Chapter Twelve
Briar
Sylvain held her hand as they walked through campus. She was more aware of his hand clutching hers than she was of where they were going, or even of the sun. And it was a really bright day. In the weeks since she’d started school, Boston had changed. Now the days were shorter, and the weather in the mornings was frigid. It didn’t seem to bother most of the students. A good number of the ones Briar met on the paths between buildings wore light jackets or sometimes, a sweater, hands dug deep into their pockets.
This was Briar’s kind of weather.
If it hadn’t been for the sun, it would have been perfect. It was cold, and she’d changed out her summer hat for one more fitted for the winter. It was a little uncomfortable inside; she’d had a few classes where sweat dripped down her neck, but she’d take it if she was blending in more.
Sylvain squeezed her hand. “You warm enough?” he asked.
Sylvain fit in with these warm-blooded students. He wore a flannel button-down over a thermal shirt. His boots were the only concession to the weather. But he seemed completely comfortable, even with the shirt unbuttoned and flapping in the wind. His strong hand wrapped around hers, and she really wished she could take off her gloves and entwine her fingers with his.
A niggle of self-pity wormed its way through her before she could squish it. There was no reason to feel bad for herself. She should be feeling bad for that girl over there, the one who slipped in a puddle when she turned her head like an owl in order to keep her gaze on Sylvain. That girl needed sympathy. Not Briar.
Sylvain pulled her to a stop, and she realized she hadn’t answered his question yet. “No. Not cold.”
“We can stop for hot chocolate after class,” he said. “Warm you up.” It was like he hadn’t even heard her, and from the way his eyes darted from side to side, maybe he hadn’t.
Briar reached up, touching him on the cheek to focus him. “Hey,” she whispered. “Where’d you go?”
His gaze settled on hers, and he relaxed. “I’m sorry.” He lifted the hand in his to kiss the back of her glove. “I’m worried.” The declaration surprised him, but Briar warmed to the admission immediately. It was good to finally know what they were thinking, and that Sylvain was sharing with her made her feel like they’d taken a huge step forward.
“Me, too,” she replied, keeping her gaze on his.
He narrowed his eyes, and his lip puffed a little before he got himself under control. “Nothing will get to you while I’m here.”
“I know,” she answered. “I’m still worried, though. Not about you protecting me. I know you will. I should probably worry more about protecting you…” Briar trailed off as three tall blonde girls walked by, giggling and staring at Sylvain with something that could only be labeled hunger.
“Huh?” he asked, following her gaze and then laughed. It boomed across the campus and sent a flock of pigeons flapping madly into the air. “Yeah, maybe you will.” One of the girls hesitated, like she was considering approaching him, but Sylvain swept Briar into his arms and kissed her. By the time she got her wits about her, the girls had disappeared.
“I… I should get to class.” Eventually. Would it be horrible to find a bench and kiss Sylvain more?
Sylvain’s eyes twinkled, and he nodded. “Yeah. Let’s go learn some art.”
✽✽✽
The professor smiled at Sylvain and Briar as they entered the auditorium. It was an undergraduate course and a prerequisite for other art history classes, so it was packed. Sylvain hesitated a moment, studying the crowd before leading Briar to a set of seats in the front, near one of the two exits. He slid into the seat closest the door and leaned back in the chair. As he shifted from side to side, Briar studied him. He was huge, his massive shoulders and torso making the seat look like the chairs in a preschool. He couldn’t be comfortable.
Frowning, Briar studied the rest of the auditorium. Though he’d accompanied her more than once to this class, she still harbored guilt about it.
The lights lowered, and an image appeared on the giant screen behind the professor. Briar flinched, her gaze drawn to the suffering depicted in the faces in the painting.
“The Battle of Vienna,” the professor announced, flipping through slides. Behind her, another image appeared, this one even more pain-filled than the first. “The Battle of Salamis. A Greek naval engagement twenty-five hundred years ago.” She clicked the remote in her hand. “The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Some of the earliest, and most moving, pieces of artwork are depictions of war.”
The professor began to highlight parts of the artwork behind her, but all Briar could do was stare at the faces of people in the painting. The piece she showed now was the Battle of Salamis, and she zoomed in on one of the people in the painting. Somewhere in Briar’s mind, she imagined the sound the woman made, one arm wrapped tightly around a child in her arms, the other reaching toward a man on shore.
