Leaf, Erin M. - Tango Trio [Dream Marked 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (16 page)

“I didn’t either, Jared. Sure as shit stinks, you could’ve knocked me over with a toothpick when the doctors down in Santa Fe told me what was wrong with me.” Charlie shifted his weight, stepping back and groping for the door.

“Let me get that.” Jared leaped forward. He opened the door and touched his friend on the arm. Charlie slid his hand up to Jared’s shoulder and let him lead the way inside. Jared glanced around, happy to see that at least the house looked the same—kitchen to the left with its old, scarred wooden table, living room to the right. The ugly green sofa still sat in the center of the room like a blot of ugly in the midst of lovely, gleaming wood. “Charlie, that sofa is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen,” Jared said, leading his friend straight to it.

Charlie laughed and let Jared help him settle into the cushions. As soon as he was down, he lifted up his feet and propped them on the old, metal coffee table. “What do I care how it looks? It’s the most comfortable piece of furniture I’ve ever owned.” He waved his hand around. “Make yourself at home Jared. You want coffee? A beer?”

Jared shook his head. “I’m okay, thanks.” He settled down next to Charlie, careful not to jostle the man. “Mind if I turn on the light?” It was a sunny day out, but not much light made it through the trees outside the house.

“Go ahead,” Charlie said.

Jared leaned over and switched on the lamp next to the sofa. When he turned back to his friend, he had to swallow. Hard. His friend looked even worse now that he could see him clearly. Charlie’s skin was yellow and paper-thin. Jared could see the veins running through his friend’s arms. He sniffed, unable to stop himself. His newly heightened sense of smell told him his friend’s immune system was shot, too. Jared wasn’t surprised by the hint of infection he tasted on the back of his tongue. “Jesus, Charlie,” Jared breathed.

“That bad, eh? Yeah, I figured.” Charlie let himself settle down into the cushions even more. “I don’t have much time left. Maybe a couple days. I haven’t been able to keep anything down this week except water.”

“You didn’t have to answer the door, you idiot. I would’ve just come inside,” Jared said.

“I needed to get up anyway. The longer I sit here the more my ass hurts.” Charlie smiled. It nearly broke Jared’s heart. “But I’ll tell you my whole story in a minute. You’ve gotta tell me what the hell is up with you.”

“What do you mean?” Jared frowned. Could Charlie sense the bonding somehow?

“You’re glowing, dude,” Charlie said, weirdly. Jared sent him a look but didn’t say anything, and Charlie chuckled. “Remember, I still got some of that ‘Path shit in my veins. I lost most of it, but I still have a touch of empathy. A little telepathy. You’re fucking glowing silver.”

Jared shook his head. “Even if you didn’t have that crap in you, I bet you could tell.” He grinned. “I’m bonded.” There was a moment of silence while Jared waited for Charlie to absorb what he’d just said.

“Whoa. I was not expecting you to tell me that.” Charlie’s eyebrows lifted. “Who is she?”

“Yeah, about that—” Jared pinched the bridge of his nose then sighed. “
Their
names are Tessa and Parker. They’re amazing.” Far off in the corner of his mind, he could sense them—their concern, their love. If he concentrated, he could tell Parker was at work. He could even see through Parker’s eyes to the construction site. He shifted his attention to Tessa. She was back in her house, cleaning up the mess. He sent them a quick mental kiss.

“Two people? You’re bonded to a man and a woman? Damn.” Charlie looked dumbfounded. “How does that even work?” He leered at Jared.

“I am not telling you about my sex life, so don’t even ask.” Charlie made a crude gesture, and Jared laughed then abruptly sobered. “I didn’t expect you to take that so well.”

“Yeah, well, after the shit I’ve seen in people’s heads, hearing that you’ve got two people to look out for you instead of just one makes me feel better, not worse.” Charlie’s face sobered abruptly.

“What the fuck happened? Really?” Jared asked, ready to hear the whole, sordid tale. What was so big that it was worth Charlie’s life? “You told me a lot on the phone. What was so dangerous you needed me to drive out here? Not that I wouldn’t have come anyway.”

