why he felt so out of it. “I don’t remember what happened. Where are we? How did I get here?”
Melanie shook her head. “You helped Seth save us.”
“I did?”
Bastien nodded.
Cliff could call forth no memory of that.
Melanie’s eyes bore a faint glow as she blinked back tears and rubbed his arm. “Are you okay?”
He glanced down. Moonlight provided enough illumination for him to see the numerous holes, tears, and burn marks that marred his clothing. Though blood streaked his arms, nothing hurt. How long had he been unconscious? “Yeah.” It must have been quite a while if his wounds had healed. “My ears feel funny.” And everything else just felt… off. Sluggish. His mind foggy or something.
Had they given him too much sedative?
Bastien and Melanie exchanged a concerned look.
Gently clasping Cliff’s chin, Melanie turned his head from one side to the other, then ran her hands along his limbs. Her brow furrowed. “I see blood, but I don’t see any wounds.”
Across the way, Seth frowned. “His wounds are all healed?”
Melanie nodded. “There isn’t a scratch on him.”
Then he had been wounded.
He hadn’t chased someone into the forest and drained him, had he?
If so, he hoped like hell it was one of the bad guys… whoever the bad guys were. He still had no idea what had happened.
The sound of a vehicle approaching distracted him.
A Humvee sped into view, kicking up dust on the dirt road. Tires locking, it drifted to a halt inches from the concrete slab upon which Seth and the rest of the Immortal Guardians stood.
Chris Reordon stumbled out, eyes wide, hair mussed. He took a few steps toward the others, stopped, turned in a circle, then met Seth’s gaze. “Okay. I don’t know how the fuck I’m going to cover this up.”
Everyone but Cliff burst into laughter.
Chris strode over to Seth and wrapped him in a bear hug. “Glad to see you made it.”
Seth clapped him on the back. “Glad to see you did, too. Did the other Immortal Guardians and network soldiers all make it out safely?”
“Yeah. They’re guarding the prisoners we took a couple of miles away. I didn’t know what to expect after that big-ass explosion, so I told them to keep their distance and watch the flock while I came to see what had happened.”
Cliff stared. Prisoners? Explosion? He didn’t remember any of that.
“There was an explosion?” a tall woman hovering close to Seth asked.
“Well, yeah,” Chris said as if he couldn’t believe she’d asked. “I don’t know how you could’ve missed it. Honestly, I expected all of you to be toast when I came back. It was that fucking big. And loud. And bright as hell. It stopped just short of creating a mushroom cloud.”
What?
Again Cliff glanced around. Maybe that explained it. His difficulty remembering. His ears feeling weird. The confusion riding him. Maybe he had been caught in the blast.
He glanced down.
And maybe he wasn’t the only one. Maybe he found one of the bad guys—he really hoped it was a bad guy—in the forest and drained him, then passed out on his way back to…
He looked around.
Wherever the hell they were.
“Don’t worry about the cleanup,” Seth told Reordon. “Have Henderson get his crew back to network headquarters here in Texas and…”
Cliff missed whatever the Immortal Guardians leader said after that.
They were in Texas? Why? He drew a complete blank when he tried again to remember, something that always filled him with anxiety after having a psychotic break.
Chris nodded. “I’m on it.”
Seth caught his arm as Chris turned away. “Would you take Cliff with you and have Dr. Machen examine him once you’re home?”
“Sure.” Chris gestured to Cliff as he strode toward his vehicle. “Hop in.”
The odd lethargy lingering, Cliff followed him and stepped up into the Humvee.
“You okay?” Chris asked as he wheeled the vehicle around.
“Yeah,” Cliff said slowly. “I think so.”
“Okay. Let’s get you back to network headquarters.”
“Emma?”
Emma frowned, cursing the tentative female voice that drew her back to consciousness. That way lay pain and despair and grief so deep she feared she might drown in it. She didn’t want to go there.
“Emma?” A hand touched her shoulder and gave it a light shake. “I’m sorry to wake you, but Kate from Mr. Reordon’s office is calling.”
She could hear it now, the dinky incoming-call alert her phone issued. “Let it go to voice mail,” she mumbled. If she didn’t answer it, she wouldn’t have to hear Kate confirm Cliff’s death and could pretend there was still some tiny smidgeon