It was as if Briar had stood on the shore herself and heard the woman’s cry. Briar covered her eyes with one shaking hand and focused on the professor’s voice. “Battles were especially popular during the neoclassical period…”
With a deep breath, Briar focused on the art again. This time it was a portrait of a battle, a dying man held in the arms of his comrades. Horses leapt around the man, rearing up on tightly held reins. A horse’s injured whinny shrieked in Briar’s head, and she startled, upsetting the binder on her lap and knocking it on the floor. The jarring sound made the people around her jump. Sylvain immediately leaned over. “Are you okay?”
She nodded but kept her eyes on her binder as she dragged it back in her lap.
“Briar?”
“It’s amazing, isn’t it, to see the detail these artists put into events that happened hundreds of years before their birth. Jacques-Louis David went back to Greek and Roman times with his portrait of The Lictors Returning to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons. Follow the line of the woman’s arm, what do you see?” The professor droned on.
Briar couldn’t bring herself to look in case it brought back the sound. For a brief moment, she wondered if it was Asher in her head, but no. This was more like a memory than something that was actually happening right now.
“Do you want to leave?” Sylvain asked, his voice a little louder.
Briar took a deep breath and met his worried stare. “No,” she said. “I’ve missed too much school already.” But she took his hand and squeezed it tightly.
For the rest of class, Briar kept her gaze on her binder or the art history textbook. She kept one finger in the appendix of the book, ready to skim through titles and find the portraits the professor noted. None of the pictures in her book bothered her, but if she happened to glance up, the massive, zoomed-in shots the professor had chosen overwhelmed her.
“Now,” the professor intoned. “Let’s go back to Boston. And Bunker Hill. Look at General Warren’s face. Abigail Adams, upon seeing the sketch for this, said, her ‘blood shivered.’ You can see why. Look at the man holding back another bayonet thrust. The graying pallor on Warren’s face as the life seeps out of him.”
Briar didn’t need to see it. The woman’s description was vivid enough.
“Have you been to Bunker Hill?” Sylvain asked, distracting her from the picture forming in her mind.
“No.” She’d had plans to do a tour of the sights in Boston, but between school and the vampires, she hadn’t. “I haven’t seen it. I haven’t done the Freedom Trail either.”
“Next cloudy day.” He squeezed her hand. “We’ll take Hudson and Marcus. They’re full of history. You know, because they’re so old.”
If he was trying to make her laugh, it worked. She nodded, holding back an ill-timed giggle. By the time she had herself under control, the lights were back up and her classmates were gathering their things.
As she packed her bag, she felt Sylvain watching her. She wanted to tell him what she’d experienced, but didn’t want to do it here, in a room hall full of undergrads.
And he didn’t push. Whatever he saw on her face only had him taking her bag and holding out his hand. She took it and sighed in relief as he wound his arm around her waist. They walked out of class that way, her head leaning against him, and into the hall.
Sylvain led her back outside, pausing only to make sure she was covered. Together, they walked to Hudson’s lab. Somehow they both decided to go there without saying it out loud. But it would be quiet, and private.
The door to Hudson’s lab had been outfitted with a keypad and a badge reader. Sylvain entered the code to get in and then took a card from his back pocket to swipe over the reader. With a click, the door unlocked and they went inside.
It hadn’t closed behind them before Sylvain hugged her tight. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered into his chest. God, he smelled good. She breathed in the scent of him. Musk and something else, like the fresh air from outside had stuck to him. It was addictive. A rumble vibrated in his chest, and she pulled back, embarrassed. “You smell good.”
“I’m glad you think so.” He leaned his face into her neck, breathing her in. “You smell good, too.” He set her back from him. “Stop distracting me. What happened, Briar?”
Peeling out of her gloves, she searched for the words to describe what she’d remembered. “It was the paintings.” Part of her whispered, duh, and she grimaced. “That’s probably obvious. But for a moment, it was like I’d been there.”
“In war?” Sylvain asked, sitting in Hudson’s favorite swivel chair. He dragged her between his legs and gazed up at her.
