Page 64 of From the Noblest Motives
"Blaze wondered the same things." Damien reached across and fastened Shudder's seatbelt, which could've been condescending from anyone else, but he was so obviously distracted. "I don't know."
"No. Right. It's not as if you could've sat down with Cyril and asked him,Hey, Dad, how does this mind-control thing work, anyway?I just would like to have a brain scrubbing now, please."
"I will never call him that," Damien said with a coating of ice over his soft voice.
"No one could blame you. It's…" Shudder was going to say it was too much like rape, but that would only upset Damien more. "I don't understand how anyone does things like that."
For a moment, Damien stared into the distance, but he hadn't shut down. His gears were spinning. "He thinks he's fighting the right battles. That he has to do these things for change to come. For such a brilliant man, it's incredibly obtuse, isn't it? But in his eyes, his motives are only the best ones. As Wilde said,Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives. I'm not excusing. It's still horrible. But I see how he justifies it."
Shudder leaned in to rest his head on Damien's shoulder—an apology for pulling away so abruptly—and there it was again, that sense of security that came with being surrounded by Damien's scent. Sweat and dust, yes, but stillDamien.
"We'll figure it out, Dami," he murmured into the side of Damien's neck. "I won't be useless forever."
Damien stroked the side of Shudder's face. "It's not about being useful. If someone's only thinking about how to use you, there's no space left to love you."
He spun away and was gone before Shudder could answer.
"Awake five minutes and you managed to upset him already?" Blaze slid into the driver's seat, shaking his head.
"I'm not entirely sure. He was trying to tell me I'm not useless, but I don't think he was talking about me. Or uselessness at all."
"Yeah, it's hard to peel the layers sometimes." Blaze shot him a smirk. "Takes practice." The smirk vanished as fast as Damien had. "And youareuseless right now, but you know what? You're allowed to be for a while after the hell you crawled through."
"I don't want to hurt your feelings, but you both have very odd ways of sayingI love you."
"Putting words in my mouth, McKenzie."
Maybe, but you didn't deny it. Shudder snuggled back in his seat as someone thumped twice on the partition to the cargo compartment, and Blaze set off northwest again. It was the little things that made having a nonconsensual passenger in his brain more bearable.
Shudder knewhours had passed by how stiff his neck was when Blaze shook him awake again. "Wazzat?"
"Shuds, come on. We're almost there. I need you aware and cognizant in case shit happens."
Rubbing his eyes since they refused to focus, Shudder forced himself to sit forward and stretch his back. "Are we expecting shit to happen?"
Blaze snorted. "It's us. We are happening-of-shit magnets."
"You think someone will be chasing after her."
"I'm hoping Doc Parma manages togetto us. No idea what she found or why she thought she had to run, but it had to be bad."
Shudder powered his window down and breathed deep. The trees had changed from tulip poplar and black walnut to dark evergreens murmuring to each other in the soft evening wind. Theairhad changed, still summer warm but less close and sticky.North. I like north.
City lights winked through the tree branches on Shudder's side of the truck. "Racine?"
"Got it in one. But we're not going near the city." Blaze drummed his hands on the steering wheel. Some habits never died. "Looks like we're meeting in the middle of treefuck nowhere."
Shudder had some things to say about trees fucking or possibly fucking trees, but something caught his eye. "There's a light up ahead."
"It's the right coordinates, but we don't know what we're walking into."
Blaze was already gliding on maglev only, the truck as silent as it could be on a narrow, heavily wooded trail. A fern-dotted clearing opened up ahead of them, and Blaze stopped short of it, pulling a handgun from one of his thigh holsters.
The window between driver's and cargo compartments slid open, and Damien peered through. "Is this it?"
"Should be. But stay put, damn it. All of you. Neither of you are armed. If she's been followed, if the site's been compromised—" Blaze shook his head. "Just let me check things out first. You get in the driver's seat, Twitch. In case you need to get them out of here."
"But you—"
