The Butterfly Code (12 page)

I skid out of the driveway and onto the slick road. The front door to the house opens. Three guys built like tanks spill onto the walk.

Some insane, reckless part of me, one I had no idea existed, slows the beast enough to dig out the Phoenix Research Lab key card. I wave it high.

"Come and get it!" I shout.

Then I bust across the road.

Iron-fist barks, "GET IN THE CAR, GET IN THE CAR, GET IN THE CAR!"

Like some military sergeant on training day.

They want to go to the PRL? I’ll take them there. Just let them try to get through. I’d like to see it. But no one said I had to make the trip easy on them.

I turn into the abandoned field, praying to God they’ve left Dad alone. I fly past the orchard, sending rotten apples falling. I fishtail through a puddle and mud sloshes up my legs. I keep moving, keep going, willing Dad and Sammy to be okay. Oh please, let them be okay.

I weld my gaze to the bumpy ground, my fingers to the handlebars. Towering stalks rear up out of the gloomy rain. A boulder. I swerve. I’m moving way too fast to be safe. Stupid tears blur my vision and I scream.

Why is this happening? I’m supposed to be here on vacation, visiting Dad, trying out his smoked fish, playing music, and composing.

This has to be a joke. This isn’t me. My life is predictable and safe.

Stop it
, I tell myself.

I’m nearly across the field. Less than fifty feet of pine and scrub separate me from the winding road. Too late, I spot the tree root.

I clamp the brakes and nearly tumble over the handlebars. The Outlander slams into the root and goes airborne. Then, with a grinding crunch, it touches down and snakes sideways. Branches tear at me. Frantic, I try to touch my foot to the ground. Big mistake—my shoe is ripped away.

Brakes locked, engine whining, I skid between the towering pines that border the field.

I’m still sliding. Across the narrow road.

I hear the roar of a tractor-trailer. Then the driver blares his air horn in alarm. Halfway across the far lane, I skate to a stop, the ATV stalling. The eighteen-wheeler careens past, spraying me with grit while I stare wild-eyed, imagining the soft, sickening crunch of my skull.

My breath is ragged as I frantically restart the Outlander. I can’t seem to get enough air. I’m shaking so hard I think I might pass out. Rain gusts around me. My sweatshirt is sticking high on my back. I feel exposed but don’t bother to yank it down.

My grand plan to drive to the research lab and toss the keycard over the gates seems suddenly ludicrous. Stupid beyond all reason. I should have gone the other way. To a police station. Even though I’ve never seen one. Who do they call when there’s trouble? It’s a pointless question. I have to keep going.

Driving is easier on the road. The wet forest whips past.

At least two miles to go.

No one will be there. Hunter won’t be waiting. No one’s going to come out to defend me with guns blazing. They have no idea what’s headed their way. There are cameras, though. Iron-fist and his men won’t shoot me in plain sight, not in front of all those security devices. Would they?

The stalled store truck is exactly where I left it. I blow past. Spot Gage’s mailbox, closing in fast.

Please be there! Please come driving out, Gage!

Deserted.

What could he do, even if he had miraculously appeared? I keep going. Fully committed now. Unbidden, thoughts of how the whole town is suspicious of Hunter bubble wild and fast into my mind. Winding left, the trees open up. What if there’s a basis to their fears? What if there is something horrible going on up at the lab? What if the men chasing me are the good guys, and I’ve got it wrong?

No. If they were the good guys, they wouldn’t hurt Dad. Or Mr. Creedy. Or Sammy.

Another sob threatens to choke me.

I slide through a turn, almost losing control. Hunter said it was dangerous for me to be at the PRL. Why did Dad warn me off Hunter like he was trying to protect me? Crushed pine needles send tingling air into my lungs. The odometer reads
55 mph
. Rain pricks my cheeks, and I’m terrified and alive all at once.

Beyond the ragged cliff edge, sheer walls drop to the churning ocean far below. Gusts fling up salt-tinged billows. Sensing something behind me, I glance back.

Big, high headlights. A wide, glossy front grill. Iron-fist and his men. They’ve caught up.

I crank the engine until the odometer reads
60 mph
.
65
. Then
72
. The curve comes up too fast. Wheels thumping, I careen off the road. Hover along the edge. Sliding. I wrench hard and somehow the wheels grip, yanking me back to safety. Pulling me along a short straightaway.

My pursuer’s high beams light up the misting rain. Grow brighter. Closer. From a hundred feet back comes a loud pop. The next instant, my earlobe flares. I’ve been shot.

I duck and open the throttle all the way.

