Overlord: The Fringe, Book 2 (18 page)

“I just couldn’t do it anymore,” Duster said. “Not after I saw what we were really doing to women like Diane. Eighteen years old and sold into slavery by her own father, for what? A paltry bit of script so he could drink his pathetic life away?”

Diane would have compelled Michael if he hadn’t been drunk all the time. Diane came from a home as rotten as his. His father had been an abusive gambler with a taste for floozies. After almost beating his father to death, Michael left home at fifteen and never looked back, not until Diane forced him to look back. As much as he wanted to amass a fortune, he couldn’t do it by someone else’s misery. He couldn’t believe he’d actually done it for six months. Michael became an ex-slaver turned viciously against slavery.

“How could you let Diane go?” Michael asked, even though he feared the answer.

“She didn’t love me,” Duster said with resigned acceptance. “I loved her, but she didn’t feel the same, and try as I might, I couldn’t make her love me.” Biting his lip, he tapped the map still spread on the desk. “You might want to give some serious thought to that notion before we find Mary.”

“You don’t think she could ever love me.” Michael voiced his own greatest fear as a simple statement, but he felt dead inside as soon as the words left his lips. Darkness filled him and he feared no amount of good works would ever light the void in his soul.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You don’t have to.” Michael closed his eyes for a moment. “What woman in her right mind could ever love a man who’s done the horrible things I have?” He grew weary of looking into the mirror Mary held up to him.

“I’m not saying that either,” Duster said. “People change. You changed. People in love forgive an awful lot, but you can’t make Mary love you. You could keep her here for the rest of her life, and it still wouldn’t make her fall in love with you.”

That simple truth had driven more of his actions than everything else combined. Michael tried to convince himself he only wanted her to desire him when he actually wanted to smell that lovely scent of unconditional love on her.

“But how the hell can I just let her go?”

“If you love her, you will.” Duster spoke the words as a simple yet profound truth.

“Is this a variation on a theme?” Michael asked flippantly. “Not the ‘I told you so’ speech, but the ‘if you really loved her’ speech?”

“Give Mary a load of script and send her on her wily bandit way,” Duster said. “Let her do whatever it is she has to do. If she loves you, she’ll come back.”

“Risky.”

“Sure.” Duster nodded. “Matters of the heart usually are.”

Chapter Seventeen

Picking at the plastimirror on her bracelet, Mary struggled to keep rising panic at bay. No matter how hard she pulled, the damn stuff wouldn’t come off. She tried to jam a stick under an edge, but she couldn’t get the mirror to go pliable again.

Somehow, the plastimirror bonded to the plastimetal. She tried bashing her bracelet with a rock and ended up with a bleeding wrist for her trouble. It was too hard to pick off, but not hard enough to shatter. If she couldn’t get the mirror off the bracelet, there wouldn’t be a way for Commander to find her.

She raised her wrist to her mouth, sucking blood away from the scratch to see how deep was the cut. The copper taste caused bile to rise in her throat, and she swallowed several times to keep from throwing up.

It vexed her that her plan to escape had worked far too well. Everything would have gone smoothly if not for one massive snag—breaking her stupid foot. She hated to admit it, but she desperately needed help.

Bleary-eyed, she looked down at her throbbing ankle. In the double half moonlight, her foot looked as if a black beast had swallowed her whole foot and was making its ponderous way up her leg. Broken bones must have cut open an artery, and it bled inside her flesh, filling the surrounding tissue.

If she didn’t figure something out, she would die, and she didn’t want to die. Certainly not on a planet she didn’t know the name of, brought here by a man she didn’t know the name of. Icing on the cake, she sure as spit didn’t want to die without knowing her own name, her real name.

A frantic, burbling laugh rose in her throat. Given the scope of her twisted, tragic life, it seemed fitting her death would be just as screwed up and just as anonymous as her birth.

She always imagined she’d perish in a flaming burst of glory, fighting off the IWOG as they tried to invade her world. The Void had a cruel sense of humor to let her die like this. Really cruel, considering her death would be her own damn fault.

“If I could have one wish before I go, I’d like to meet Overlord just once. Just to see what he looks like.”

