The Protectors Read online

  “Mr. McAlister! We’ve been expecting you. Thank you for coming. May I take your coat?”

  I shook my head, distracted by the noise from the dining room. A small place, St. Moritz packed about twenty tables in fifteen spots, and every one of them was at capacity. I scanned several and saw no trace of Lyla. I turned back just in time to catch a glimpse of the maître d’ twisting the dead bolt on the front door, but played it off as though I hadn’t. No reason to throw a fit—locking the door didn’t alarm me in the slightest. If anything, it would keep distractions out of the restaurant. His outstretched arm pointed toward the far end of the room.

  “Your party is waiting,” he said, beckoning me to follow. We carved a serpentine path in and out of the tables, and my eyes focused on each one as we went past. No surreptitious looks, no signs of stress. Every diner involved in conversation or eating, and not one person cast even a glance my way, which should have screamed “red alert,” but it didn’t.

  Because I saw her.

  At the worst table in the house, near the kitchen doors, she waited alone. Her eyes locked on to mine and I practically floated the last ten feet to the table. She’d straightened her long black hair, which framed the sides of her face in gleaming curtains. Her skin was exactly the way I’d remembered—perfect, olive, radiant—made even more striking by her simple white dress. The elegant fabric was brilliant in the low light and the thin straps highlighted her slender shoulders. And the eyes—my God, always the eyes—flecks of gold twirled around her pupils. It reminded me of a hypnotist’s charm, almost impossible to look away from. Especially if you’d never seen her before. But this wasn’t my first time, and the only thing impossible for me not to notice was her mouth—she wasn’t smiling. I stopped short of the table and made no movement toward the empty chair facing her.

  “Hello, Scott.” None of the distinctive purr to her voice. All business.

  “Lyla. It’s been a long time.”

  She unlocked her gaze long enough to look me over.

  “You even wore your duster. You know, I’ve never felt them appropriate for men under six feet.”

  “Nice. Leading off with a height joke. I’m five eleven. And a half.”

  “Look at you, like a picture from years ago. You’re exactly the same,” she told me. Her voice sounded tired.

  “Not exactly.”

  She raised her hands from beneath a white linen tablecloth and rested them on the surface. A glass of red wine sat on the table in front of her. It looked untested. Another full glass sat in front of my empty chair. She examined her fingernails, distracted or unwilling to look at me.

  “Still haunted by the past, I hope,” and her mouth finally formed a smile, a cruel one. She was angry, which made two of us.

  “Look, this is about bigger things than Crusher . . . ,” I began. Her eyes widened and her nostrils flared as her face contorted with rage.

  “His name was Carsten!” she hissed. “Carsten Walker. Don’t you dare talk about him like he was a comic-book character. He was my friend. He thought he was your friend, too. Until you killed him.”

  A five-year-old argument, made new again. Just as painful now.

  “Wow. Thirty whole seconds before mentioning Carsten. Thank you. That’s about twice as long as I thought I’d get,” I told her. She geared up for another tirade, and I lifted my arm to point a finger in her direction. Surprised, she shrank back in her chair. “Just listen for one minute . . . ,” I started, without recognizing my old habit of extending an arm and pointing at someone before dropping them. As soon as my arm moved, the restaurant changed around me. Conversations—all of them—stopped. I heard a flurry of chairs screech across the wooden floor, plates and silverware clanging, and the distinctive sound of cocking hammers.

  Lots of them.

  I let the arm continue and had my other one join in, pointing at the ceiling. Taking extreme care, I turned my head to look over my right shoulder. Every single customer, every waiter, and even the courteous maître d’, was armed. Revolvers, automatics, and submachine guns of all types, presumably hidden beneath the tables when I’d entered, were leveled in my direction. People near me were crouched on the floor in shooting positions, while people farther away at the front of the restaurant were standing on tables and chairs. It looked like a theater-seating shooting gallery, and I was on the wrong end. I turned back to Lyla. Slowly.