“Sort of.” She pushed his hair back from his face. In this position, she could see all the facets of brown in his eyes, and that he had a smattering of freckles along his cheekbones and forehead. She smoothed her thumbs over his eyebrows, pausing at the scar that split one. Leaning down, she kissed it. Sylvain leaned forward, his head pillowed on her chest, and she leaned her cheek on his soft hair, stroking it with her fingers as she went on. “It was like I could remember being there. I could hear the horses, and the screams.” Beneath her head, he jerked, and held her tighter. “Not as if it was happening,” she assured him. “But as if I’d been there when it had.”
“Asher,” he said, and Briar nodded.
“That’s what I thought, too. It could have been from what Asher had shown me. I mean, I’ve watched my share of war dramas, but this was different. This felt like I’d stood among the dying and heard them die.”
Now, Sylvain tensed. A small step back allowed her to see his face again and read the troubled expression there. “I’m afraid he showed you my past,” Sylvain said and then shook his head. “No. I mean, I know he’s shown you the past, but I’m afraid of what he’s shown you. I’m not a good man, Briar.” She scoffed, but he stopped her by taking her hands to hold between their bodies. “No. Listen to me,” he went on. “Because I’m afraid I won’t be able to get the courage to say this again. I loved war, Briar. I was good at it. I wasn’t good at much before Asher. I failed my human family. Failed at being a human. But when Asher remade me, he remade me harder, stronger. I was fast, and I was deadly, and I loved it. I still love it, Briar.”
His dark eyelashes rested against his cheekbones as he hid his gaze from hers. His fear was palpable, calling to Briar to alleviate it.
“I’m not surprised,” she answered. When he whipped his gaze up to hers, she smiled to soften her words. “You’re a warrior, Sylvain. All of you are, but maybe it’s because of your human life that you’re harder. Stronger. Less yielding. I don’t know what happened in your past, and you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but I imagine it fashioned you into someone who never wanted to lose the people you cared about ever again.”
He sucked in a breath. For a moment, Briar thought tears gathered in his eyes, but he quickly looked away. When his gaze returned to hers, his eyes were still bright. “Yeah,” he said and cleared his throat when his voice caught. “Yeah. I guess it did.” He stood and swept her into his arms before sitting again, this time with her on his lap. “I wish you could remember what Asher showed you. It would be so much easier, I think.”
“Easier why?”
On her leg, he drummed a tempo with his fingers. Fast, fast, slow. Fast, fast, slow. “I don’t know. It would just be out there. You’d have seen it, so I wouldn’t have to watch the look on your face when I told you.”
“Sylvain…” She placed the palm of her hand against his heart and held it there before resting her head against him. Slowly, she sat back. It was her turn to gaze up at him. With everything inside her, she tried to show him that she wouldn’t run away—wouldn’t be frightened of him. “If you want to tell me. Tell me. Do it quick. Like ripping off a bandage.”
He stared at her a moment longer, eyes narrowing. Then he gave a sharp nod. “I had a wife and a son. They were murdered. By Asher. He turned me into a vampire and instead of avenging them, I became his weapon. He pointed me in one direction and set me loose, and I hacked my way through his enemies.”
A wife. A son.
Briar swallowed hard. Why had she not expected that he’d have had a family? In this day and age, he was a young man. No one would expect him to have a wife and family now. But four hundred years ago? The surprising thing was probably that he only had one child, and not four or five to work alongside him.
“What were their names?” she finally asked. She wanted to picture in her mind the kind of woman Sylvain had fallen for. She would have been tough. And beautiful, obviously. “Where did you live? What did you do? You lived in Canada? Was it Canada then? Were you born there?” With one question asked, a thousand more came on its heels. She had to shut her mouth to keep them inside. “Sorry. I’ll stop now.”
Sylvain’s shoulders sagged, and he kissed her neck. “Why am I surprised you are asking more questions? I thought for sure you’d be upset.”
Briar searched her feelings. What she felt wasn’t anger or disappointment. A little jealousy, yes, because somewhere in time was a woman who had Sylvain’s love first, but she wasn’t mad he’d had a family once.
He was a vampire, and by some miracle of science, or maybe it was a miraculous combination of science and magic, he’d existed long enough for her to meet him.
And care about him.
Love him.
So, no. She wasn’t upset he had a family. She was just glad she got a chance with him.
“What kind of dad were you?” she asked. “Will you tell me about them?”