Would he be as sexy as Commander? Well, no man should be
that
sexy. Seemed damn near appalling that one man got not only seconds, but thirds and fourths, when it came to sex appeal. For what he’d been given, she imagined at least four men running around the Void so ugly not even their own mothers could stand to look at them.

“Maybe that’s why my mother abandoned me.” She wondered if she’d been a painfully ugly baby. Or maybe she’d been too mouthy even then, crying and wailing to the point she drove her own mother away. “Most folks can’t stand me after five minutes.”

She tried to keep her mind focused, tried to keep herself awake, but she drifted in and out of consciousness. Dreams of making love with Overlord wearing Commander’s face made her body hot despite the chill night. Then pain ripped through her, waking her up. If nothing else, she had to move. No way would they find her hidden by all these bushes.

Pulling on a reserve of strength she didn’t know she had, she sat up, fought off insistent waves of nausea, then crab-walked, dragging her butt down the hill. Holding her injured foot high, she sweated in the chill night as she scrabbled down the sharp, rock-strewn dirt. Damp air laced with the pungent smell of the gray-green scrub brushes filled her nose.

Passing out, waking, moving foot by foot, she finally made it to within a few yards of the electric fence around the tarmac. Bruised and bloody, her hands felt pampered by the smooth gravel around the fence.

She glared at the pounding pain of her foot. “What now, O brilliant brain?”

She had to find a way to attract attention and considered screaming, but she didn’t have much strength left. Without any guards patrolling the area, bellowing would be a pointless waste of energy. Throwing something against the fence wouldn’t do any good, either. She had to find a way to short it out.

“All those ships, just sitting there. What I wouldn’t give to be in one right now.” Once home, she would warn Emmet and they would run. “Gotta get back over that fence first.”

Racking her brain, she took stock of her meager possessions. Cotton bra, panties, homespun shirt, pants, one leather boot, one wool sock, a leather jacket with a wad of torn silk lining in the pocket, one orange, a hunk of smelly cheese and a gem-encrusted platinum compact.

She knew if she touched the fence, that would bring them running. “To find my charred corpse hanging off it.” She shivered and shook her head. “I’d like to be alive when they show up.” Conflicting thoughts of escaping, yet needing help, muddled her mind. Fight or flight? She couldn’t remember.

Shock. I’m in shock.

But she couldn’t remember why that mattered. Something about being in her right mind. Something like that. Right mind, left mind. She shook her head and forced herself to focus on how to set off the fence without touching it.

Her brain swam with confusion, and she couldn’t fight the nausea any longer. Turning her head, she vomited. Up came the romantic dinner Commander had fed her earlier. Chunks of half-digested food sparkled in the light of two half-moons.

Thank the stars he wasn’t here.

The thought jarred her. Didn’t she want him here? Him who? Commander. No, Overlord. Her mind spun off again with perplexing confusion as she frowned at the puddle.

Wet. Something wet tossed into the electric fence. Wet metal. She didn’t have anything metallic other than the compact, but it had too many gems to give her a good surface area.

Stuffing her hands into the jacket, she flopped on her back, too exhausted to even move away from her own puddle of puke.

Zippity do da, I’m going to die.

She laughed. A funny word, zippity. Zipper. The zipper of Commander’s jacket was metal. So? Bolting upright, she blinked back the encroaching swirl of static-gray that tried to lure her into darkness. If this didn’t work, she didn’t have a plan B, so it damn well better work.

She unzipped the jacket, shrugged it off her shoulders and let out a howl when she jostled her foot. Taking several deep breaths, she zipped up the jacket, affixed the compact to the zipper, then dipped the jacket in the puddle, getting it as wet as she could. Twirling the jacket over her head, she threw it at the fence. The jacket bounced off without so much as a spark.

Spewing every expletive she knew, she crab-walked over to retrieve the jacket, passed out and woke again. Realizing she had to get the jacket wetter, she pulled the orange out, squeezed it until the juice ran and dribbled it all over the jacket. She tried her throw again, with the same result as before.

Laboriously, swearing her head off, she retrieved the jacket once more, but the effort caused her to lose consciousness again.

When she awoke, she realized the jacket wouldn’t short out the fence unless she got it really wet.

“I should have swiped a bottle of his very fine wine.”

