She stared at Merc a long moment, proud of herself for not laughing. “Werewolves. Riiiight. But, yeah, such a problem.” She shook her head. “I bet fairies, kelpies, and the Abominable Snowman have the same issue.”
He wasn’t amused. Her humor faded in the protracted silence. At last, he shrugged. “I exist, and I’m a changed being. Summer exists, and she’s been changed. You have no idea how many changed beings you’ve already met. Reality isn’t what you think it is. It’s that line the Legion’s fighting to preserve, a line Flynn would happily trample. It’s a line that could topple entire governments and crumble world order as we know it.”
Ash turned to face forward. She was so stinking gullible. Merc said things like werewolves existed with an entirely straight face, and boom! She could almost fall for it.
But then, how could she explain what she’d seen in her vision about him in the pit or what he’d done back at the church? Or the death chairs with the perfectly intact skeletons? Or even the curse he said he put on the mass graves drawing evil people to lie down and die in them? Or what about the fact that very few people in town could describe him the same way, since everyone remembered a different man?
The only explanation she had to go with was hypnosis—and it worked for all she’d seen. That and the terrible role-playing game they were still in the midst of.
Ash looked around the Jeep, trying to find evidence of a recording device, something that tracked Merc in real time. Maybe he couldn’t leave the game’s extreme reality yet.
That made her sad.
The guy she was crazy about was just crazy. And she was alone with him at night in the middle of the jungle—out of cell phone range.
She was in her own horror movie.
Would her friends ever find her body?
Too bad she didn’t watch many horror movies. She had no idea how to placate someone whose grip on reality had slipped long ago.
Just play it cool, Ash, she told herself. “So why are we out here in werewolf-not-werewolf territory in the middle of the night? I’m assuming they are out here?”
“They are. There’s someone I need to connect with.”
Of course the game’s script would go this way. Make it worse, then make it even more awful. Typical. “So this is fascinating. Who writes these game scripts? Or is it all improv?”
Merc took his eyes off the road to let them bore into hers.
“I mean, it’s phenomenal the way you guys stay in your roles. Impressive, really.”
Merc sighed and faced forward.
Ash locked her jaw shut, forcing herself to stop her nervous chatter. It was only making him mad.
She couldn’t explain anything that had happened here. A role-playing game couldn’t defy the laws of physics. And Merc’s insistence on this human mutation stuff was as implausible as everything else. Maybe the changes he kept mentioning were just psychological ones. Maybe the affected people believed they were mutated warriors for good or evil.
Or werewolves.
That could happen.
A thought hit her suddenly—something that had occurred when Summer was dating Sam. That night they were all at Summer’s. She had a terrible wound that she said was from a monster attack. That was the same night her boss was mauled…by a pack of stray dogs, which were never found.
Oh, hell. Something really was going on. Still didn’t mean werewolves were real, just that something was making people believe in really out-there stuff.
But what about the skeletons in the chairs? That could have been done by some slowly degrading glue. And the people in the pit had surely been actors. She was as imperfect as the next person, but it hadn’t consumed her. And it hadn’t taken Flynn either.
She looked at Merc as she puzzled through that. Finally, she had to ask: “Why didn’t the cursed pit draw Flynn into it?”
Merc looked at her, then back at the road. “He was never near it in his physical body.”
Dammit. She shouldn’t ask questions when she knew she wouldn’t understand—or like—the answer. She should just put blinders on and pretend everything was totally normal.
Merc frowned. “There’s a lot to understand. Don’t feel bad.”
“I don’t feel bad. I’m angry. Imagine learning everything you thought was a hardened rule about life actually wasn’t what you thought it was.”
Good. That was believable. He’d think she was on his side in all of this.
“I spent years in that denial state,” Merc said. “Cost me everything I loved.”
And that, of course, brought forward more questions, but before she could ask them, Merc explained Flynn’s body thing. “You’ve heard of astral travel?”
Ash nodded. “I’ve read about it, but I’ve never experienced it. And I’m pretty certain I don’t believe in it.”
“Of course not. That mindset is why it’s so easy for mutants to do what we do.”
“Mutants. C’mon, Merc, throw me a bone.”
He laughed. “I’ve been genetically modified. I’m a mutant human. You’re a regular human. Regular humans can do everything mutants can do, but they generally don’t. It takes years and extreme effort and study to build the super skills we were modified to do. One of those skills is astral travel.”
“Wait. Why were you modified? Let’s start there.”
“We were a science experiment. The group that changed us wanted super warriors. We were designed to infiltrate and destroy enemies from within. The problem was that our creators quickly realized that while they’d enhanced our physical bodies and mental capabilities, they had no control over us, so they broke their experiments down into more controllable units. Acier—I think you met him—well, he was changed in a different group than the three of us. And I think Guerre came through the changes before us.
“Anyway, one of our super skill sets is the ability to travel without our physical bodies. Almost all mutants can do that. Some of us can even interact in the physical world while in astral form. Flynn is one of those beings. The pit didn’t get him because he was there without his body.”
She thought about the other bombshell he dropped. “What did you mean about your denial costing you everything you loved?”
In the faint light from the dashboard, she could see his face tighten. “The modification process erased my memories. Or, I guess, suppressed them. They slowly returned to me. Meanwhile, my wife and family were left to fend for themselves. She never gave up on me, and she refused to accept the excuses the military gave for my absence.”
Whoa. Wife. God. Merc was married. Married. No wonder he didn’t want her. Dammit. They’d had such chemistry. And they’d been intimate… What a schmuck, making her love him when he was already committed to someone.
She slumped down in her seat. Really, she had the worst luck with men.
He continued without acknowledging the way she’d checked out. “My wife was a squeaky wheel to them, and I was a useless, absent bastard. I wasn’t there when she died, but I’m certain they killed her.”
A chill knifed its way down Ash’s spine and right into her spirit. She’d been jealous of a woman whose life was cut short.
Because of Merc.
She looked at him, wanting to apologize, knowing there was more to his story. “Tell me the rest of it.”