He opened his mouth to speak, eyes wide, and then shut it, shaking his head. “God, Briar.” He raked his hand through his hair. “You… You fucking slay me.”
Too much. She’d asked too much. “I can’t help the million questions I want answers to, but Sylvain, just tell me to mind my own business. I can take it.”
He shook his head again. “No. I want my business to be your business. I want to tell you everything.” A smile grew, creasing the skin near his eyes.
“So do I,” Briar answered. “Tell me everything.”
“Juliet. And Jacques. I was so happy when he was born. He looked like me. A black-eyed, squalling terror. But Briar, he was the most beautiful, most perfect being I’d ever seen. Or could ever imagine.”
She smiled at the faraway look he got in his eyes. He saw them as he spoke. She could tell by the way he seemed to gaze past her. “I can imagine.”
“I held him in my hands, and he stopped crying and just looked at me. Stared me down. I’d never been so scared in my fucking life. And I have the bear scar to prove it.” He pointed to his eyebrow and winked at her.
“That’s how you got it!” she said. “I wondered! I knew it was a bear. Or an ax. Or a fight with a bear who held an ax.”
“A bear with an ax?” Sylvain lifted the eyebrow she’d become focused on. “That’s quite the imagination you have.”
“Keep going,” Briar said, interrupting him. She bounced a little on his lap in excitement. She loved listening to him. Loved picturing his life and seeing the happiness associated with memories he may not have let himself linger on.
“Once, when he was two, Juliet took him to our orchard. I heard her yelling for him, and then for me, and I barreled out of the barn, through the trees to her. She couldn’t find him, and that monkey was in a tree. Apple in hand, fast asleep in the crook between two branches. We searched for hours, but the leaves were so thick, and he slept hard. Didn’t wake up when we screamed his name. Woke up on his own and dropped out of that tree like it was no big deal.” Sylvain laughed. “Any gray hairs I got, that kid gave me.”
Briar laughed with him and threaded her hands through his hair. “I don’t see any grays. Couldn’t have been too bad.”
“Nah,” Sylvain said, smile still curling the edge of his mouth. It called to Briar, and she didn’t resist, leaning forward to drop a kiss on each end. He met her second kiss, turning his head to capture her mouth. His tongue tangled with hers, stroking lightly before he pulled away. “It feels good to talk about them.”
“You loved them,” Briar said. “You should talk about them. Remember them. I wish you had pictures, portraits, or something, of them. Too bad you weren’t an artist.”
“We have one of Annie, but back then, no. I was too poor to have anyone paint a portrait of my family,” he mused.
“Who’s Annie?” Briar asked.
It may have been because she’d just left Art History, but when Sylvain froze, all she could think was, Freaked out Vampire. In Marble.
“Oops?” Briar asked when he remained unmoving—except for his eyes, which widened more and more with panic. “Slipped out, didn’t it?”
He blinked rapidly and encouraged her to stand. He made sure she was steady on her feet before backing away. “I—It’s not only up to me to talk about her.”
Which meant whoever Annie was, she was someone to all of them. It was on the tip of Briar’s tongue to ask, “A sister?” But she wasn’t stupid. She knew Annie wasn’t a sister. They’d been speaking seconds before about Sylvain’s wife and son. For Annie to be mentioned in the next breath meant she was probably his wife as well.
And Hudson’s.
Marcus’s.
Valen’s.
A stab of jealousy hit Briar square in the stomach. It was different than it was when Sylvain spoke about Juliet and Jacques. All of the reasons she had not to be jealous of Sylvain’s human family seemed not to work when she tried to apply them to this Annie girl.
That’s not very kind. Her chiding mental voice was at war with the snarky part of her. She wasn’t being fair. With a sigh, she pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. When she thought she had herself together again, she dropped her hands and met Sylvain’s worried stare. “Okay. When you’re ready. All of you. We can leave it here for now.”
But her mind wouldn’t shut off. As many questions as she had about Sylvain’s human life, she had about Annie. Was she still alive? Was she a vampire? Why weren’t they together anymore? Was she the only person the four of them had shared? Was it the four of them? Or was it just Sylvain and Valen?
“Stop.” Sylvain took her hands and drew her closer. “Briar. Stop. I can’t speak for anyone else. But what I had with Annie—” Whatever else he was going to say was cut off by Briar’s ringing phone. “You should get that,” he said when she made no move to answer.