Should have, could have, would have. Truth be told, she shouldn’t have put such a foolish plan, one riddled with holes, into action. Her plan might have worked if she hadn’t broken her stupid foot. She glared down, but as the full horror dawned, her eyes went wide and her heart raced. Not just her foot. Her calf swelled and her pant leg looked like an overstuffed sausage casing. Carefully, she split the rough fabric at the crooked hem. Once she started it, the run raced up her leg with a wave of dizziness. Blasted by the drop in blood pressure, she passed out yet again.

When she woke, the two moons had set behind her, and brightness glowed just beyond the hill in front of her. Morning? With it, she knew they would start searching for her. Still, full daybreak was at least an hour away, and she didn’t know if she could wait that long. Her leg looked gigantic.

She knew she had one way left to soak the jacket. Dipping it in puke paled beside what she planned to do now.

“Gotta do what you gotta do.” With a high, hysterical laugh, she unbuttoned her pants. “I won’t die without a fight.”

A loud insistent clang ripped through Michael’s office, jerking him awake. “What the hell?” He swiveled his chair to scan the array of sensors.

“Breach. North fence.” Duster leapt to his feet, issuing commands into his wrist com.

“
My
north fence?” Lethal voltage surged through—Michael shot to his feet and knocked his chair over. “Shut it down!”

“Whatever hit the fence shut the whole thing down,” Duster coolly informed him.

“It can’t be her.” Michael shook his head and cast an anxious glance at Duster. “No way. Fifty miles?” Even to himself, he sounded incredulous, worse yet, frantic. “No way did Mary touch the compound fence.”

Duster shook his head, barking orders into his wrist com.

“She would have had to come fifty miles in six hours.” A surge of adrenaline shook his entire body.

“Calm down. It’s probably another bird.”

Last spring, after a sudden rain, a soaking-wet bird had flown into the fence, shorting it out. Armed to the teeth, his guard investigated with enough firepower to blast a thousand elves to kingdom come, only to find the charred body of a hapless bird.

“I’m coming with you.” He yanked on a pair of boots and a flak jacket, then followed Duster and a pack of guards to the tarmac.

Whisper
gleamed at the far end of the base. Michael tried to ignore the ship as he followed Duster and a plethora of fully armed guards, but his gaze flicked to it repeatedly.
Whisper
mocked him, a monument, a shrine, to a woman he now realized he’d never loved. He’d hung on to her memory and ship in some crazy bid to turn back time. He could have chosen a very different path once. A slower path to where he stood now. If he had taken that path, he knew Kraft still wouldn’t have stayed with him, because she hadn’t loved him any more than he loved her.

“Don’t shoot unless I specifically order you to.” Michael instructed the guards to keep their weapons pointed skyward.

“It’s not Mary.” Duster fell back to stride beside him, his own Slim-Shot Thirty pointed to the lemon-yellow sky.

“I don’t want anyone to shoot her if it is.”

“If she touched the fence, she’s already dead.” Duster gave him a stricken look. “I didn’t mean—”

“You always know just what to say, don’t you?”

“Let’s just say Mary didn’t short out the fence. Okay?”

Warily, they approached the burned-out section. Hour-off morning sun cast the base tarmac in a surreal light. Something black fluttered between two of the wires. Michael could almost smell the collective inward breath of relief.

“Co-man-dur?”

His heart constricted as the men around him gasped, moving in unison to rivet their guns. “Don’t shoot!” Michael knocked barrels toward the brightening sky.

Crumpled, looking for all the Void as if a mean giant had picked her up and slammed her repeatedly to the ground, Mary lay ten feet beyond the fence. She lifted herself on trembling arms. Her face, tiny and pale, split into an incongruous grin.

“Remember that deal you offered?” She locked her arms. Eyes wide, luminous in the pale light of dawn, she swayed like a cobra. “I think I choose—” Her face went slack as her body splayed out on the gravel-strewn ground.

“Get this fence out of my way right now!” Michael wanted to rip it apart with his bare hands.

Dropping their guns to their chests, the guards struggled to hold open the dead wires of the electric fence so he could dart between them.

Mary sprawled motionless. He charged toward her, horrified when he realized what looked like a log turned out to be her leg. As he dropped to his knees, her scent hit him in a shocking wave of smell-memory. Death hovered around her body with the stench of decaying leaves.