"Almost there, almost there," I gasp, seeing the final bend, and then the gates coming up. My eyes are so wide, the whites are burning.

"Hunter," I scream at the cameras, even though there’s no way he can hear me.
"Hunter!"

From behind, a bullet makes contact with my leg.

Thwack-thwack
s ring out as more gunshots strike the Outlander. The stench of exploding rubber floods my nostrils. Shredded tire parts hail past. Still holding on to the handlebars, I’m toppling, spinning, careening through the air. The ATV is head-over-heels. I’m grappling with an eight-hundred-pound monster, kicking myself free, aware of it flipping around me and the sharp moving parts underneath, of the searing exhaust, and thinking of the skin on my face—
please don’t let it touch my face
—and then I see the forged steel gates.
Oh god, not the gates. Not like that.

Hands grind dirt. Body still airborne. From somewhere behind me, the engine screams.

I slam into the barrier first. Shoulder blades, ribs, ankles.

The brick-shaped ATV sails at me in slow motion.

Mom.

You protected me once, but nothing could stop this.

Not today.

Maybe it’s been coming for me ever since.

Bringing me back to you.

The crack of my bones is deafening.

S
omeone is touching my face
.

Gently.

Large, rough fingers. They trace my cheekbone with such yearning tenderness that my soul aches to respond. The touch ends, launching me into blackness.

I feel nothing but the fragmentary trail of sparks left behind by that strong hand.

My body is featureless. A cloud, fuzzy and floating.

No arms, no legs, no fingers, no toes. Just that cheek. I drift away from the sparks, unable to hold on, desperate to hold on, slowly falling, grasping at the sensation, knowing that was my anchor and I’ve come loose.

I see it then, emerging in the fog. Snapping and winging out of reach. A man with arms that could lift a vehicle full of men and guns. A man who ripped the doors off a monstrous SUV. A man with flashing catlike eyes, reflected in a pair of headlights bent on destruction, who tore my pursuers in two. A man who gathered me into him and bore me away.

Terror. I’m terrified of his strength even as I claw to stay in the warmth of his grasp.

I tumble down from the vision, a feather in the current.

Submerged until I’m all gone.

T
he presence is there again
. Pulling me back, calling me back, around me like a force field. Male and powerful, warm and steady.

It’s no use, though.

I’m slipping.

There’s not enough of me to hold on.

"Aeris!"

The voice explodes in colors. White and purple and red.

Human heat surges close by, swirling inward. A cheek touches mine. Rough skin. Stubble. That’s what it is, stubble.

"Aeris." His voice is a hoarse whisper.

So sweet. Oh, so sweet to hear him call me. I ache with the pleasure of his voice. Liquid warmth rolling through me, swelling my heart.

"I’m not letting you go," he says. "Hear me? Not letting you go."

I want to reply. Where’s my mouth? How do I reach my mouth?

"You were right about Poppy," he whispers.

He’s gone then and I spin around his words, puzzling over their message. Poppy. There was a mare. Dakota? No, not Dakota. Soft brown eyes. Pleading for my help. Something happened to her, though. A joyous moment gone wrong. There was a shoulder, too. His shoulder, and I pressed my face into it.

A lurching sensation rolls through my being. A sob, maybe. I watch it like waves on a stormy ocean, rolling and smashing, wet and dangerous.

Voices, low and urgent.

Two men, one woman.

Instruments, clicking metal objects. Beeping machines. A heartbeat echoes, sounding strange. Arrhythmic and staccato. Not good music at all. Don’t they know the tune? That beat will kill you.

"Jack wants in," comes the woman.

"Jack can stay in his seat and keep giving blood," the man who touched my cheek replies.

Hunter
. That’s his name. Hunter.

The beeping heartbeat slows; the pings grow random. Have they stopped?

Ping.

That’s good. Pings are good.

A clock ticks against the wall. Click, click, click, click, click, click—

Ping
.

"We’re losing her. One milligram atropine. Now!"

"Blood pressure dropping."

Rushing sounds, people moving. Images, hazy at first, grow clearer. A big, bright room. So bright. A table in the middle, directly below me. I’m on the ceiling, staring at an operating theater. A body lies on the table, mangled arms and legs, bleeding everywhere. Shreds of checked fabric cover part of the body’s torso. I have a shirt made out of that fabric. I put that shirt on in Dad’s guest bedroom.

"Atropine, point five milligrams."

I stare at the man below me, working to revive the body. I recognize the broad shoulders, the big hands, the way he stands protectively over the inert remains of a woman. Like a knight on the battlefield. Like an armed warrior trying to fight off death.

"
Come back to me
,"
he whispers.

