Summer stepped out of Sam’s arms. “You’re okay with Merc unilaterally deciding their future? Ash has no say in this? That’s not how love works.”
“It is for mutants. The choice is first the mutant’s. He can reject the pairing to save the human female’s life.”
“We decided on this together.”
“We did—because I was too weak to spare you.”
“You think I’m still in danger?”
“Yes. But I believe you’re safer with me than without me.”
Summer nodded. She blinked away tears.
Sam pulled her close again. “I love you, Summer. I love that we’re together. I love the future we’re building.”
“I want this for Ash and Merc.”
“Me too. But we have to respect what they decide.”
20
Merc looked at Ash sleeping peacefully in the bed. That afternoon, before Ash had come in, Merc had almost gotten inside the mine with his host. He’d been irritated when Ash interrupted him, but he’d learned an important lesson: there was a difference between astral travel and possession. In astral form, he could not penetrate the energetic protection set around the mine. But possession was a different kind of connection, one that was binary. He was either in possession of someone or he wasn’t. With a connection made to a host, he could open or close that door at will, which explained why he was able to snap back to himself without going through the protection Flynn had set.
He intended to finish his exploration of the mine compound tonight, but he had to reverse the crazy he’d set in motion here in the village first. Tomorrow, he’d go for the robe. After that, he could take Ash to go meet up with Santo—his original mission—then head home with her. Merc’s intelligence had the old guru waiting for him out near the training camp. Once they were back in Colorado, they could decide what they wanted to do with the mess the Matchmaker had put them in.
Keeping himself hidden, he went across town, heading toward the first mural wall. Artists had covered the blank pink wall with vibrant street art of tropical plants. What was left of the first gang leader Merc had condemned to a passive death was still in his seat, facing the wall.
A circle of flowers, trinkets, and religious items of all sorts filled a six-foot-wide circle around the chair, starting a few feet out from it—the buffer Merc had put in place so people wouldn’t get too close the corpse.
He now cancelled that protection, returning the cadaver to its normal state. The skeleton collapsed on itself and tumbled from the chair in a tangled pile of rags, sinew, and bone, spilling over a line of tchotchkes.
He did that with each skeleton. He knew there were cameras trained on the dead men, but his hidden state meant his presence would be recorded only as a brief electrical interference that briefly blocked the cameras and the corpses they recorded.
Perhaps that would feed into the myths growing around the sites of these dead gangbangers. Perhaps not. It was far too late to worry about the things regulars would say or think. Their behaviors had never been his to control or judge.
He left the town and went up to the death pits. A few fresh victims were lying in the trenches. He’d only come up here once since the government had emptied out the pits after he first returned. Seemed the rate of fill had slowed. Whether that was due to word getting out and evildoers staying away, or because there was a smaller population of baddies to snag, he didn’t know and didn’t care.
It was time to end this. He kept himself invisible to regulars—if the padre was making his rounds, he didn’t want to be seen.
During his prior visit to the village, he’d tried to stop the curse in several ways, none of which had worked. He had to remember that he was dealing with energy, and energy behaved in predictable ways. It never ended—it could only become concentrated, distributed, or transmuted.
His curse had set an energetic cover over the pits that was defined by rage. Rage was fueled by fear. What had he been afraid of at the point when he set the curse?
The answer was simple. He’d been afraid dark would consume good. He’d lived it with the Omnis when they’d killed his family. And he’d seen regulars destroying each other here, in the wicked village of Valle de Lágrimas.
Maybe dark and light needed each other. One couldn’t exist without the limits imposed by the other. Without an opposite, there was no beginning and no end, no movement, only stagnation.
It occurred to him that to end the curse, he had to neutralize the energy he’d set in place.
What was the opposite energy of rage with an aspect of fear? Peace, with an aspect of hope.
Merc wished for peace and hope to take over the pits, releasing the previous intent he’d put in place. He spread his arms and felt the shift from imbalance to balance. It felt good. It felt right. His eyes closed as his entire body focused on the new feel of the space…until he heard Ash scream his name.
Everything after that happened in a flash. He jerked himself out of his own protection, sending his energy out from his location as he searched for Ash. She’d sounded so close.
He was unprepared for the piercing pain that slashed across his back.
Roll, Merc, Liege told him. Now.
His reverie shattered, Merc tumbled forward onto the dirt path between the first and middle pits, pulling his knife from his thigh sheath. Two ghouls flanked him. When they leaped toward him, he made swift strikes at their femoral arteries as he slipped from them into the first pit. The beasts felt pain, but they were made for fighting, and the volume of adrenaline an attack produced in them kept them upright long after anything a mutant or regular could have survived. The cuts he’d made would have killed a human, but not a ghoul—at least, not quickly. It would take several similar injuries to bring them down.
The beasts scrabbled at each other, thinking they had him between them. He wrapped an arm around one of the monster’s knees and tried to swing up behind him, but before could complete that maneuver, something grabbed his ankle, jerking him back into the pit. Too late, he realized that the removal of his curse had freed the damned.
The ghouls noticed the struggling humans and instantly lost interest in Merc.
What came next was the stuff of nightmares—a bloodbath no regular could survive.
Merc climbed out of the pit. He stood at the rim a moment. He had to help the humans, but the ghouls were already ripping them apart and feeding on them.
Merc summoned his last reserve of strength and sent an electromagnetic pulse straight toward the skulls of the ghouls, causing them to explode from the pressure.
As Merc turned toward the village, the pain of his wounds slammed into him. He stumbled, then felt himself buoyed by the spirit energies of Acier and Lautaro. He could feel the soothing healing energy of Guerre, who was already working on his wounds.
Ash, he said to his friends. Go to her. I heard her scream for help.
It wasn’t Ash, Guerre told him. It was Flynn. He couldn’t reach you in your reverie, so he had to break you out of it. He mimicked her voice.
Damn. Ash was as much Merc’s strength as his weakness. His legs gave out. The guys’ spirits supported his physical body as Guerre numbed his pain. I did it, Merc told his friends. I ended the curse.
Fuckin’ A, man, Acier said. When you’re healed, tell us how.