  “Jesus. You embraced all of these people?”

  She looked a great deal more relaxed now, standing by the kitchen doors outside the line of fire.

  “Yes. With your history it felt prudent. Remember how you once told me you couldn’t affect more than forty people simultaneously?”

  “How many of them are there?”

  Lyla smiled. “More than forty.”

  “Well done. Although unnecessary. I’m not here to hurt you, Lyla. I just want to talk.”

  She sneered.

  “ ‘I just want to talk’? Do not try that hostage negotiation drivel with me. I’m not some moronic criminal you can manipulate. I’m disappointed you would even try.”

  “Sorry. Force of habit,” I told her, then offered a mean-spirited chuckle.

  “What is so funny?”

  “You’re offended I’m trying to manipulate you. If that’s not the pot calling the kettle black, I don’t know what is. You’ve got a room full of mind-controlled people with guns standing here, and you’re pissed-off at me? C’mon, even you have to admit that’s funny.”

  Her expression stayed flat. In spite of my jokes, it took everything I had to hold my arms still and belie my nervousness. I don’t care how powerful you are, having more than forty guns trained on your back generates many sensations, none of them pleasant. I was an inadvertent sneeze away from looking like shredded cabbage. I needed to ratchet the tension down, and it was useless to say anything directly to Lyla’s mob. There was only one person I needed to calm down, so I fell back on the most reliable form of persuasion I know.

  “You look wonderful. Better than I remember. Incredible job on the setup . . . none of them looked embraced.”

  A glint of satisfaction from her eyes.

  “Thank you, flatterer. My abilities have changed over the years. I am . . . better . . . now.”

  “I can tell. Their conversations were so natural, I didn’t see any of the old signs. You totally fooled me,” I told her.

  “Well, I do love making you a fool.”

  Ouch.

  “Happy to oblige, but seriously, could you please ask them to put safeties on or at least lower the guns? They’re making me nervous. Even if it sounds like a line, I am only here to talk. Hate me as much as you want, but you know I’m not a liar.”

  She returned to her seat and stared back at me with those eyes, weighing the decision. My arms were starting to tingle from holding them aloft. Finally, she shrugged.

  “Friends, please lower your weapons and engage the safeties. I believe him.”

  I heard the mob do exactly as she commanded, with zero hesitation. Even so, I didn’t lower my arms until I had time to check again over my shoulder. Not only was I no longer a target, but the crowd sat down and resumed dining as though nothing had happened. They looked harmless, as before.

  “Very nice. Thank you.”

  “Like I said, I’m better now.”

  I rolled out a crick in my neck and said, “So am I.” Then I dropped every single person in the building except us.

  Glasses and plates crashed against tables and then to the ground. Diners slumped out of their chairs, waiters collapsed to the floor, and the maître d’ fell right into a potted plant. Even four guys out of sight in the kitchen went down. I never took my eyes off Lyla. “Honest conversations rarely happen with loaded guns in the room,” I said.

  She only shook her head.

  “So you are stronger now. Why not
drop them when they drew their weapons?”

  “All those guns, all those fingers wrapped around triggers . . . some of them would have gone off when they fell. Didn’t want anyone getting hurt.”

  Her smile was tinged with sadness.

  “Same old Scott. Always worried about the innocent,” she whispered.

  “Not the same old Lyla, though, is it?”

  Her gaze drifted away before answering, and I noticed dark areas under her eyes. She looked exhausted.

  “You are correct. I am different.” Soft and quiet at first, Lyla sounded like a shy child telling me her age, but when her eyes came back to mine, she had an edge. “I’m not a pawn anymore.”

  Here we go.

  “Like me, you mean.”

  “You are what you are. If you take offense, perhaps you should wonder why the truth riles you so much,” she said. Lyla’s ability to make an insult sound regal hadn’t waned. God, even without using her powers she had a way of controlling my emotions. Especially when she wanted to piss me off.