I want to. Oh, how I want to.

"
Come back, little bird
,"
he begs.

A memory flits by, bittersweet and wistful and too ancient to grasp. I watch his powerful hands cover my chest, trying desperately to hold my life in. His words come to me then, words he spoke into my hair as I sobbed against his chest when we lost the mare.
Death is the darkest of thieves.

Beeeeeeep.

The ominous sound pierces the room. Pierces me high above, and I fear now I’m never going back.

Hunter sags against the table. "This can’t be happening." He slams the beeping machine, and it goes silent.

"We’re out of options," says the man with red hair peeking from his cap.

"You’re wrong, Ian. It’s my job to save her, and I damn well intend to."

Voices grow urgent. Garbled.

Dad’s in the room, shouting, trying to get near me. He’s alive, safe!

"Get out, Jack," Hunter rages. "Do you want her to live? Then get out and let me do what I have to do."

I’m fading.

It’s not painful. Just a sensation of dying light. Like a fire fading to embers and finally, softly, darkly, going cold.

Hunter.

If you’re coming for me, come soon. Oh god, please, come soon. . . .

A
plunging force
stabs the center of what’s left of me. It explodes in a sunburst of tendrils, rays shooting outward in all directions. Millions of arms and hands, grabbing, seizing, clutching.

My consciousness slows its outward drift, stops, frozen.

Then it all comes rushing inward. Pieces of my mind smash against one another, slam into place. Whirring and clicking, smelling of blood and electricity and disinfectant. The engine in my chest roars into action. Hammers in earnest, in joy, in celebration. My mouth opens, and air charges over my tongue, runs deep into me, forces my chest to rise as it conquers the farthest reaches of my lungs. Warm liquid sensations swirl into my shoulders, surge down my arms into my fingertips that curl with delicious pleasure.

It’s beautiful. Sensations and smells of this world. This wonderful world. Where Dad still exists, and Sammy, and music, exquisite music, and the dark-haired man I long to see.

My eyes fly wide.

He’s there. Right there.

"Hunter!" I gasp.

He nods and there’s a wobble to that normally strong mouth. It’s as though he doesn’t trust himself to speak.

From farther off, I hear a female voice say, "Shit."

Victoria.

The operating table and its bright lights and beeping machines are a modern island in the beautiful old room. Oak-paneled walls are straight out of a study you’d see in a royal palace. A painting stretches across the ceiling overhead. Pale blue sky with fluffy clouds and butterflies. Thousands of butterflies in fiery shades of orange and yellow. Painted branches bloom in profusion along the ceiling’s borders. On the painted tree limbs are cocoons, some bursting open as winged creatures emerge, others being built by fuzzy caterpillars.

My head drops and my eyes drift from the dizzy ceiling to Hunter’s face. His surgical mask is pulled down under his well-shaped jaw. Dried blood stains his neck. From when he carried me.

Hunter sinks down until our heads are level. "You scared the hell out of me. You know that?" He gives me a half smile.

"Dad," I croak. "You have to help Dad."

"He’s here. He’s perfectly safe."

Of course, he was in the operating room. I heard him. Relief gives way to fresh shock at a fragment of recall.

"Our dog—"

"Sammy’s all right, too."

Hunter smooths away my hair, and my skin tingles faintly in response. My sluggish brain takes a moment to process it all. Sammy looked so hurt. And Dad—they were kicking him and beating him. I breathe out. Dad’s all right. Sammy made it.
Thank you, God.

The chase comes back to me, vivid images fast and rough.

Me approaching the gates. Screaming at the cameras. And then Hunter was there.

"I saw you . . ." I break off, staring at him, trying to make sense of it. How had he gotten there so fast? He lifted the ATV off me and threw it.
He threw it!
An eight-hundred-pound vehicle. At the windshield of the men who were chasing me. I saw it smash. No, it wasn’t possible. A vivid dream. Was I even conscious?

"What do you think you saw him do?" Victoria demands.

Emotions surge over me. It’s weird, though, because they’re not my feelings. They’re hers. I sense them almost as clearly as if they were my own. Wariness and anger flow from her, resounding on a different pitch than if they’d come from me. Hers is a faster, more refined vibration. She’s suffering an overlying emotion that colors it all.

Fear.

Victoria is afraid. It’s the kind of fear that makes my stomach churn. I don’t know how I’m feeling it, just that I am. Is it because I hit my head? It’s coming on so strong I need to make it stop.

Hunter’s stormy amber gaze snaps from my face to hers. "Out."

Her mouth opens in surprise.

"Go," he says, pointing to a mahogany door set in the far wood paneling. It has a brass knob that looks to be from another century.