Charlie sighed. “I found out why people are bonding, all of a sudden. Where it came from.”

Jared stared at his friend. “What?”

“It’s not natural. It’s a man-made thing, Jared.”

“Are you serious?” Jared asked his friend. He couldn’t believe it. “The scientists said it’s just some weird, spontaneous mutation.”

Charlie picked at his jeans. “Well, it is. Sort of. But it didn’t start out that way.”

Jared frowned, not liking the implications of Charlie’s assertion. “What did you find out?”

“Well, after I discovered I’d been dosed with this shit—and didn’t that just fuck up my vacation, let me tell you—I came back, wanting to know how it happened. Why it happened. I figured out pretty quick it was in the food. The Jell-O.” He snorted. “My love of the fucking red Jell-O was my downfall.”

Jared felt the anger inside him grow. “No, it wasn’t. It was the people who spiked the food, hoping to create super-soldiers or something. Not your love of Jell-O, for fuck’s sake.” He hated to see his friend blaming himself. He was a casualty, an innocent bystander.

“Yeah, whatever,” Charlie said. He slumped further down into the couch. “Anyway, I tracked it down to the fucking Jell-O through judicious eating. It took a few weeks to figure it out. By then, I’d already started pursuing some leads into getting my hands on a pure supply.”

“How did you do that? You couldn’t have your aides help you.”

“Nah, I don’t trust Griffith. Or Bogen. I asked a friend at the local diner. One of the waiters. He’s a good guy, but I know he deals on the side because there’s no way he can make enough to support his family on a waiter’s income. He got me the stuff and slipped it to me in the bathroom. It was easy.”

“It shouldn’t have been that easy.” Jared’s neck began to hurt. And his hands. He curled his fingers into fists to prevent the claws from popping out. Charlie would surely notice that.

“I know, but that’s the way the world is. Anyway, I didn’t have anything to lose. I dosed myself and went to work. You wouldn’t believe the fucking shit I found out. After my first class in the morning, I’ve got three free periods this semester. Sometimes I go for walks, so no one thought anything of it when I began to wander around a couple weeks ago. They figured I got tired of walking outside and let me have access to almost everything at the school. What threat is a blind man, right?” He laughed bitterly. Jared touched his hand briefly, trying to comfort his old friend.

Charlie continued. “So, it wasn’t too hard to wander around a few of the offices in the administration building. I stopped in one of the lounges and took a nap.”

“You did
not
take a nap,” Jared asserted.

“Nope.” Charlie grinned. “I was ‘eavesdropping.’” He used air-quotes to emphasize his derision. “I sat myself down and opened up my newfound ‘Path telepathy. I’d read that most people get a heightened sense of empathy, so I don’t know why it was different for me. Maybe the damage to my brain did it. I don’t know. All I know is that I could tiptoe around people’s minds, and they had no idea I was there.”

Jared nodded, knowing exactly what Charlie meant. “I can do that with my bond-mates but no one else.”

“Well, on the third day of my drug-induced super-power bender, I took my pretend nap. Imagine my surprise to find the head honcho of the military in a meeting with the Commandant himself.”

“Wait, what? Are you telling me the Secretary of Defense was in the office?” Jared asked, incredulous.

“The former Secretary of Defense, actually. Guess what they were talking about?”

“‘Path?” Jared risked a guess. He felt Tessa and Jared suddenly zooming in on the conversation. He opened his mind, inviting them in with a mental caress.

“Close, but no cigar for you. They were talking about this weird vaccine initiative they’d begun a little over fifteen years ago. Seems they’d hired some hotshot chemist who claimed she could help increase soldier’s stamina. So they gave her a pile of money and a lab, and she developed this nasal vaccine, which did nothing. No powers, no stamina, nada. The military was not amused, and they fired her ass after a couple of years.”

Jared sat there, trying not to move. He could feel Tessa’s shock. She was sure the woman was her mother. “Do you know the name of the chemist?”

