—— About half an hour later…
Something was wrong with Morgan’s truck. The engine control software, unable to keep up with the way the she’d had to throw the steel behemoth around, between, and sometimes through traffic had left the transmission in a place where the engine had red-lined for much longer than it had been meant to. The shocks, too, seemed like they hadn’t been up to the task. Something in the rear clanked and squeaked, protesting every bump and roll on the unpaved road. That was, of course, beside the broken window, blood-soaked passenger seat, and several holes in the truck’s roof, cables and upholstery fluttering in the breeze. She hadn’t even tried the radio - some unknowable ichor had pattered down from one of the holes, and the display now only showed something that could be an eldritch symbol, or nothing more than dying electronics.
Malone had regained consciousness, one of Leon’s masks still perched on her nose. Malone’s wound had finally stopped bleeding, but not before Morgan had sacrificed the tee she’d been wearing, wadding it into a makeshift pressure bandage. She still had a jacket - zipped, now - but the inside of the car was chilly enough to make her skin prickle. That she’d managed the entire process of pulling her shirt off, ordering Leon to hold the shirt against Malone’s shoulder, and putting her jacket back on at well over highway speed had led to at least one quirked eyebrow, but Morgan hadn’t offered any explanation.
After all, she had other things on her mind. The way Leon smelled, adrenaline and clean sweat; the coppery smell of Malone’s blood, the almost electric sensation of her bare hand touching the woman’s skin, the way her mind was utterly unprotected. They were both temptations on the order of a fine cigar to a terminal nicotine addict - no, worse. They were a syringe and tourniquet, the way to fill an emptiness she could barely describe, and she only needed to reach out and take them, and everything would be all right.
But she already knew that for the lie it was. So Morgan let out a low growl and piled the truck though a puddle that reached to the lug nuts and she shivered under her jacket, trying to ignore the way Leon’s eyes were boring into the back of her neck.
In the back, Holt - or Tragellan, via Holt - had remained quiet, but her eyes still burned with the ferocity of Eleanor’s jade-green eyes rather than Holt’s watery orbs. Morgan hadn’t said anything, either about or to Holt-Tragellan, but the sight made her stomach turn. She caught a look at the woman though the rear-view mirror, swallowed, and turned her attention back to the road.
“Turn left, Manny,” she said into her cell phone, the little device warm against her left breast, “There’s a short road, and then you’ll see…a house,” she sighed.
Morgan hauled her own wheel over, eliciting another chorus of squeaks and groans from the truck, and another jounce from something on the roadway. A moment later, the truck passed between what had once been tall, wrought-iron gate posts, reddish rust catching the last dying embers of sunset. The gates themselves, once imposing and ornate, lay ahead, fallen into the road, the designs and bars bent and twisted, and served only to pull more squeaks and rattlles from the truck.
Ahead, the road widened out into…a large and stately country house, the kind that you would otherwise see in baroque period romances. The walls were stone, the windows tall and narrow. Fallen branches and the first golden leaves of cooler weather skittered across what had once been a smooth stone roundabout in front of the building. No lights were on inside, but all the windows still had their glass. The large double doors were battered and weathered, the finish damaged around the doorknobs and with splinters around the hinges. A chain was wrapped around the handles, secured with a large combination lock, below a very faded sign that did its best to ward off trespassers.
Morgan pulled the truck up close to the doors, then reached over and turned the car off. The engine clattered to a halt, coughing and wheezing its way to silence. A moment later, the second truck pulled up behind, and Morgan turned to look behind her at the headlights. The movement bought her gaze across Holt’s again, still with those blazing green eyes.
She watched them for a moment, and fist of anger punched from her stomach though her heart, and she felt the hot sting of fury against the back of her throat. With a twist of her body, Morgan wrenched the door open, taking a moment to glance back at Leon and Malone.
“Malone, can you keep pressure on the wound yourself?” At the woman’s nod, Morgan turned to Leon, “All right, I’m going to have a…talk with Tragellan. I need you to watch Holt. I don’t know what’s going to happen when she gets her brain back.” Her voice was clockspring-tight, each word bitten off.
With that, Morgan stalked toward the other vehicle, the doors opening while the others members of the Group untangled themselves. She saw Eleanor step down from the car, her expression distracted, and Morgan’s long legs devoured the distance between them in a few long, swift strides.
With a viper-quick movement, Morgan slammed the door shut behind Tragellan, the hollow boom echoing off the stone wall of the house. Her hands balled around Eleanor’s lapels and shoved her against the steel, not quite rough enough to injure her…probably. Morgan leaned close, pinning Tragellan against the car. This close, she could still feel the strange, erotic thrum inside the woman’s mind, but for once, she found the sensation almost trivial to ignore.
“Let her go, Eleanor,” Morgan said, her voice an icy snarl of barely-contained fury. She leaned in close, and whispered in Tragellan’s ear in a voice she knew would not carry, “We both already know you’ve hurt her, but if you don’t stop this, by all the gods there ever were I will make you stop.”
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