  “Says the woman whose entire existence is built around making people into pawns. Nice, but I’m nobody’s lackey.”

  “Then you apparently have a very poor memory,” she said.

  I could feel burning in my cheeks and neck as the anger boiled.

  “You wanna hate me because of Carsten—fine. I made the tough choice, and I’ve had to live with it every goddamn day for the last five years. But don’t tell me my memory sucks, because it works just fine. My memory is disgustingly, nauseatingly perfect . . . no matter how hard I try to forget.” I wasn’t lying. Over the last few years, I was lucky if more than two days went by without me reliving the moment.

  CHAPTER 7

  I stand in burning, smoky ruins. Sirens and screams from all directions. A broken rotor from a crushed helicopter whines behind me. The bodies of doctors, nurses, and soldiers litter the rubble. Some are dying, most are already gone. The government calls this place a “psychiatric assessment center,” but that’s just politically correct bullshit. We know what it is—the high-security wing of a mental institution—and we know what it means for one of our own.

  It’s the end.

  Except no one bothered to tell Crusher. He rises up from the wreckage, all seven feet and four hundred pounds of him. His clothes are burned away, courtesy of repeated bolts of lightning from Blaster. Diego used everything he had before collapsing, brilliant sustained blasts of electricity arcing from his fists across the remnants of the building. Millions of volts, hell, maybe billions, and Carsten just laughed. Didn’t even bother to throw the tank at him. He just went ahead destroying everything else and waited for Diego to wear himself out.

  Carsten looks at me now, and his eyes are scary. I don’t know what they see, but it’s more than what’s really here. Everything a danger, everyone an enemy, monsters and demons all. Sanity is like water pumping out of a hand-cranked well—he’s tried so hard to gather it up, claw at it—but it just slips through his fingers and soaks the ground. He starts toward me and I realize how far gone Carsten is. He roars and takes giant steps across the distance. Lyla fights to embrace him, but he can’t hear her voice. Doesn’t matter—his mind is broken, beyond her power to control. Only one person can stop him and he knows it. I had to drop Carsten multiple times just to get him to the facility, but each time it was harder to do. He FIGHTS me . . . hell, I didn’t think it was even possible, but he does. Now, with his rage beyond measure, he closes in on the one demon that can actually harm him.

  I reach for him, feeling for the mental button I know will turn Carsten off. It’s easy to find, just like everyone else’s, but when I press it nothing happens. He pounds through the carnage, not bothering to hurl anything—he wants to finish me up close, kill me in person—he needs to feel my body pull apart at the joints. I like my arms and legs attached, so I don’t just press the button—I stab and hold the damn thing down. He feels it now . . . the edge of his consciousness being pulled away . . . and he staggers. I keep right on pushing and pushing, so hard that for the very first time I feel a dull throbbing pain in my own head. He knows he won’t make it to me now, so in desperation he bends over and picks up the only lethal object within reach. The steel-plate door may be crumpled, but it weighs more than I do, and it will cut me in half.

  That’s when I know: it’s him or it’s me. So I drop the fucking hammer on his button. I scream, he screams; but in the end, Carsten and the door hit the ground at the same time. Everything falls quiet. I don’t even hear the sirens or the choppers anymore. I’m aware of only one thing: I’m terrified. Watching Carsten plow through the rubble intent on murder has petrified me, and the only thought pulsing through my brain is I can’t let it happen again. Ever. So I keep a death grip on that button. He’s already down but I don’t care. I keep pressing, pressing, pressing . . . my hand stretched out and straining toward his unconscious body. I’m dimly aware of Lyla touching my arm—soft at first, then insistent, and finally, panicked. She’s screaming now, pleading for me to stop. When I finally do, Carsten isn’t breathing. I sink to my knees, blinking in disbelief.

  I’ve killed my friend.

