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CHAPTER

THIRTY-SIX

ASHER

A sher’s tongue felt like it had been permanently glued to the roof of his mouth.

He forced himself to open his eyes, ignoring the pounding of his headache, and pulled himself up into a sitting position on the hard floor. He could see his sleeping mat several feet away, and his screaming back told him he had to have been sleeping for a while. Probably at least a few hours.

As he glanced around the hut, he tried to remember recent events, but it was difficult.

He could, however, figure out that he must have been high on DX8 by mistake.

He remembered lots of colors and twisting shapes. He remembered feeling like he’d lost his place in space and time, like he was floating in an infinite blackness.

He remembered his ears pulsing with blood. He remembered the mixture of silence and buzzing that followed the sound of an explosion…

But there had been no explosion here. No. Even DX8 hadn’t made him delusional enough to believe that. All it could do was force him to remember Afghanistan, to make him relive things that he wanted so badly to forget.

Even now that he had sobered up somewhat, his brain still felt riddled with holes. What else had he seen?

He was curious, but a bigger part of him was thankful that he didn’t know. Perhaps God was protecting him from those memories.

But as for the real world, a few details began to emerge from the haze of his exhausted mind.

Police had shown up here, and they’d arrested Bajwa. He remembered that. They had big dogs that barked, and then the drumbeat sound had been turned off.

He could see Paul and Cora sleeping on their respective mats nearby, looking normal. That was good, at least.

He craned his neck to look for Karlin, to ask her how on earth she’d accidentally given him the wrong dose, and then he remembered.

She had gone outside, and he’d seen Lily following after her.

And even though hours had passed, neither of the women had returned.

Asher sprung to his feet, gripping the wall of the hut for a moment to steady himself before taking off at an unbalanced run. His legs were filled with rubber, but he had to push through it, along with the general feeling that his head was stuffed with cotton balls.

The desert was dark and empty, but there was a thickness in the air, like a storm might be rolling in soon.

He wanted to run, but he had to think. He needed direction. By now, Karlin and Lily could be anywhere.

Despite the remaining fogginess in his brain, he was sober enough now to remember what he wished he’d told Karlin. She didn’t know that he’d caught Lily lurking around his cabin when they got back from the Senera offices the day before.

At the time, he’d wanted to accept the woman’s excuse for being there. He liked Lily, and he’d been so focused on stopping Senera that digging into the other patients’ pasts felt like it was mostly a waste of time.

But now, nefarious possibilities began to unravel in his mind.

Lily had probably been at his cabin for the most obvious reason–she suspected that he wasn’t who he claimed to be and was digging for clues. She could have swapped his DX8 dose, too, probably at the lab beforehand. How she’d gotten in, he didn’t know, but security there wasn’t exactly tight.

Giving him the real drug would have allowed her to both confirm he was lying and take him out of commission in one blow, allowing her to get to Karlin.

It all fit. It was certainly a more plausible explanation for the DX8 switch than Karlin simply making a careless mistake. He knew her well enough to know that she virtually never made them.

That, and how out of it he still felt. He should have been a lot more clear-headed by now than he was, which made him think he’d been given a much bigger dose than anyone else.

But nothing he could think of settled the most obvious question: why?

Was Lily involved with Senera somehow? Was she working with Bajwa?

If she was, why had he been arrested? Was it all part of some ruse?

He pressed his fingers to his temples, as though he could push through the haze somehow. All of this attempted deduction was not helping his headache, either.

He had to get ahold of dependable, brilliant, and always sober Ben so that he could do a deep dive into Lily Moonchild.

Finding a phone was now his next objective.

But before he could consider where to look, he heard the sound of angry voices coming from inside the hut.

KARLIN

Every inch of Karlin’s body ached.

She forced one foot in front of the other as she and Lily hiked through the desert in the dark, stumbling over rocks and pricking herself on unseen plants.

The air felt dangerously heavy, and the wind was beginning to pick up, sending a bitter cold breeze rushing over the sand.

Despite the exertion, she struggled to keep herself warm, and the business-like skirt and thin cardigan she wore did little to protect her from the cold gusts of wind that swept up every few minutes.

Her simple flat shoes were only moderately warmer than a pair of sandals, and she would do almost anything to go back and choose a pair of sensible sneakers with thick socks.

She couldn’t stop shivering, and yet, she longed for a glass of freezing cold water.

She knew that she had more important things to think about.

Everyone was in danger now, most of all herself, but it was incredible how the needs of the body could draw her thoughts even as she faced a real risk of death.

She tripped over a root and fell to her knees, gasping in pain as she felt a cut opening up on the top of her right foot.

She felt Lily jabbing the gun into the back of her head.

“Keep moving,” the woman said, her voice void of emotion. “I need you out of my way.”

