasn’t true. “She seems happier with you. She can stay here.”

  “Bach, they’re going to kill her because of you!” Shouting, the Terran shoved him. “We’re both dead now, because she swore you’d be able to help us. Didn’t you realize she has sat at that door for days while you slept?”

  Ignoring the boy, Bach yelled back at him, “Never touch me.” Blocking Garfield’s blows, he knocked him down.

  “Asshole!” Garfield yelled up at him.

  Bach was getting tired of his rambling. He moved to the door and swung it open.

  On the other side were three men armed with knives and one of them was holding a gun.

  “I’m glad to see you’re feeling better, Nun,” said one wearing a cold grin on his face.

  Bach had seen the speaker when he first arrived. He called himself Sammy.

  “Sammy, what’s going on?” Garfield appeared next to Bach while trying to sound cheerful, but Bach could hear the fear in his voice. “Where’s Wisteria? She was out here before.”

  “Come with us,” Sammy ordered to the two teenagers as he pointed his gun.

  “Be very careful where you point that thing. You could get hurt,” Bach warned.

  “Just shut up and sit your ass down.” The man poked the gun into Bach’s ribs.

  “Fine” Bach put up his hands. “But you should calm down.”

  “Shut the hell up!” The man jabbed at Bach again.

  “Do not point that at me.” Bach pushed the man back, but the two other men produced shotguns which they aimed at his head.

  “Listen—” the Terran called Sammy warned.

  Before he could finish his statement, Bach reached out and immediately disarmed all the men. “You might hurt yourselves.” With very little effort, he smashed one of the guns against the ground.

  “No, we need those!” Garfield gasped with surprise at Bach’s lightning speed and super strength. “We need weapons.”

  “Why?” Bach asked, about to destroy the other weapons. He paused to inspect the shotgun and the handgun. He’d avoided using Terran artifacts, so he handed them to Garfield.

  “What the hell are you?” Garfield remarked in fear as he tried to balance an armful of guns.

  “
I am leaving,” Bach answered while ignoring his question.

  The crowd parted as Bach walked through.

  “You know we’re dead, once we get outside, right?” Garfield muttered in fear as he followed. “We’re dead if we stay here, too.”

  Bach wondered suddenly why Wisteria wasn’t there. He stopped, turning back and headed over to the archer, Sammy, who had accosted him with the weapons before. “Where is she?”

  “Your…your friend?” Grimacing, Sammy shook his head.

  Bach grabbed the man’s arm. “Where?”

  “I’m not afraid of you,” the man sneered until Bach squeezed his arm and his bones started to crack. “Ah!”

  “Where?” he asked again while strengthening his grip around the Terran’s forearm.

  “Oh, please,” the man whimpered. “She’s with Mackenzie!”

  “I know where,” Garfield piped in. He took Bach to the apartment where they’d met the fanatical leader on the first day.

  In the apartment, he found three other men. All armed, with their guns trained on him.

  The golden-haired woman sat in the corner of the room, calmly smoking a cigarette. “Oh, hello?” she greeted, as though he were a friendly visitor. “I’m glad to see you’ve recovered.”

  “Where is the Terran girl?” Before the Terrans could respond, he sped around the room and instantly grabbed all the weapons, depositing them into Garfield’s arms.

  “Terran?” The woman seemed confused as her expression showed surprise at his instant disarming of her guards.

  “He broke Sammy’s arm with his bare hands!” an old woman shouted as she rushed into the room. “He’s one of them…a biter!”

  Bach smirked. Clearly, he was more rejuvenated than he had thought, since he only intended to sprain the Terran’s arm.

  “I don’t know what the hell he is, but this freak is not a biter.” The leader took a drag from her cigarette. “As for your friend—”

  Not waiting for the answer, Bach sped through the apartment and he found Wisteria on the floor of a bathroom. Squatting beside her, he listened for her breathing. He could hear the sound of it always when she was near, but somehow her breathing at this time was a source of comfort to him.

  “Clearly, we got off on the wrong foot.” The dungeon leader walked up behind him. “This is a tough time for all of us. Why don’t we talk about forming some sort of alliance?”

  Bach completely ignored the beastly Terran leader and picked Wisteria up. He’d most of his strength back, so he used his superior speed to immediately leave the Dungeons behind. This was why he didn’t mix with Terrans. They were nothing but animals.

  * * * * *

  Wisteria woke up as the sun shone into her eyes and she felt the movement of being in a vehicle. Sitting up, she found herself in the back seat of an SUV. Bach was driving and Garfield was in the passenger seat. Looking out of the window at the deserted streets, Wisteria realized that Bach was avoiding motorways as much as possible.

  The drive through the barren wasteland that once was Surrey was disturbing. The roads were littered with burnt or abandoned vehicles. Bodies, young and old, lay rotting out in the open. There were no people, just the echoes of a civilization that seemed long gone. “What happened?” The last thing she remembered was being choked by someone until she’d passed out.

  “Hello.” Bach didn’t look at her as he drove.

  “You feeling all right?” Garfield turned to her.

  “My neck hurts,” she whispered. “My head’s killing me.”

  “Just try and rest,” Garfield suggested.

  “How did you get a car?”

  “Do you think I carried you to London on my back?” Bach remarked with his usual sarcasm.

