“Maddie. Come here. Are you drunk?”
What had he just asked? Everything was static.
“What? Drunk? No. So tired.”
Muffled voices in the background had her trying to force herself to focus. Stupid witches. Think Maddie. Think. When in doubt just repeat shit you’ve heard, right? She giggled. Okay, maybe she was drunk.
“Donnie? Are you alone?” Her words might have had a bit of a slur. She’d curse at her mom later.
“What? No. Why would I be alone to come face to face with a monster? I’m here to save you.”
Save? No.
“No. No. I don’t need to be saved.”
Unwelcome hands wrapped around her and started to pull her up.
“I beg to differ. The son of a bitch alien has done something to you.”
The words took a few seconds to process.
“No. Well, maybe. In bed.” She started to giggle again. Fuck. What had her mother done?
So tired.
“Don’t drop me, okay?” was all she said as her legs buckled.
Surprisingly, he didn’t. Maybe she should have given Donnie more credit.
That elicited a snort from her. Ha, ladylike.
It didn’t matter. Donnie still couldn’t hold a candle to Kal.
“Ha. Candle.”
Donnie gripped her harder and although it felt wrong, Maddie couldn’t stop laughing.
“What? What candle,” Donnie asked.
Maddie stopped laughing and couldn’t hold her head up. No more jokes. She needed to save the energy she had.
“Someone help, already,” said Donnie.
Maddie heard another person, someone she didn’t know.
“What the hell is wrong with her? Is she even going to be able to help us?”
A few grunts and groans before Maddie felt someone else lifting her feet. Kal wouldn’t need help. Her eyelids felt so heavy. Maybe she should just sleep. Yes, sleep. Her mother said not to use her magic, anyway. Although, right now she wasn’t even sure her mother had left any magic at all.
Her feet lifted, someone grabbed her butt, and then she was sitting. That was rude. Leaning over, she sort of sat, sort of leaned. What the hell?
Oh, right. This is what it felt like to be shoved into a car. Wait. No. This was bad.
“Maddie? What is wrong with you? We can’t help if we don’t know.”
Who was ‘we’? Donnie had a we?
“Sh-murph.”
“What? Smurf? What the hell was that.”
Taking some borrowed energy from God knows where, she raised her arm and scratched her nose. It itched.
“What is wrong with you?“
“I had an Ishhh.”
“What?“
How did Donnie not get that she had an itch? Sighing, she let her head rest against whatever sat next to her. Probably Donnie. Probably not the vibe she needed to set.
“Let’s go. Whatever he did to her needs to wear off. Head to the compound and we can figure it out later. He’s not going to leave without her. Let’s get her safe and then set the trap.”
Maddie couldn’t make her lips work. She couldn’t tell him to fuck off or even to just sit further away. So she listened.
“She better be able to help. You know that the doctor is expecting us to retrieve these guys. If we have to use your girlfriend as bait, so be it.”
Maddie’s head shifted as the shoulder she’d leaned against moved.
“She isn’t bait. I told you he will come for her. You should see the way he was controlling her.”
Maddie thought of Kal. Maybe he could hear her from here. She didn’t really understand any of it, but she didn’t want him to come for her. She didn’t want him to get caught.
“Look at her. That thing did more than just a mind game on her,” said a voice that wasn’t Donnie.
“Those are the fucking tattoos I mentioned. Although I didn’t know they glowed like this until last night. What the fuck is he? Is she infected? Can you fix her?”
Gravel kicked up outside of what she now knew was a car. The engine revved.
“Fuck. I don’t know. Let’s report back. They’ll want to see this,” said the same new voice.
Maddie sat somewhere between sleep and awake. Maybe this was all a bad dream; then again if Kal wasn’t a dream this probably wasn’t a nightmare.
No one else said anything until the car stopped.
Maddie let everything happen to her like she was observing, not that she had any other choice.
“I’ll get her. Just don’t. No one’s allowed to touch her without my permission. That’s the agreement and for now that’s how it will be,” said Donnie.
“Whatever Reyes. You better not fuck this up. You have no idea how this alien could catapult our sector within the Illuminati. You have no idea how much money is riding on this research.”
Maddie wanted to ask Donnie who was talking. Reyes was his last name, but why was it used in a sentence with Illuminati. Wait, were they real? She’d heard of them, crazy conspiracy theorists that supposedly had their people in every government in the world. But they weren’t real. Where was she?
Maddie tried to talk, instead she was sure it sounded like a drunken stupor. Or maybe nothing came out. Who knows? Exhaustion pulled at her eyelids. It would be so easy to give in.
Using her mind, she called out to Kal.
Don’t come for me.
That should work. She hoped.
Forcing her eyes open, Maddie winced. The heat of the sun licked at her skin, bringing her some comfort.
Daylight. That had to mean they weren’t too far or at least too many hours hadn’t passed.
“Get her inside, Reyes. They’ll want an update.”
That was it. Maddie decided once she was strong again, she’d be turning that asshole into a cockroach. He sounded like one.
Footfalls crunched against whatever covered the ground, dirt she supposed. A few seconds ticked by before she was jostled in Donnie’s arms. At least it was more graceful than her initial kidnapping. He was going to get it, just as soon as she could magic up something, anything. Maddie shivered as the temperature changed to the cool of air conditioning.
“Take her down below. Put her in a cell for observation,” said another voice. Maddie couldn’t move her head enough to see who