"Yes," she says. The door creaks as she opens it and marches out of the room.

Hunter may as well have flipped a switch. The crippling fear disappears, leaving me drained. How did he know I was upset by her emotional turmoil? Was it the look on my face? Can he read me that well?

From beneath my heavy lids, I notice the red-haired man leaning against a steel counter.

His face is grim. "So you’re the lucky girl who’s captured Hunter’s interest."

The way he says it sends a chill over my prone form. I say nothing as he straightens and crosses under the blazing lights.

"Back in a few," he tells Hunter, who has moved to a flashing monitor.

Hunter grunts in reply.

The door opens again. This time, I catch a brief glimpse of a warmly lit room with overstuffed chairs and rich carpets before it clicks shut.

"You’re going to be just fine," Hunter says with a calm strength that cushions me. He wets a cloth at the sink and rubs it softly over my face. "You doing all right? You’ve had a bad shock."

It was more than shock. But his attention distracts me. I close my eyes as he continues to stroke the hot fabric over the bridge of my nose and forehead. Clearing away the blood. Still, he can’t completely wipe away the remnants of Victoria’s fear that cling like a knot in my disembodied center.

Did he notice what I sensed from her? Did she? Or is he right? I’m in shock. I need to stop freaking myself out. I need to calm down. Splintered recollections barrage my mind. I can still hear Hunter begging me to come back to him. And then—

"You injected me with something," I whisper.

"I injected you with a lot of things."

My pulse throbs in my temples. "I thought I was going to die."

"You think I would have let you do that?" He puts down the cloth and touches my cheek with his thumb. I turn and press my face to his palm.

A bout of nausea takes hold. I wrench my face away. The ceiling wobbles and begins to spin, butterflies flying in a circle above me.

"What’s going on?" Hunter says.

"I’m going to faint."

"Deep breaths, there you go. I got you." He checks my blood pressure as he talks.

I breathe in, gulping air until I can speak. "I would’ve been dead if you hadn’t come."

"Yeah. Well." He looks away. "It’s my own damn fault you had that key."

"You couldn’t know that. So thank you."

"Don’t thank me for trouble I got you into," he growls.

"Try and stop me," I whisper.

He grows unnaturally quiet and then says. "I’ll never forgive myself."

I’m fading fast and trying to keep my eyes open. I know I’m badly hurt. Mangled, even. I should be afraid. His presence soothes me, though.

"Guess we won’t make that concert," I say.

He lets out a low laugh. "Exactly my thoughts when I saw you leading that chase like some batgirl out of hell."

"Seriously?"

"No."

"I didn’t know what else to do. The only way I could think to get rid of them was to throw the key through the gates so it would be gone."

His mouth opens, his brows draw upward, and then he shakes his head. To my surprise, he lets out a bark of laughter.

"What’s funny?"

"You."

I’m struggling to speak. "What are you talking about?"

"You just take the bull by its horns. You don’t even know how to stop. You jump on and go for it."

"What choice did I have?" I swallow and a dizzy wave hits me.

"That actually wasn’t a bad plan. Most people would have hidden in the bushes until the bad guys left."

"How did you get there so quick?"

"I was nearby," he says vaguely.

I close my eyes. I can’t fight the creeping blackness much longer. "I just wanted to save my dad and Sammy."

"You did, Aeris." His voice is soft. "You did good. I’m proud of you."

I glance down to see his strong hand against my arm, but something’s wrong. It’s like my arm is dead. An amputated limb.

I can’t feel it!

Adrenaline spikes me out of my stupor. I attempt to wiggle my fingers. Nothing. Then the real fear strikes. "Am I paralyzed?" I cry.

"No. I think it’s only temporary."

I stare at him as a phantom feeling of cold floods into limbs I can’t actually sense.

"You think?" I say.

"Let’s take it one step at a time."

My music. My work. My soul. My root.
Will I ever be able to play again?

I clamp down on the question. I’m not ready for that future. I can’t get enough air. Blackness narrows in, pressing at the edges of my vision. Blood drains from my head.

"Stay with me, Aeris," he says, concerned. "Come on."

The sheet rustles at my side, and he takes my disembodied hand.

Numb or not, I sense the connection immediately. A wall. No—almost a force field around him—seems to rip loose. His emotions stream into me like water from a scorching river. A jarring rush. Masculine and completely unlike my own. Urgency. Guilt. A savage protectiveness. For me. So fierce it makes my breath hopscotch.

I stare at him, mouth open, and let it rush in.