Eyes on him, she dug the phone out of her jacket pocket. “It’s my mom.”
“Then you should definitely answer,” Sylvain replied. Briar had been better about calling her mom once a day and sending her texts, but the few times she hadn’t answered the phone, because she was asleep or in class, she’d gotten an earful on her voicemail.
Briar nodded and answered, “Hi, Mom.”
Her mom had nothing really important to say. She wanted to make sure Briar was wearing her hat and gloves, that her burn was healing, and that she was absolutely, one hundred percent sure she couldn’t make it home for Thanksgiving.
She was. It was. And she couldn’t.
“All right, honey,” her mother sighed across the phone, sending a blast of static over the line. “Keep in touch.”
“Yes, ma’am. I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Briar hung up. During her conversation, Sylvain had migrated toward the rows of books Hudson kept in his lab. “This stuff is interesting to you, huh?”
Edging closer, she read the spines of the books he stared at and smiled. “Yes. It’s very interesting. It’s not so different from history,” she said, reaching toward one book labeled, Mitochondrial DNA. “Everything we are is written into our cells. And maybe, even everything we could become. Take you and me.” Briar replaced the book and went to Hudson’s computer. With a keystroke, the screen came to life. A few taps later, Chromosome 18 and its mutation, the one that made it impossible for her to walk in the sun, appeared on the screen. She found Sylvain’s, and placed the images side-by-side. “What is it about you that makes you a vampire, and what is it about me that makes me—”
“Vampire lite?” he asked, using the phrase she’d come up with weeks ago.
Briar laughed. “Yes. Exactly.” She enhanced the image. “What is it here that makes it possible for Asher to get into my head, but not you? Is it the same thing that makes me burn in the sun but not need blood? It could all be right here.” She pointed to the chromosome, and then glanced at Sylvain. “We just have to find it.”
He was staring at her, his wide smile making the skin near his eyes crinkle. “I see what you mean. It is interesting.”
Briar turned her attention back to the screen. “Erythropoietic protoporphyria, what I thought I had, can be inherited. But usually it comes from both parents. I had my parents send me blood samples.” She found the pictures she and Hudson had captured when they’d gotten the samples and brought it up on the screen. “See? There’s the mutation on my mother’s chromosome, but on my father’s? Nothing. My brother, he doesn’t show it. My mom didn’t pass it on to him at all. Usually, both parents’ recessive genes are passed on to the kid who shows the disorder. Not in my case. It’s just another example of why I don’t really have EPP. But it makes me think. Is there something else in my DNA that makes me susceptible to Asher?”
“It could just be that he has mind control power,” Sylvain said, pulling up the wheely chair next to hers and rolling from side to side. “Couldn’t it?”
“Nope.” She refused to believe that magic was what gave Asher the ability to get into her head. Magic she couldn’t control. Or understand. But science? Science she could do.
Staring at the images on the screen, she called up another part of her DNA—Chromosome 6.
“What’s this?” Sylvain asked.
“Chromosome 6. There are some sleep disorders that have their genetic origin here. The human leukocyte antigen complex… people with narcolepsy can have it and…” The door opened, interrupting anything else she would have said.
“But what’s going on with you isn’t narcolepsy,” Hudson said as he strode into the room. Marcus came behind him, and then Valen. Marcus gave her a nod but a kind smile.
“Hi,” she said quietly.
Marcus looked past her to the screen and smiled. “Sleep disorders?” He came closer, leaning over her shoulder to examine the image carefully.
“Yes,” she answered. Her face heated. He was so close. While he hadn’t said much, the pride in his voice overwhelmed her. Especially when she compared it to how bitter he’d been earlier. It took her a moment to remember Hudson had spoken, and she cleared her throat. “I know it isn’t narcolepsy. But I wondered if something might be present here that would indicate—” It seemed like a long shot now.
“I like where you were going,” Hudson said, touching her shoulder.
“She’s going to figure out how Asher gets into her head,” Sylvain said with a hint of pride. “Using science.”
Briar bit her lip to keep from laughing. “I was going to try.”
“What do you know about brainwaves?” Hudson asked, and Briar tried to remember her cognitive neuroscience classes. “Well, there are five types of brainwaves. They change depending on what we’re doing. Right now, I’m active and thinking… so beta waves?”
