Malice In Wonderland

  "Well, then, apparently you've just shown all your cards." He shook his head and laughed icily but I could see the pain in his eyes. "But I will have the last word as to your point about me wanting to use you against your father. I already told you that I stopped believing you were involved with your father very quickly after I met you." He returned his attention to the road, his shoulders stiff.

  "And yet, you never gave me the benefit of the doubt when it came to my involvement with the Draoidheil import," I threw back at him. "When I told you I was innocent, you wouldn't listen to me! For someone who trusted me, you had a really funny way of showing it."

  He faced me with raging eyes. "Dulcie, I trusted you up until two weeks ago. Since then, the Dulcie I thought I knew so well was nowhere to be found. I concluded that I must have been duped into believing you were innocent. Obviously, once Christina confirmed your involvement with your father, that was enough for me. "

  "But you still could have listened to my side of the story."

  He shook his head as if I were dense and couldn’t understand what he was saying. Then he faced me again, carefully dividing his attention between the road and me. "What did you expect me to think after Christina confirmed that you were absolutely working for your father? I would've been an idiot if I still believed you were innocent."

  I couldn't fault him for that one—especially because Christina hadn't known me from Eve. At the time, she hadn’t known the true reasons for my association with my father. As far as she was concerned, I was just one of my father's people. Well, that is, before she talked to Caressa. At any rate, I knew I couldn’t win this argument, so instead, I turned to the other issues that still bothered me. "That's all fine and good, but before I ever met my father, when you thought I was innocent of all of this, did you ever tell me who my father was? No. And that was when you quote, unquote, loved me!" I couldn't help the shrill sound of my voice.

  "I didn't tell you about Melchior because I didn't want to hurt you," he said earnestly. "I weighed the options and decided it was better for you not to know who and what Melchior was than to know the truth."

  "That's a decision you should have left up to me." I shook my head, anger now freely pouring out of me. "Sometimes you have this God complex thing going on and it pisses the shit out of me!"

  "Please," he said with a frown. "I'm an alpha male; I have to be in this line of work."

  "Alpha male or God complex, they're both just as infuriating," I spat back. "Does it ever occur to you that you don't have the right to make other people’s decisions?"

  "Dulcie, I didn't tell you about your father because I was protecting you," he said in a hollow voice. "I didn't want to upset you. Think about it—if you had known who and what your father was, how would it have affected your life? You would have wondered why your mother came to Splendor in the first place and if it was to escape your father (which it was). I'm sure you would’ve always wondered if all of your successes in life had anything to do with you being Melchior's daughter. Not to mention that it would have shattered any idealistic thoughts you might have entertained as to who your father might be. There was no way I was going to take responsibility for any of that."

  Sometimes Knight was spot on. Sometimes it was difficult to argue with him. "I could have handled it," I grumbled, staring out my window as I frowned. Not wanting to admit defeat, I faced him again. "The point is that it should have been my decision to make, not yours."

  "Just like it should have been my decision to make whether or not you ruined your life by teaming up with your father because of me?" he demanded. "How the hell do you think that makes me feel? Knowing that all the shit you ultimately put yourself through was because of me?" He shook his head and sighed. "We could have figured it out together, Dulcie. You never should have taken all of this on by yourself."

  I didn't respond, suddenly too tired to think. "What's done is done," I said softly, rubbing my temples as I closed my eyes, fighting the exhaustion that was trying to claim me. I just had too much to think about—The Resistance, what my future held, when I could see my friends again. I really didn't want to add the shriveled remains of my relationship with Knight to the mix. The mix was already dangerously close to precipitating the onset of a complete mental breakdown.

  "Yes, what's done is done," Knight continued, his voice much softer now. "But that isn't to say we can't pick up the pieces, Dulcie." He reached over, squeezing my knee reassuringly. "At the end of the day, all we really have is each other, right?"

