Burn(29)

“Is that why those people are after you?” he asked. “Did you rob a bank?”

“No,” Malcolm said. “It’s all mine, free and clear.”

They got back on the road, going as fast as the snowstorm would let them. Malcolm felt some anxiety at their pace and that they were going in the wrong direction, but an unmanned border crossing was clearly high priority after being chased out of the campground. Besides, he was finding it hard to feel anxious about much in the presence of Nelson.

“So why are they after you?” Nelson asked carefully that second day, driving and eating the sandwich Malcolm had bought. “You never said.”

Malcolm sighed. “I haven’t done anything wrong, if that’s what you’re asking. People don’t really like Believers. Officials especially. We rarely even leave our Cell compounds anymore.”

“Then why did you say you didn’t want to kill them?” He glanced over. “Was that for real?”

“I wish it wasn’t,” Malcolm said, quietly. “I have to be somewhere. Soon. It’s more important than I could even say. They would have stopped me. Tried to.”

“You don’t mean . . .” Nelson ate the last bite of his sandwich, trying to look nonchalant. “You don’t mean actually kill them, though.”

Malcolm watched him, watched his handsome profile, watched the way he cleaned his lips with thumb and pinkie. The question of attraction had barely come up in his training. It was a religious mission, not unlike priesthood or a nunnery. Relationships were never meant to enter it. That had been drummed into Malcolm since he was a boy. He had been surrounded by women, too, almost exclusively, his entire life, and though he knew about this feeling, there had almost literally been no opportunity to even entertain it, much less act on it.

He barely knew Nelson. Nelson knew him even less. But the connection had been so instant, so strong, that he already worried about disappointing him.

“Not actually, no,” he lied, and his heart leapt at Nelson’s disguised relief.

That night, lying together again, Nelson had said, “I never thought this was possible. I never thought this would ever happen.”

Malcolm heard him crying, but Nelson wouldn’t let him turn around to comfort him. He kept talking, though. “I always thought it would have to be rough. And violent. And full of shame.”

Malcolm didn’t ask why he thought that, but he could have taken some guesses.

“But this,” Nelson said. “Like this.” He choked up again. “I just don’t believe it.”

With that, he had finally allowed Malcolm to hold him. Malcolm pushed away all thoughts of the mission, of the very short time he had, of how he would—without fail—have to leave Nelson behind.

But not that night. And not this one either. Not just yet.

“And down over your feet,” Nelson said, moving his hand across Malcolm’s toes. Malcolm giggled involuntarily.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Turn over.”

Malcolm did, somewhat clumsily in the limited space, and felt Nelson’s fingers moving down his bare back, along his spine, between his buttocks.

Oh, Mitera Thea, he thought, praying before he could even stop himself, but why shouldn’t he? If it was all ordained? If it had all been seen and decided long before he was born? Thank you, he prayed, thank you for sending me this. And why wouldn’t she? Was she not benevolent? Was she not the holiest Mitera Thea there had ever been? It was a secret for now, but when the rest of the Cells found out she had not only convinced a dragon to fly him to the start of his journey but actually incinerate two men so the mission wasn’t lost, well, no Mitera Thea had achieved anything close to this in two hundred years. She truly, truly had the power of dragon blood in her, enough to change the world. Why wouldn’t she be able to do this for him, her humble servant, if she chose? Thank you, Mitera Thea, thank you.

“You’re really committed then, I guess?” Nelson said, still looking, his voice unsure.

“Does it bother you?”

“My experiences with religion aren’t good.”

“We think sexuality is healthy.” He turned his head back around to look at Nelson. “That it’s the dragon part of us.”

Nelson grinned, shyly. Malcolm found his heart thumping just at the sight of it.

“I like that,” Nelson said. “The dragon part of us.”

He smiled again, and that was it, Malcolm’s heart was lost.

“Goddammit,” Agent Dernovich said, not for the first time.

“I would ask you to watch your language,” Agent Woolf said, also not for the first time.

“I am watching it. I’m watching myself swear because we had him. We had the little fucker and now—”

That word, apparently, was too much for Agent Woolf, who got out of the car with her notebook and headed back to her hotel room. The last hotel room they were probably going to get out of this trip. The APB—or whatever equivalent the Canadians used—had found no truck, no boys, no sign of what Agent Dernovich was now completely convinced was their would-be assassin.

“How can they not have found him?” he’d asked, a hundred times in the last seventy-two hours.

“It’s a big place,” she’d replied. “Lots of roads to cover. And they’re not happy we’re here.”