Karlin yanked her body upright, knowing that it would be dangerous to argue.

Ever since Lily had ambushed her outside of the retreat hut, she’d hardly spoken, but everything she did say filled Karlin with cold terror. It was like the cheerful older woman had disappeared, replaced by a monster in an instant.

But there had to have been signs. Signs she–and apparently, Axel–had missed.

Not that she was casting blame. Whatever the reason for her deception was, the act Lily put on had been extremely convincing.

“We have a ritual to do, and we’re already late. It was supposed to be performed at midnight,” Lily continued. It was the most substantial sentence she’d uttered in hours.

Karlin decided she’d risk a question, though she didn’t dare to ask specifically what the woman meant by needing her out of the way.

“What do you mean?” she choked out.

Her mouth was so dry that the words nearly got stuck in her throat.

Lily stopped walking for a moment, and Karlin stole a glance behind her. The woman actually looked almost sad.

“You almost found out, back then,” she said at last. “Amira liked you, trusted you. She was going to tell you everything, but she never got the chance. I couldn’t risk history repeating itself. You were getting too close.”

Karlin’s stomach clenched as she stared at Lily, realization dawning.

It was all she could do not to throw up.

Everything was finally beginning to make sense.

ASHER

Asher followed the raised voices back into the hut, just in time to see Paul begging Cora to leave with him. “We need to get back to the main site,” he was saying, his voice pleading. “We need to call for help.”

“No way,” Cora argued. “Listen to the wind. There’s a storm starting, and it’s pitch black out there. I don’t even know if there’s still a Jeep to drive, and the trail will be rough if it starts raining. We need to wait for Karlin to get back.”

“She might not come back,” Paul snapped, sounding angrier than Asher had ever heard him. “Dr. Bajwa is in jail, Ms. McKenna has disappeared, and so has Lily. Maybe she had a bad reaction and Karlin had to take her to the hospital like they did with Destiny. This whole retreat is cursed.”

Asher considered this.

If he hadn’t spent most of the night high out of his mind, he probably would have considered that possibility first. He hadn’t even looked to see if Bajwa’s Jeep was still outside.

Surely, it was a more likely possibility than the explanations he’d been tossing around.

He was about to suggest that they go see if the Jeep was there and if the keys were in it when Cora spoke.

“That’s not gonna happen,” she said, shaking her head, as though Paul’s idea was ridiculous. “Lily has way more experience with DX8 than Destiny did. There’s no way she…”

The woman cut herself off mid-sentence, shutting her mouth like a trap.

Asher paused for a moment, confused.

What did she mean?

He was all but certain Lily had said she’d never tried anything more severely mind altering than weed.

Man, his head hurt. It felt as though each time he tried to form a thought, he was killing off a few more brain cells and causing a little more pain.

He needed to drink some water, he needed to talk to Ben or one of his other brothers, and he needed to get his theory straight.

Most of all, he had to find Karlin.

“Fine, do what you want,” Paul said at last, wiping invisible dust from the front of his jeans. “I’m finding a phone to call for help. If I can’t manage that, I guess I’ll wind up back here or find some other shelter.”

“Be careful,” Asher warned. “If there’s no phone in the Jeep, the next one will be at the main compound. It takes a while to get there on foot in the daylight, let alone at night with a storm brewing.”

Paul considered this. “It would be a lot safer if you came with me.”

Asher shook his head. “Honestly, man, I feel way too sick. I’m just gonna hunker down here with Cora for a while.”

It was true.

His head was still pounding, his mouth was dry, and he knew that if he was going to find Karlin in this weather he was probably going to need to take a few minutes to get himself together.

Everything still felt muddled, and he was afraid that in his impaired thinking, he could make things even worse.

Paul headed for the door, giving them a final wave as he strode out into the brewing storm.

For several moments, neither he nor Cora spoke.

The hut felt lonelier than ever.

Asher longed for the normalcy of his life in San Antonio.

Failing that, he would have settled for a few hours of sleep back in his guest cabin down at the main area of the retreat site.

Anything but here, unable to think straight, his body and mind rebelling against him even as he knew he had to start taking action.

“Hey, thanks for staying with me,” Cora said after a little while, moving her mat a little closer to his. “It would be seriously creepy by myself.”

“Yeah, seriously,” Asher agreed, not wanting to tell her that as soon as his head stopped spinning, he was heading back out into the rain.

Hopefully, Paul would be successful in calling for help, and she wouldn’t be alone for very long, but he couldn’t stick around when Karlin was in much more danger.

“It’s better this way,” Cora continued, reaching for something in the pocket of her baggy jeans.

“Sorry?”

He had no time to think, no time to react.

In a single motion, Cora lashed out like a snake, and a sudden flash of pain jolted through him.

He glanced down just in time to realize that the end of a syringe was now stuck firmly into his thigh.