  "I don't know." I glanced down at his large hand that seemed to engulf my knee and felt numb. I lifted his hand and returned it to him, pulling myself closer to the passenger door, suddenly needing more space.

  "Dulce," he started.

  "You said some really shitty things to me, Knight." Those shitty things included some incredibly rude comments about my friend, Bram. Due to an unfortunate string of events, Knight managed to convince himself that Bram and I were ... intimately involved. And he wasn’t discreet about his feelings on the subject. If I remember correctly, he even asked me if I called out his name while Bram and I were having sex! That was followed by a few other, just as colorful, statements and/or accusations.

  Knight nodded guiltily and sighed again. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have let my temper get the best of me." Then he stopped himself short as though something suddenly occurred to him. "Then the Rolex wasn't a gift from Bram?"

  I shook my head, keeping my lips tightly sealed as I tried to restrain my temper. "It was a portal compass given to me by Melchior."

  "Shit," he said. Then, without any warning, he bashed his fist into the steering wheel, which beeped angrily at the assault. "I was jealous, Dulcie," he said once he seemed to calm down. "I was convinced you were playing me before you moved on to Bram. It even crossed my mind that you were with Bram all along." As he said the words, his eyes started to light up with a familiar glow, a glow which said I was his. I felt something inside me blossoming receptively, a yearning deep down in my belly. I swallowed down the sudden desire to feel his lips all over me and felt like slapping myself.

  "I was never with Bram," I managed.

  Knight nodded, but his expression was unreadable, almost like he hadn't heard me, or like he was reliving his memories. "When I went to No Regrets and saw you leaving his office, he leaned down to kiss you."

  "That's just Bram. He always pulls those stunts just to piss me off."

  He nodded again, but that same empty expression said the memory still enraged him. "When I watched him kiss you, I just couldn't take it anymore," he said, slowing down. He exited the highway onto "Pineville Street," which appeared to be just as deserted as the highway. With a strange glance at me, he suddenly stopped the SUV in the middle of the road, turning his entire enormous body toward me. "I've regretted all the shitty things I said to you since I said them. I was overcome by jealousy and I couldn't control myself. I wanted to lash out and hurt you because the thought of you and Bram devastated me." He swallowed. "The truth is that thinking about you with any other man makes me sick to my stomach."

  And that was when something occurred to me, a thought that left me cold. "Knight, did you ... did you ... do anything with anyone because of what happened between us?" I was thinking in particular of Angela, the bartender at No Regrets, Bram's club. Angela had it pretty bad for Knight; and they’d even dated before things got hot and heavy between Knight and me.

  Knight shook his head and laughed, but there wasn't anything happy about the sound. "I thought about it, and to be honest with you, I wanted to. The idea of trying to forget you with another woman definitely appealed to me." Then he shook his head. "But I couldn't do it. At the time, I was in too dark a place to even contemplate being with another woman."

  I was relieved, incredibly relieved, but my feelings were just as jumbled as before. Everything in my head was in a tailspin, a whirlwind of thoughts, emotions, and feelings that I couldn't try to begin to figure out. I just needed the proverb
ial dust to settle so I could sort out exactly how I felt about Knight.

  "What are you thinking?" Knight asked.

  I shrugged, not quite sure what I was thinking. One moment, I was mad as hell; and the next, I wanted nothing more than to feel his lips on mine. Even worse, I ached to feel him inside me. But then just as quickly, I was livid again. I wasn't sure how to make sense of anything or where I stood. "Things need to be low key for a while," I said after an uncomfortable silence. "I don't know what to think or how I'm feeling. I've been through a shitload lately."

  Knight nodded and stepped on the gas again, driving down Pineville Street, which, true to its name, was canopied by massive Norfolk pine trees.

  "Well, I'll be here if you need me," he said quietly. "And no matter what happens between us, I will never doubt you again."

