Catalyst (2 page)

             
Dang. Girl fought
dirty.

             
“L, you’re putting me in a bad place here. You see that
right? Once again, you’re going to be out there and I’m going to
be freaking out over you getting hurt. This isn’t some club we’re going to. This is right in the middle of the Lighters. I don’t want you there. Not because I don’t trust you, but because if anything happened to you, I’d...”
I sighed and balled my hands into fists.

             
“That
’s exactly how I feel about you,” she said with clear inflection.
“
I want to be w
ith you. I feel safer and
better about you when I’m with you. Ok?”

             
“No, i
t’s not ok,
” I sighed
again, “b
ut I’m not gonna make you stay.”

             
She nodded but still didn’t look pleased. She understood where I was coming from. I understood where she was coming from. Neither of us liked it
,
but there was no budging as we both t
hought our side was important.
I was pleased that she took no joy in winning.

             
“Billings, w
hen are we leaving?” I asked, glancing back at him.

             
“Fifteen minutes.”

             
“Go get dressed,” I told Lillian. “You heard him, fifteen minutes, which means you’ve got twelve to be ready to go.”

             
She turned and walked down the hall without looking
back
at me. I wondered what it meant that I’d never felt this bad about a fight before with any other girl. I really wanted to go to her room and apologi
ze, tell her it was all alright,
b
ut that would have to wait for later.

             
“Billings? Do we have
everything we need?”

             
“Yep. You, Lillian and I will go in. Merrick, Je
ff and Miguel are riding for the
muscle if we need it. Ryan, Danny and Marissa are gonna come and sit tight, just in case, for back-up.”

             
“Ok, good.”

             
The Keepers went
over the regular rules with us:
no thinking of home, w
e need to pretend
to be thinking about the job, b
e an
xious about our new placement, w
onder who our boss will be. Normal human worry
so that when they read our thoughts, it wouldn’t be suspicious
.

             
Then it was time to get the
show on the road.

             
I saw them at the stairs, all ready to go. I went to Lillian’s room to get her. She was already coming out of h
er room
by the time I got to the hall
. Something in me hurt -
p
hysically hurt
-
looking at her
. I didn
’t want this life for Lillian, n
ot like this.

             
I walked right up to her and
begged her with my eyes to understand what my mouth couldn’t say
.
I pulled her to me with a hand on the back of her neck.
She didn’t stop me.
I thought she might since she was mad
,
but she kissed me back just as eagerly
, her small arms gripping me tightly to her
. I pulled back first, taking her face in between my hands.

             
“None of this is about any feelings for Sherry,” I said firmly.

             
“I know
that
.”

             
“You promise?”

             
“I promise,” she assured me firmly.
             
             

             
“You’re going to g
ive me lots of gray hair, you know that?
”

             
“I know,” she whispered and smiled sadly.

             
“Let’s go.”

             
She followed
close beside
me.
I held her hand to the stairs and as we made our way up to the van. Her warm long fingers squeezed mine every few seconds. She
was nervous but she needed to come
. I let it go and didn’t call her on her shaking.

             
We
’d
talked about it and if we were going to rescue Sherry, we might as well rescue any other prisoners if we could. Billings described the holding cells to us and the layo
ut of the hallways. He said he’d
only been present for a couple of interr
ogations and such, he just sort of
avoided that wing, so he didn’t know exactly what went on in them or what we’d find, but he knew it wouldn’t be good.      

             
We loaded up
the van
. Billings, Lillian and I had ou
r conceal
ed stakes in our boots under our
pant legs. We woul
d be given a uniform shirt to wear so we couldn’t take any other weapons with us.

             
The van ride was long and quiet. Except for the occasional word or tid-bit from Billings if he had forgotten or thought of something we might need to know.

             
Merrick and Danny were
two
of the
most sullen and anxious people
I’d ever seen, f
aces of stone and bobbing knees and legs restlessly. Even me, I was worried sick about her. I didn’t want anything to happen to her. When I heard what Margo had said, that they wa
nted a fragile person to take, o
ne that we’d
go after, I wanted to hurl. I didn’t want to think about what she was going through or w
hat they
’d
done to her.

             
One thing the L
ighters didn’t count on
was us having
Billings. We had a way directly inside. We we
ren’t trying to break-
in in the middle of the night, tripping alarms
and bumping into guards
like they expected us to do.