“What else do you know?” he asked, putting her on the spot.
“Oh gosh, okay.” She tried to think. “Um. Brainwaves can be changed using chemicals or maybe neurofeedback.”
“Maybe…” Hudson interjected. “But what about when you sleep?”
“Jesus, Hudson. Stop fucking hinting at shit and just get it out. This isn’t a fucking lecture,” Sylvain barked.
Hudson blushed, and Briar took his hand. “It’s okay,” she told Sylvain. “This is the part I love about college. But you’re right, Sylvain. We’re being rude. I’m sorry.”
Sylvain huffed. “Not your fault.” And Briar got what he meant—it wasn’t her fault, but it was most certainly Hudson’s. “It’s fine. Get on with the lecture.” He waved his hand in the air as permission for Hudson to continue, but Hudson only glanced at Briar and raised his eyebrows.
“Okay,” she said slowly. “Sleep. During sleep, our brainwaves are theta waves. The frequency slows. But theta waves aren’t specific to sleep. When accessing memories, brainwaves have been shown to slow to theta waves.” Now she saw where Hudson was going. “Theta waves happen during REM sleep, and that’s when you think Asher got in my head. But it’s also when he got in your head, because it was your memories he took. All of yours. So, if we can keep my brainwaves from cycling to a theta wave, we can keep Asher out of my head.” Her voice rose as she put together all the pieces. “Hudson. This could work!”
“I think so. Marcus agrees with me. We can’t keep you awake. You’ll go crazy, and your body will break down,” Hudson mused.
“Wait,” Sylvain interrupted. “This seems like a pretty big leap. How have you figured this out?”
“You and Valen have been so focused on Briar, you especially Sylvain, that each time you’ve noticed a physical change while she sleeps, you’ve said something to Valen. In turn, he’s noted the time or something that was happening, so we could pinpoint how long she’d been asleep. We did a little calculation. Took what we know about sleep patterns, and made a guess.”
“A guess.” Sylvain crossed his arms and looked down at Hudson. It struck Briar that while they were close in height, Sylvain had a couple of inches on Hudson and was making use of them now. “A guess isn’t good enough.”
“You could attach me to an EEG.” She turned to Sylvain and Valen. “An EEG measures brainwaves. Because brainwaves are electric impulses. So these nodes go on my head, and then it reads each little pulse. It’s kind of cool. I’ve never had one before.”
“Does it hurt?” Sylvain asked. He grabbed her chair and rolled it toward him before kneeling. Her hair fell in her face as she shook her head, and he pushed it back. “But how do we help you if Asher gets to you?” He glanced over at Hudson. “Have you thought of that, Professor? What happens when he goes to her, and hurts her, like you know he’s fucking doing, and we can’t get to her.”
“We wake her up,” Hudson answered quickly.
“This is stupid,” Sylvain replied. “We don’t need to know how it’s happening, to know that it is happening.”
“She needs to sleep, Sylvain.” Valen’s voice was calm, and Sylvain’s shoulders relaxed somewhat.
Briar took his face between her hands, turning his head to hers. “This is to keep Asher out of my head,” she said. “Not prove he’s there. If I go into theta waves, you wake me up, or there are some drugs I could take…”
“So we do this forever?” Sylvain asked. “You take drugs every day to keep from having these brainwaves, or whatever the fuck they are?”
“I—” When Sylvain put it like that, it didn’t sound like a very good idea. So what was the answer? In the short term, taking a sleeping pill would knock her out but keep her from REM sleep, the time her brain would enter a theta wave cycle. But how did she keep Asher out of her head forever? What was he doing in there? She slept through it, and she didn’t remember, but… What if he got in her head during the day? Made her say things? Do things? These guys were the strongest people she knew, and they hadn’t been able to keep Asher from making them attack her.
“We’re going to kill him,” Valen said. “And we’re going to do it soon. We’re not talking about her doing this forever. We’re talking about doing it as long as it takes us to kill him.”
“Then let’s do this now.” Sylvain stood, clenching his hands by his side. “We stash Briar somewhere safe, and we end him. But we do something. No more fucking talking about it and strategizing. We get shit done, and we get it done now.”