  ###

  For the next ten minutes, we didn't say another word. The silence was nerve-racking and uncomfortable, but I didn't think there was anything left to be said. Since Knight didn't even say boo, I figured he must have agreed. Left with nothing but the deafening silence, I was forced back onto the battlefield raging in my head, a place resembling a war zone.

  Now what would happen between Knight and me? Was this really it? Was it really over between us?

  They were questions I couldn't answer although I tried, berating myself for even making the attempt. Why? Because I firmly decided (in the last, oh, five minutes or so) that my relationship or lack thereof with Knight would be relegated, yet again, to the back burner. It was more important for me to focus entirely on The Resistance and creating a plan to defeat my father.

  Once I firmly entrenched my feelings for Knight in the quagmire known as "I'll visit this later," relief washed over me. Well, that is, until I realized my future was rocky, if not bleak. Luckily, the drive to Compound One wasn't a long one. I wasn't sure how much of my own pessimism and melancholy I could tolerate at this point. When we reached what I guessed must be Compound One (the heavy gates, topped with barbed wire, and the two guards wielding the latest in automatic weapons were the first clues), I wasted no time abandoning Knight's company, in serious need of my own space.

  "Thanks for the ride," I said, jumping down from the Denali with a quick but awkward smile. I just wasn't good at this stuff.

  He just nodded, his face still an unreadable mask. I closed the door behind me and stepped back, watching him drive down the road from whence we'd just come. Before reaching the gate guard, however, he took a quick right and disappeared behind the crest of a small hill. I didn’t bother wondering where he was going or what he was up to. Now, more than ever before, I needed “me” time, I needed to get back in touch with myself and return to the Dulcie I used to be.

  Compound One looked similar to Compound Three with the barbed wire fencing surrounding the place and a nondescript, three-story white building, which loomed before me. As I glanced around, I realized it was the only building in sight. The only difference I could see between the two compounds was that Compound One didn't appear to house a prison, and maybe it wasn't quite as large, well at first glance anyway. I watched as people milled around, dressed in ordinary attire, and appearing, for all intents and purposes, to be ... waiting. No one was especially busy—I watched two weres stroll by, talking about checking around the perimeter. In the distance, six people were playing flag football, while right beside me, three women lazily read beneath a tree. That was when it occurred to me that Compound One was nothing more than a holding facility for anyone who supported The Resistance, and, as such, required protection.

  A few minutes after Knight departed, I watched an unmarked, grey bus pull up in front of the building. As the doors opened, I recognized the people who were waiting in line with me before Knight took on the role of chauffer. Quillan was the last to exit the bus. As he emerged, he glanced around himself, a worried expression on his face. As soon as we made eye contact, however, the worry dropped from his eyes, replaced with a wide smile.

  "Everything good?" he asked once we were in earshot of each other.

  I nodded, although as far as "everything" was concerned, it now lived in a zip code far, far away from "good."

  "I guess we register in the front office," someone said from behind us. We both turned to face a squatty elf who had just stepped off the bus. He started walking toward the three-story building, so we followed. I must have taken only three steps before I recognized Sam and Dia walking through the front doors. Trey was just behind them. It felt like centuries passed while I waited for Sam to make eye contact with me. Her eyes rested on Quill first; and with a confused expression, her eyes widened and her attention moved to me. Within a split second, that smile I loved so well lit up her entire face. Dia, who was beside her, was apparently in mid-sentence when she was struck silent as soon as she recognized me. A broad, beaming smile lit up her face as well. Trey was the only one who was still going on about something, focusing his attention on his feet.

  Seconds later, I was ambushed.

  "Dulcie!" Sam and Dia screamed at the same time as they closed the gap between us. Then I was suffocated by hugs. I pulled myself away from them and took a big breath of air, desperately needing it. Before I could say anything, Sam and Trey took one look at Quill and frowned.

  "What?" Sam started as Trey's mouth simply dropped open in astonishment. Or maybe he just couldn't breathe through his nose. Trey was the quintessential mouth-breather.