             
No, we we
re walking right through the front door.

             
W
e pulled up behind the facility
where Billings said was an employee
’
s only section and recruitment offic
e. Lillian and I followed him
and we left the rest of them
in the van. They were close enough to the door that the
y
could see a commotion or hear the alarm, but stay in the back. The back seats were still removed and there was open space back there.

             
“Listen.” I pulled Lillian to a stop. We couldn’t touch after we went through the door and I needed to touch her and make her unders
tand one thing. “You be careful.
I mean it.
Follow my lead. No hero stuff, g
ot it?”

             
“I understand. I’ll stay behind you.”

             
“You are...” I started but couldn’t think of how to word it. “You are really important to me. I need you to stay safe, ok?”

             
She looked slightly taken
back. She bit her lip.

             
“Cain,” she breathed my name and it made my heartbeat skip. “I promise I’m not here to prove anything. I just need to be with you, even if
it’s
in the backdrop. Ok?”

             
“Ok.”

             
“You don’t do anything crazy either.”

             
“Me? Never.”

             
She smiled, which was what I was going for. I touched her cheek with my hand and she closed her eyes. I kissed her again quickly and then we dropped our hands to follow Billing
s like the good little recruits that
we were.

             
Billings took us through the side door and into a little room with a round middle aged older woman with a smile a mile wide. She was more than delighted with Billings with his two new recruits.

             
We filled out miniscule paperwork and she gave us our uniform shirts. We
followed her to a small back room
and changed into them. It was customary that whoever you brought in to the enforcers was your responsibility. Hence, why Billings said he would be my mentor.

             
It was the perfect setup. Lillian and I were to work with him directly for the next two weeks - yeah right - and then we’d be turned loose on our own. So for today, he was to show us the ropes and daily routines. We even had a little green patch on our pocket that indicated we were in training.

             
We went through an hour or so of a presentation
with a couple other enforcers. They went on and
on about rules and such, the mission statement, blah
,
blah
,
blah
. Then they took us through the stale doughnut and crappy coffee room.

             
The building wasn’t impressive. They had taken over the old Sheriff
’
s office. It had windowless rooms all along the hall after a couple of administrative rooms. Nothing was distinguished. No signs to point where to go or what each wing or room was for. No plaques on the doors. No col
ors either. Everything was white
floors and walls.

             
We passed a few Lighters in the main hall and my body twitched with a need to pull Lillian to me, to keep her far away from them, but instead I stayed directly behind her, guarding her back as she walked next to Billings and we made our way around.

             
It was strange to say the least. The Lighters didn’t look at us and we tried not to look at them. To them, we weren’t important. We were humans, less than nothing. What had Piper called us? Vapors.

             
It was like they were regular old superiors on any other job. Nobody questioned how they got in the position, you just knew to respect it. It was plain as day compulsion. The Lighters weren’t even wearing uniforms. So how did everyone know to tell the difference between them and the rest of us? The human enforcers were in so deep they didn’t question anything.
They were just m
indless.

             
I followed Billings down to the end of the hall
. He informed us that it was a little after
1
1:00 in the morning
. Interro
gations were handled right before
lunch so we should see them exit once they were done and then we could check the rooms for Sherry and anyone else.    

             
“After the interrogations?” I asked, once what he said clicked.

             
That did not sit well with me.

             
“Yes. I’m sorry. They’ll be too many of them, several people to each room, but only one guy guards this hall at a time when they aren’t conducting
business down here. Once they’
re done, most of them will leave. We’ll have a better chance at it then.”

             
“You mean Sherry is in one of these rooms being interrogated right now, right this second
,
and we just have to sit out here and wait?” Lillian asked quietly.

             
“I don’t like it anymore than you do, but it’s our only chance. We can’t fight a whole mess of them. We have to get Sherry and whoever else out and t
o the van undetected. It’s going to
be hard enough as it is without alerting the Lighters, let alone charging on in there with guns blazing,” Billings answered.

             
I hated that he was right.

             
We all grabbed some literature from the table and pretended to read and study while we waited for the torture to be over.

             
After about thirty five minutes, they started exiting the rooms. There were five from a room on the right. Then another room on the right had a few come out and they had a woman with them. She was panting but didn’t seem to be too bad off from the back, but I hadn’t seen her face. She wasn’t bleeding or anything but her clothes and hair were wet.