My own emotions surge back like the outgoing tide and seem to slam into him. It’s intense and beautiful and astonishing, and I don’t want it to stop. This wild, inexplicable exchange. My heart starts to pound. If I told him what I was experiencing, he’d think I was crazy.

The heart monitor pings faster, ringing in my ears. It doesn’t matter that I’m numb. I’m shaken. I hear it. Thanks to the machine, Hunter can, too.

That’s great. That’s all I need. A broadcasting device.

He steps away, quickly. A wall comes down and I no longer feel him. If I felt him at all. Maybe the drugs they gave me are messing with my ability to think straight.

He adjusts an IV bag. "Don’t worry. I’ll have you back the way you were, I promise." His voice is ragged. "Good as new."

My eyes grow damp and I blink, hard.
Please, let it be true.

He smiles to reassure me, yet it’s strained. "There’s going to be pain. I need to warn you. But you’re up for the fight. I know it."

I nod.

"I’m going to get your dad."

I’m left with the orange-red sea of butterflies overhead.

I hear Dad’s familiar stride. Panic flares in me out of nowhere. Inwardly, I flinch away with an awful, unreasonable terror. A wild, animalistic instinct winds up inside for a fight. I’m injured; I need to protect myself! But that’s ridiculous. Dad wouldn’t hurt me.

Blinding terror rises higher and higher and flies from my mouth in a groan.

"Aeris." His gruff voice barely covers his shock.

"That’s close enough," comes Hunter’s voice.

It’s Dad, it’s just Dad, it’s just Dad. . . .

Reason fights with dread. I have to destroy him, get away, have to find safety, to find a dark hole to heal my wounds.

Dad calls, "Peanut, if you can hear me, I love you." His voice breaks. "You’re safe. You’re going to be fine. I promise, everything’s going to be fine."

Pain flares to life in my right leg. White hot. I gasp as it moves to my left leg, and into my hips. What was numb before is now on fire. Dripping hot fire, like flesh melting over a bonfire of violent flames. I open my mouth to scream.

Nothing comes out.

I’m dropping away from consciousness. Howling pain is coming along for the ride. It’s flaying me alive, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. No way to cry out for help.

I realize now what hell must be like.

I’m drowning in molten lava, bones melting. I have to get out. Voices penetrate suddenly, from a long way off. I strain, agonized, toward them.

"Let’s get her into a recovery chamber." Hunter’s voice. A recovery chamber? I puzzle over the odd choice of words. "We can save the chitchat for later."

"Make that you," Ian says. "I want no part of this."

"It’s our duty, on about a dozen levels of which you are fully aware, to keep the patient in this room, in this very house, alive."

"Don’t tell me my duty. And if you think I’m going to talk technicalities with her dad, you’re wrong."

My body throbs as I try to cling to the conversation.

"Out of everyone, you’re coming down on me?" Hunter says. "When you’re always raging about restrictions?"

"Not about this."

"You know who she is. You saw her blood sample. You would have let her die?" Hunter pauses. "Don’t walk away from me."

My blood sample . . . my pounding brain struggles to grasp what he’s saying. I recall a prick in some security booth—here, outside the gates. It took my blood.

Footsteps grow farther away.

"What’s done is done," Hunter calls.

The footsteps stop.

"She has multiple fractures in both arms and legs," Ian says sharply. "Broken ribs, extensive organ damage. She was crushed against a gate by an eight-hundred-pound moving vehicle. Look at her." The sound of a fist slamming metal is followed by a curse. "Thorne saw her—he knows she should be dead. It was all over his face. You shouldn’t have let him in."

"Well, I did," Hunter says.

"
Damn the present
, remember? Remember that? The agreement that keeps the feds and every Jack, Dick, and Harriet with a budget out?" He’s nearly shouting. "You think we want them in here? Me, or Vic, or any of us?" His rage sends me riding on a wave of terror. I sense he fears for his life. Worse, for his sanity. "She was dead."

Dead? I was dead? That can’t be true.

I feel a phantom prickle across my scalp as I share his panic, unable to block the pummeling current of dread.

Did Hunter use some experimental drug to restart my heart? Did he break some rule? Even so, it doesn’t justify Ian’s wild fear seeping through my bones.

Another presence enters the room. Waves of soft, female energy pour over me, wise and comforting, soothing the raging fire.

"That’s enough," the woman’s voice says. "Let our young friend rest. The last thing she needs is to hear you boys bickering."

"Bickering?" Ian snorts. "Don’t you get it?"

"There’s no turning back. I think we should make her feel welcome."

"Yeah? For how long, Lucy?"

"As long as it takes," Lucy says.

"You were in trouble once, Ian, remember?" Hunter asks.