  "It's okay, he's on our side," I said quickly, offering Quill an encouraging smile. "He joined The Resistance."

  "Sam and Trey, it's good to see you again," Quill said. He seemed uncomfortable as he cleared his throat. Sam and Trey didn't respond, so Quill turned to face Dia, extending his hand to her. "I haven't had the privilege of making your acquaintance."

  Dia took Quill's hand and smiled up at him, her eyes sparkling as she raked him up and down appreciatively. "Honey, I think the privilege is all mine." Then she shook her head in appreciation. "There aren't a whole lotta lookers in this damned place, so you are like a ray of sunshine on a very cloudy day."

  I laughed as Quill smiled in response. Dia whistled at him, staring at him wolfishly again before the smile fell right off her face and was replaced with a frown.

  "So now that we've gotten past the fact that you missed your callin' as a Chippendale dancer, you better have a damned good reason as to why you're standin' next to my girl, Dulce, and why she's goin' on about you joinin' The Resistance." Then she fastened her hands on her hips and did something with her neck that only Dia could do, something which resembled a snake preparing to strike. Dia did "diva" very well. She was tall and beautiful with chocolate skin and an infectious smile. She was also one of my closest friends.

  Quillan laughed, but seeing her expression, the laugh soon died on his lips. For as wonderful a person as Dia was, you never wanted to get on her bad side. Yep, when her temper bubbled to the surface, it could be legendary. Quill cleared his throat and alternated his gaze between Dia, Sam, and Trey as he explained.

  "Dulcie thought I deserved a second chance, so she fought for me," he started. "And in true Dulcie O'Neil form, she was able to get what she wanted." Then he offered me a quick wink, to which I just shook my head.

  "From here on out, Quill's history is just that," I announced. "He's made the decision to start over and that's good enough for me. I hope it will be good enough for all of you too."

  Sam nodded and hesitated only momentarily before reaching out and hugging Quill. "It's good enough for me too, big guy." She pulled away from him, her eyes twinkling. "It's good to have you back." I was sure Sam was relieved to know Quill was on our side because he was also her boss once upon a time and she used to call him her friend as much as I had.

  "It's good to be back," Quill answered before facing Trey and extending his hand.

  "What up?" Trey started, jutting out his chin as he tried to act the part of a baddie, but ended up just looking ridiculous. Truth be told, Trey looked like a chubb
y ten-year-old, grubby and always grimy to the nth degree. Even though there was stubble in various patches around his face (he obviously wasn't adept at shaving), he still managed to maintain an air of Peter Panism, and never quite grew up.

  "Good to see you again, Trey," Quill said, a small smile pulling at the ends of his lips.

  Trey was quiet for a second or two and I wondered how he'd respond. Then a genuine smile broke across his plump face. "You too, Quill."

  Dia took my arm and the five of us started toward the building, ostensibly so Quill and I could check in.

  "So, girl, you gotta let me in on somethin'," Dia started as I eyed her, curious to hear her question. "How do you know so many hotties?" I just laughed as she continued. "You an' me need to hang out some more so I can score some of your leftovers."

  I faced her and beamed, feeling somehow rejuvenated. I glanced around myself, at my small group of friends and felt so incredibly lucky. They had become my family. My mother died when I was young; and other than my poor excuse for a father, I didn't have any other family. But I had to say that this adopted family was more than enough for me. I felt like I'd just come home again.

  FOUR

  "I've been taking care of your dog, Dulce," Trey said as the five of us sat around a table in a coffee house on base. "Base" was what everyone called this place, and it was pretty fitting because that's exactly what it looked like. Complete with soldiers patrolling back and forth, armed guards at every entrance and barbed wire fences running the perimeter, it was like a military encampment and then some. I was wrong about the registration building being the only building on site—it was merely the biggest. Just beyond the crest of a small hill, stood a crowded cafeteria, a Laundromat, and even a bowling alley. There was also a crudely constructed schoolhouse and an even more primitive fire station.