  As empty and lifeless as I feel in the aftermath, one look at Lyla makes it worse. Through a prism of tears I see her . . . staring at me as she rises from Carsten’s body. Those hypnotic eyes tell me everything her voice never will: despair, rage, and pity. I’ve made an enemy of the only woman I’ve ever loved.

  —

  Now, five years later, her eyes are on me again. But this time, it’s harder to read them. Oh, trust me, there’s still anger . . . but anger I understand. It’s the pity I can’t take.

  “So, you are haunted by the memory of Carsten’s murder . . . the price of being the general’s assassin has proven too high? I feel so sorry for you. Look at you, the government’s little errand boy, sent across an ocean to fix another broken superhero.”

  “Goddammit, Lyla, enough with the superhero crap. I didn’t have orders to kill Carsten. What happened, happened. And I’m not here to ‘fix’ you, either. If I was”—my eyes looked away on reflex—“I would have done it already.”

  She leaned back in her chair, but still kept her annoyingly perfect posture. For the moment, she was on defense—so I kept her there.

  “I’m going to ask a simple question and I want a direct answer. Do you really believe I killed Carsten because of an order? Do you think I’m an assassin?”

  She stared at me, searching my face. Before her lips started moving, I knew she was going to sidestep.

  “What I think is: Carsten was special. A jewel unlike any other, as all four of us were. I think you destroyed that jewel and it is now gone from this earth. Do the conditions of such a travesty really matter in the long run?”

  Her arms folded to punctuate her rhetorical question.

  “It matters to me. I’ve had a long time to think about that day, y’know. Five years of rewind gets old, but a while back, I stopped cursing my memory because it finally let me see something. I was astonished I’d overlooked it . . . but with all the depression and anger, I guess it was understandable. Just like knowing I was buried under a mountain of guilt probably warms your heart.”

  A whisper of a smile on her face. “A little.”

  “Well, when I finally came up for air, guess what I remembered? I wasn’t the only one there that day. You were, too.”

  “A shocking revelation. Yes, I was there, trying to stop Carsten . . . keep him safe. So the government did not just give up and kill him. Like they asked you to do.”

  “Which I refused.”

  “Correct. You refused the general in the morning. Then things get uncomfortable and by afternoon you choke the life out of Carsten’s helpless body.”

  “While you stood there and did nothing.”

  “You know quite well I could not reach him. His . . . mind . . . wa
s . . .” She searched for the word. “. . . chaotic. There was nothing for me to embrace, nothing I could hold on to once his rage began.”

  Now I had her. I hated myself for going in this direction, but if she hadn’t faced the truth yet, it was time. Hell, it was way past time.

  “You couldn’t stop Carsten. But you could’ve stopped me,” I told her.

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “You could have embraced me immediately after he fell. Just as I’m sure you planned to that morning while you scowled at the general when he asked me to terminate Carsten. You could have sat me down, made me recite the Pledge of Allegiance, or tap-dance in the rubble. You could have stopped me. They’re the two worst words in the English language, but listen to them: could have.”

  No surprise, no affront registered on her face. She knew. She’d always known.

  “But you didn’t,” I said. “Let me tell you what I think: Carsten was sick. He had been for a very long time, and he was only getting worse. And yeah, I know he wasn’t the only one. There are plenty of people out there with invisible demons . . . I get it. But those people can’t throw railroad cars at their demons. Their bodies aren’t impervious to drugs. News flash, Lyla: the world can’t handle a psychotic Superman.

  “You wanna blame me . . . you wanna go on thinking you had nothing to do with it? Be my guest. But it doesn’t change what happened. I killed Carsten, yeah”—I pointed my finger at her chest—“and you let him die.”

  I expected her to recoil, if for no other reason than my harsh tone, but her eyes merely drifted to the wine, focusing on the lip of her glass. She said nothing. The silence felt good, but only because I was tired of hearing angry voices. Finally, she spoke.

  “Are you happy? Does it feel better to know your burden is shared?”

  I told the truth.