The more he explained things, the more confused she became. For now she had to just gather the crumbs of information and hope all would make sense sooner or later.
Lucas walked on, down the wide path of smooth stones. Karina scrambled to follow. They walked side by side along the path and over a bridge. The gardens burrowed into nooks in the buildings here and there, forming small sitting areas. To the left two women sat on a bench, discussing something. They looked so normal. Both wore jeans; the older of the pair had on a flowered top, white on blue; the younger woman wore a familiar yellow blouse—Karina had looked at it in J. C. Penney last week.
Last week. A lifetime ago.
The women saw Lucas. Their faces took on a certain tightness, as if they were straining to keep calm. They looked her over next. Karina met their gaze and saw pity in their eyes. Suddenly it made her furious. If Lucas grabbed her throat right now, they wouldn’t lift a finger to help her. They would just sit there and watch him choke her to death and feel sorry for her. She raised her chin and stared at Lucas’s back. No, thank you. She didn’t need anyone’s pity.
Henry’s words came back to her. Lucas is the most feared. “They’re afraid of you,” she said.
“I’m the security specialist here; I have the right of judgment,” he said. “I can kill anyone on base at any point without any retribution.”
“You protect them, and all you get in return is fear. Why do you keep doing this?”
Lucas kept walking. “Because everyone must have a purpose. The Mandate tells me what I am doing is right and must be done and because I’m the biggest and the strongest it’s my duty to put myself between my people and danger. I would do it for you.”
He would. She believed him. “Lucas . . .”
“Yes?”
She wanted to tell him that if he ever shielded her or Emily, she wouldn’t be afraid of him. She wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to put up with people shrinking away from him, but inside a cold rational voice warned her that she was losing her grip on reality. The plan had to be to escape. The plan couldn’t be to fall for Lucas and be that one sole person who comforted him.
He was looking at her.
“I’m really confused right now,” she told him. “So this actually doesn’t mean anything.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
“Bend your arm at the elbow.”
He did. Karina reached out. What am I doing? She put her hand on his forearm and raised her chin. The two women on the bench stared at them, openmouthed.
“Now we walk,” she murmured, avoiding looking at him.
“We can do that,” he agreed. They started down the walkway. His arm was rock-steady under her fingers. A few moments, and the dense greenery of rhododendron shrubs hid the women from their view.
“Why?” he asked.
Because she lost it, that’s why. “Would you hurt those two women?”
“Not unless they tried to hurt someone else first.”
“Then they’re in no danger and they know it, but they still make a big production out of you walking by, minding your own business.”
“That still doesn’t answer my question,” he said.
“Can we stop talking about this?”
He didn’t say anything. They simply kept walking. It was surreal, Karina reflected. Beautiful flowers, Emily and a tame bear-dog, and she and Lucas striding side by side.
“I’m tired,” Emily said.
Karina bent down and picked her up. The effort nearly made her lose her balance. Apparently she was weaker than she thought.
Cedric sniffed at her feet.
“Let her ride him,” Lucas offered.
“What?”
“Let her ride him. He doesn’t mind.”
“I want to ride!” Emily squirmed in her arms.
Karina surveyed the bear-dog. He was almost as big as a pony. Gingerly she lowered Emily on his back.
“Hold on to his fur,” Lucas said. Emily dug her fingers into Cedric’s brown mane and they were off again.
They emerged from the stand of rhododendrons. Lucas stepped aside, revealing a round plaza paved with dark red stone. A bronze statue rose in the center, a nude man, muscled with crisp precision. Enormous wings thrust from his shoulders. An angel, but not a garden cupid or some mournful cemetery statue. The angel leaned forward, one arm stretched out, his muscles knotted on his frame. The wings thrust up and out, featherless, as if made of sharp bone. The angel’s perfect face stared into the distance, its gaze focused. Everything about it communicated fury and power. This was a predatory being about to kill its victim. Metal letters beveled on the side of the statue read “A. Rodin.”
Karina glanced at Lucas. “A. Rodin? The sculptor who created The Thinker?”
Lucas shrugged. “He says so, but I wouldn’t put it past him to have the name slapped on there over the actual sculptor’s signature. He is vain enough.”
What? He who? She scrutinized the statue.
Oh, God.
The angel wore Arthur’s face. It had to be figurative—she hadn’t seen any wings on Arthur’s back when he offered her tea.
“But Rodin died in the beginning of the last century.”
Lucas circled the statue and kept walking.
“Lucas!”
He turned and looked at her over his shoulder, light eyes under black eyebrows like two chunks of ice. “Arthur is a Wither. Subspecies 21. They live a long time.”
“How long?”
“Long enough to have met Rodin. Come.”
She wanted to freak out. She wanted to scream and kick her feet in panic, because right here, in cold bronze, was the final proof that this was not a nightmare. Instead Karina waved Cedric ahead of her and they kept going deeper into the garden.
Lucas turned left, down a path leading to a section of the building structured with an almost Japanese flair. Except for the white roof, it could’ve been part of a teahouse. An older woman waited on the covered porch, a stack of clothes neatly folded next to her.
They were twenty feet away from the porch when the siren ripped the quiet into shreds.
Chapter 7
Karina pulled Emily off the bear-dog and into her arms.
“Stay close,” Lucas barked as he turned and ran back up the path. She followed him, trying not to stumble. They pounded over the bridge they’d crossed on the way in.
“What’s happening, Mommy?”
“I don’t know, baby. Hold on tight.”
Emily was so heavy. Karina never remembered her being that heavy. It was like all of the strength had somehow gone out of her arms.