“Sylvain.” Briar reached for him, but he stepped back.
“Hold on, blossom,” he whispered, tempering her immediate embarrassment. “I’m serious. He doesn’t expect us. Let’s go.”
“It’s a mistake to go off half-cocked,” Valen said. His voice was calm, but he’d moved toward the door as if he could keep Sylvain from barreling through. And maybe he could.
“Valen,” Sylvain cajoled. “Come on. You and me. Old times. We could hack our way through the soldiers and get to him. Better yet, the four of us. We were unstoppable.”
Unstoppable. The word repeated, tickling Briar’s ear. She rubbed it. Hacking. From across the room, Marcus caught her gaze and canted his head, studying her.
“Wait,” she called as Sylvain continued.
“Valen. Think about it. Do you remember when we faced down the family group in New Brunswick? They were two hundred vamps strong. Two hundred! And not soldiers. Not crawlers. Fully aware, mature vamps. We went in there, and—do you remember, Hudson? You had us set the fires in the—”
Briar could feel the heat of the fire on her face. The sound of the horses as they saw the fire. In her head, she could see the whites of their eyes as they reared up in terror.
“Sylvain, enough.” Marcus’s voice slashed through the air. “Enough.”
She’d shut her eyes without realizing it, and when she opened them, she met Marcus’s stare. He studied her intently, like he could see every emotion she tried to hide.
“Marcus—” Sylvain’s voice was equal parts petulant and pissed.
“Sylvain.” Valen added his voice to the mix in a tone Briar’d never heard before. She jumped, her heart racing. It scared her; it was completely lacking the warmth and kindness with which Valen always spoke.
“Shit.” Sylvain tugged her to his chest. She knew it was him by the soft flannel beneath her cheek. “Briar. Shit.” He held her and ran one hand down her back to soothe her.
“I’m fine.” The lie rolled off her tongue. She wasn’t, but it wasn’t Sylvain’s fault. It was whatever was stuck in her head, throwing images and sounds at her like she’d stood in the midst of war. The description Sylvain gave, the story he told, was something she’d seen before. It teased the edge of her consciousness like an itch she couldn’t scratch. “I’m fine. I got lost is all.” Sylvain stepped back to stare down at her. He narrowed his eyes, studying her face, and then he breathed in. “You’re frightened.”
“Not of you.” Never of him. Never of any of them. They were her safe place. Even when Sylvain wants to kill? Is he safe then? Where did this voice come from?
“Do you have an EEG, Hudson,” she asked. Her fingernails cut into her palms she clenched her hands so tightly.
“What?” he asked. His lips firmed into a bloodless, straight line. “I can get one. Wait here.”
“Briar?” Valen asked, crowding Sylvain. “What’s happening?”
Hudson was back before Briar could explain. He and Marcus moved in sync. They worked around Valen and Sylvain, not saying a word. Briar could feel the tension ratcheting up with each moment.
“Valen. There’s this gel, in the drawer beneath the microscope.” Briar pointed. “Can you get that? It’s in a blue tube. Kind of looks like a ketchup bottle.” Valen darted away, his body a blur of blond and blue. “We’ll use the gel to stick the little electrodes to my head.”
“Alcohol,” Marcus said, as he turned on the machine.
“Sylvain,” Briar called, and he hurried to her. “Take the alcohol and swab it over my forehead and behind my ears. Then take that towel and kind of scrape it over my skin.”
“You think he’s in your head now,” Sylvain whispered, doing exactly as she said.
“I don’t know.” She winced when he rubbed her forehead a little too hard.
“Sorry.”
“It’s fine. I think you’re supposed to take a layer of skin off,” she answered.
“I thought you said you’d never done this.” Marcus pushed Sylvain out of the way, but he hovered nearby, waiting for her answer. His brother measured her head from just above her nose to the back of her head and left again.
“I haven’t,” Briar replied as he carefully moved her hair out of the way to run the cloth behind her ears. “But I’ve read about it.”
“Light reading?”
“Beach reads,” she replied, and Sylvain chuckled.
But then he was serious again. “You’re okay?”
“I am,” she replied and took his hand. To her surprise, she could feel it trembling. “Sylvain. I’m okay. You’re here with me. He can’t hurt me here.”
Hacking. Unstoppable. Murderer.
“Ready,” Hudson called.