Charlie nodded. “Yup. Her name was Cynthia Brown.” That was Tessa’s mom. Jared forced himself to remain perfectly still as Charlie continued talking. “I don’t know what happened to her after that, but I know that they think the vaccine wasn’t inert, like they’d originally supposed. Shortly after they discontinued the experiments, all the soldiers dosed came down with a cold. No one thought anything of it until ten years later when all the bonding began. One of the chemist’s assistants was still researching what happened, in his spare time. He couldn’t believe nothing happened, so he kept testing and testing. Eventually he figured out that the drug they’d originally administered mutated into a man-made virus that caused cold symptoms. It spread everywhere. Worldwide. Millions of people infected.”

Jared frowned. “There aren’t enough bonded people to account for those kinds of numbers.”

Charlie shook his head. “True. Most people got a cold and got better. Some people were infected but didn’t get sick. Those are the ones whose DNA was changed. Most of the soldiers who received the original nasal spray are dead.”

“I don’t get it,” Jared said. He didn’t know enough about genetics to understand why or how a virus could affect the DNA of people who were already alive. Wasn’t DNA passed down to offspring? How could DNA change without reproduction?

“I didn’t at first either, but apparently, there’s this portion of our DNA researchers call ‘junk DNA.’ They weren’t sure what it was for, but recent research has shown that this part of our genetic code changes with the environment. Someone gets sick, the DNA mutates to protect against it. I don’t completely understand it, but it has something to do with our DNA recognizing a virus that attacked humans thousands of years ago. It changed our DNA, sort of like a memory of the virus, which allows our immune system to recognize a similar strain of disease now and mutate to develop antibodies.”

Jared sighed, trying to make sense of what his friend was saying. “That sounds like science fiction.”

“I know. It’s weird shit. You don’t have to understand it. It’s what I found out next that’s the real kicker. The drug caused colds in some people and nothing in others. It remained inert in everyone’s system until recently when sunspot activity picked up. I don’t know if you know this, but our sun has been unusually quiet for about a decade.” Charlie looked at Jared in question. Jared shook his head.

“Well, once the sunspot activity picked up, more radiation hit the planet, just enough to wake up the infected people’s DNA and give them a predisposition to bonding. You probably have tattoos on your wrists, right?”

“Yeah.” Jared rubbed his fingers over his marks. He reached out to his bond-mates, hoping they were getting all this information. He sensed Parker had moved to his construction trailer so he could listen in. Tessa was in her kitchen, sipping tea.

“Well, when people bond, the skin pigments align somehow. There’s some sort of freaky DNA sharing that goes on. I don’t really understand the whole thing myself. But that’s why bonded couples have matching tattoos.”

Jared stared at his friend, not sure he should believe this. “This is insane. What you’re telling me is that the military, through some top-secret drug experimentation over a decade ago, caused the bonding phenomenon that’s happening across the entire world.” If he didn’t know better, he would think Charlie was making this stuff up.

“I know, I know, it sounds crazy. But haven’t you noticed that the majority of the bonding is happening in the US? That’s because it started here. More people were infected here.”

Jared flexed his fingers, trying to calm down. He was angry, confused, and horrified in equal amounts. He took a deep breath. No. The rage was definitely winning out. He felt claws prick his skin from the inside. Shit. Weird that you couldn’t tell he had them at all until they were there, ready to come out. He clenched his fists harder, listening as Charlie continued.

“Anyway, the day I listened in, the former SecDef wanted to know where Cynthia Brown had gone. The Commandant had no idea. Then he brought up the new program, how they were dosing the soldiers with ‘Path.”

Jared stood up and began pacing. Charlie unerringly followed his friend’s movements, despite his blindness. “What the hell does ‘Path have to do with that old program?”

“That’s what the SecDef wanted to know, too. The Commandant said Brown’s old assistant, Mark Johnson, came up with the idea of dosing soldiers with very weak forms of ‘Path. He thought that was a way to continue the original work he began with Brown. And it worked. The soldiers were stronger, more intuitive. Their field exercises are off the charts.”

Jared stopped and stared at his friend. “Didn’t Johnson know that ‘Path comes from the blood of bonded people?”

Charlie nodded. “He knows. He knows that Brown probably came up with the drug, too, since the Commandant told the SecDef that. Neither of them cared.”