  “The motorway would be quicker,” she croaked as she lay in the back, but Bach didn’t respond.

  “The motorways are generally impassible now,” Garfield explained. “Either they’re packed with cars and overturned trucks, or they’re booby-trapped.”

  “Either way, you keep off the motorway unless you want to run into scavengers,” Bach stated.

  “Bloody scavengers, they’d kill you for your shoes,” Garfield added.

  “I suppose,” she whispered as their voices seemed to come from far away and she drifted off to sleep.

  * * * * *

  Parking the car, Bach watched through the rearview mirror as Wisteria awoke from her sleep.

  “Where are we?” She searched the surroundings.

  They were in an empty park next to a large pond. Water was very soothing to him and after being trapped in that dungeon for days, he needed a lot of soothing.

  When the Terran boy got out, she hurried after him. “Where are you going?”

  “I really need to go,” the boy informed her.

  “Just whistle, so I know you’re fine.” she called as the Terran boy jogged off in the direction of some trees and bushes.

  “Yeah, right,” the Terran replied sarcastically.

  Returning to the vehicle, she got in beside Bach and leaned her head against the back of the seat. Soon, her eyes closed again. As she rested, he spotted bruises around her neck from when the dungeon dwellers had her.

  The archer had told Bach on the trip out of London what she went through while he was regenerating. He couldn’t believe she endured so much because of him. That was something only renewed Terrans, the Thayns, did. If she were his Thayn, then laying down her life would be her honored duty. Maybe he had renewed her by accident, but that was not possible. “I feel I should say something.”

  Her eyes opened.

  “The archer told me what happened while I was unwell. I would have died if you had not helped me through the streets and given me time to regenerate. Thank you.” Bach didn’t know why he told her this. She was only a Terran, after all.

  Nodding a little, she shut her eyes.

  After a few minutes of silence, he asked. “Why did you do it? Those people would have butchered you.”

  “You were my only way home.” She turned away as she hid her face from him.

  “You never really believed that I would get you out of there.”

  “Yeah, true.” Laughing weakly, she said, “I thought you’d probably die, I suppose. I was just being an idiot, but I’ve seen so many horrors; I can’t do that to anyone or let it happen if I can stop it. And you told me you could fly, so I was hoping—?”

  “I never said I could fly.” He frowned.

  Looking at him, she smirked. “We flew out of the Hunter Tower.”

  “I jumped out.”

  “But you said you could fly—”

  “I cannot fly!”

  Then, he saw her smirk. She was taunting him?

  “Oh.” She nodded and suddenly she looked serious. “But you can make electricity with your fingers? How come?”

  Holding out his hands, he allowed small streaks of light to emerge.

  “Whoa.” She backed away from him.

  “This will not kill you. It does not even hurt. It is decorative.” As he spoke, the blue light faded back into his fingers until only the tips glowed.

  “What is it?”

  “A pulse. All of my people are born this way.” As he explained, he caused the blue light to grow until some of the streaks were touching the SUV’s ceiling.

  “So, what are you called?”

  “Bach. I thought that was obvious.” His usual cryptic attitude had returned.

  She grimaced at him briefly. “The name of your country or wherever you’re from. No country I know has people who can do that. Are you like an alien or vampire or something?”

  “I am from—France.”

  “France? Now that, I wasn’t expecting to hear.” She chuckled. “Exactly what France are we talking about here?”

  “Home, that’s the easiest way I can explain it. We live… near the Jade Ocean. It is very far from here.” Talking about his home helped him to feel better. Still, nothing was better than actually being home, and
he hadn’t been there in 701 days.

  “The Jade Ocean,” Wisteria echoed, obviously confused.

  “My people, my Family, are not human and we are not from Terra. We came here fifteen hundred years ago.”

  “So you’re one thousand, five hundred years old? You look very good for being one and a half millennia.”

  “I’m eighteen, Wisteria.” He laughed and it surprised him that she could make him laugh.

  At his laughter, she looked surprised and then she grinned. “What’s the name of your family?”

  “It is just the Family. We do not use a name, the way you do.”

  “So, you just call yourself family?”

  “A name is sacred and we do not see the reason to name everything and everyone.”

  “So, you’re all from the same family?”

  “Yes, one family, but different pillars. I am from the Third Pillar of the Family.”

  “So, if you don’t use names, why do you have one?”

  “I have accepted that I am called Bach. Otherwise, conversations would be difficult.”

  “So, what’s your real name?”

  That was a very personal question. The first and last time he’d ever asked a Famila their real name, it had earned him three slaps. Pausing to think of an answer, he took out his faycard. “You really want to know?” He flipped the card over. He was so tempted to use the card on her. He somehow wanted to keep her near to him and if he renewed her, he could have that.

  “I mean, you know my name. It’d be nice to know yours. It’s just fair.” She looked as if she’d just realized something important. “Wait, hold on! That’s why you didn’t tell those people your name in the dungeon?”

  He ignored her outburst and lifted the card. “Right now, if I could give you one thing, you would want that? To know my name.”

  Her dark eyes were fixed on the object in his hand.

  Renewing her felt like the right thing to do, but yet again, he couldn’t bring himself to do it, not like this. He couldn’t sort out why she made him feel all these things and he knew that he wanted to be angry all the time at her, because then he wouldn’t want her.