Sylvain helped her up, steering her toward the chair they had set up in front of the computer.
The electrodes were set into a type of cap, and once Marcus had measured her, they were able to fit it perfectly to her head.
“This doesn’t hurt you, does it?” Sylvain asked, frowning.
“It doesn’t hurt at all,” Hudson answered for her.
“I didn’t ask you, Hudson,” Sylvain snapped. “Briar?”
Briar started to shake her head but stopped, remembering the cap. “No. It won’t hurt.”
The computer beeped, and then all their attention was on the line of squiggles appearing on the screen. “Is she okay?” Sylvain asked.
Briar noticed how quiet Valen was. He stared at her, and then the screen, and back again. The lines on the screen meant nothing to her. She couldn’t interpret them, even if she knew what they were supposed to be. She held out her hand, and he came to her. His hand dwarfed hers, but he was careful. He was always so careful with her.
Briar squeezed hard, meeting his stare. She hoped he understood the comfort she was trying to give him. He studied her, eyes trailing from her head and across her forehead to the computer. But he didn’t speak.
She took a deep breath, held it, and released it. If she let herself think about why she was doing this, about Asher being in her head, whispering horrible things, she’d go crazy. Instead, she focused on her breathing, picturing each inhalation traveling from the top of her head down to her toes.
In and out.
“Theta.” Hudson’s voice seemed to come out of a fog, so she kept breathing.
In and out.
Somewhere far away, someone screamed. Briar’s eyes shot open. But she wasn’t in the lab with Hudson, she was on a battlefield.
In the middle of a war.
“What are you up to, Briar Hale?” Asher asked.
Stay calm.
Asher laughed. “You think that you can keep me out of your head? You’re not smarter than me. Hudson isn’t smarter than me. Look at this.” He threw his arms open to encompass the entire scene. All at once, heat burned her skin and the sounds of pain and dying surrounded her.
I’m not really here.
“No?” Asher asked. Cool fingers wrapped around her throat, and he pulled her against his chest. “Do you not feel me? The heat of the fires? I told Hudson to set them.”
“It was Hudson’s idea,” Briar said, remembering Sylvain’s story. “Hudson said to set the fire.” As if her words conjured him, she saw him, striding toward another man. Marcus. Marcus’s light eyes caught hers from across the battle scene, and he cocked his head like he had just moments ago when he’d studied her in the lab. Briar lifted her hand and waved to him. White teeth flashed in his face, and suddenly, she wasn’t there anymore. She was back, sitting on the leather wheely chair. Sylvain loomed over her, one hand held hers while Valen held onto her other hand.
“Thank God,” Valen said on a breath. “There are those eyes.”
“I’m here,” she said, and her voice was hoarse. “I’m here.” She said it to reassure herself as well as them. Over their heads, she caught Marcus watching her. “Anything interesting?”
“Lots,” he said, and he lifted his hand, fingers twitching in a wave. “You waved to me.”
“I remember,” she said. “I remember what he did. Where I was. What I saw!”
“He’s going to be mad,” Valen said, squeezing her hand. “But I’m so proud of you.”
“I was thinking about the battle Sylvain described,” Marcus said. “Hudson and I spoke about it earlier. We wondered if what Asher was showing you, he took from us. Memory, passive memory, is often associated with theta waves. I think that’s how he gets in our head. When we’re relaxed, thinking about the past.”
“Or in my case, dreaming, or in a state of calm,” Briar added.
“Yes. But you remember? You remember what he showed you?” Sylvain asked while Valen watched her with a frown.
“I remember,” she answered. “I saw Hudson, and Marcus. I didn’t see you or Valen.”
Valen’s shoulders slumped, and he let out a breath. “I’m not ready for you to see me that way yet, Briar. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize for not wanting to share every moment of your past with me,” she replied. His sadness was palpable, and Briar couldn’t stand it a second longer. She stood and wrapped her arms around the huge man. She kissed his chest even though he wouldn’t be able to feel it under his heavy wool sweater. It itched against her skin when she laid her cheek there. “I’ll be here when you’re ready.”
“Promise?” His breath ruffled her hair, and she tucked it behind one ear.
“Promise,” she answered, and then, because his muscles were stiff and rigid, his arms tense, she said it again. “I promise, Valen.”