by Christi Snow
The next thing she knew they were flying again, although this time Marcus carried her wrapped in a blanket like a baby. Another shiver wracked her body as she reached up to touch his face where the muscle in his jaw clenched. “You really are a beautiful man.”
He looked down at her in surprise. “Is that why you keep collapsing at my feet?” He frowned at her and she wondered what a genuine smile from him would look like. She got the feeling that didn’t happen too often.
“Sorry about that. The last few days have been a bit much for my body to handle, I think.”
He gazed down at her and she could see the concern and something that looked like fear in his eyes. “Malcolm’s meeting me at the house and he’ll help you feel better.”
“Okay, just don’t leave me. Promise…”
“I promise. I won’t leave your side.”
She nodded and let oblivion flow over her, knowing that Marcus would take care of her.
* * *
Lori surfaced through sludge while she tried to regain consciousness. The fact she even realized that little detail didn’t bode well for what was happening to her. She knew it would be bad when she woke up and that made her want to burrow further into her unconscious, but safe, mind. But they weren’t going to allow her that luxury.
“Come on. Wake up.” She could feel a hand slapping her cheeks. When that didn’t convince her to open her eyes, the cruel hand grasped her naked breast.
Her eyes flew open in alarm, but immediately squinted shut again from the bright light in the room. Again the hand pressed at her breast. They kept her naked during these experiments to humiliate her and so she couldn’t escape.
From the other side of the room came a low threatening growl of the panther. Oh no, they’d brought William in for this. She hated it whenever they brought in any of the Others to be tortured to convince her to go along with the testing, but William hovered on the verge of breaking. He’d been here longer than most of them—eleven years—and was already more than a little wild because of his existence as an animal shifter. Now he lived in danger of becoming completely feral. They all worried for his sanity.
She tried to reach out to him telepathically, a connection they’d managed to keep hidden from their captors, but her mental push just caused him to growl more.
As an animal shifter, William could shift at will except when captive. If his hands or paws were restrained, he had to stay in the form he appeared in when they restrained him. It was a weird quirk of nature that the scientists and doctors in the lab took full advantage of.
Her eyes flew open again and she glared with contempt at the man smiling gleefully in front of her. A short man with a wide girth and balding head, Dr. Henderson was one of the most sadistic of all their doctors who conducted the experiments. He got a special twisted kick out of causing them pain.
She looked down at the instruments in his hand. The forceps.
“It’s nice of you to join us, Ms. Renshaw.” His smile emanated pure evil.
Her gaze flew to William again. While in panther form, they took pleasure in removing his claws by force to punish her when she didn’t cooperate. He found it extremely painful and left him incredibly vulnerable when in animal form. They’d even gone so far as bringing other big cats in to attack him after pulling out his claws. It had been horrific and William still carried the scars from it.
“I’m sorry to say that it’s never a pleasure to join you, Dr. Henderson.”
He backhanded her and pain ricocheted through her head. She really should know better than to provoke him by now, shouldn’t she?
Her brain scrambled trying to find a way out of this. She could just cooperate and would, if it had been any other doctor. But Dr. Henderson wouldn’t be satisfied until he hurt one or both of them, regardless of whether she cooperated or not. He needed that from these sessions.
She reached out again to William’s mind. “William, listen to me. I’m going to remove your restraints, but I need you to be ready because he’s going to grab for the tranquilizer gun. I’ll try to get to it first, but am not sure I’ll have any power left after freeing you. Protect yourself, William. He’s going to hurt you.”
Manipulating her power from this distance was difficult. If she had physical contact with the object she found it much easier, but she had a connection with William and he touched the cuffs so she could work through that connection. She turned her attention back to Dr. Henderson. He wanted her to melt down a piece of metal on the table. Fairly easy stuff for her, but they didn’t know that.
She looked at the object like she’d begun the process on it, but then switched her attention to the cuffs around William’s paws. It took a great deal of work to manipulate all four cuffs at the same time, but she had to so William would have the benefit of the surprise to get to Dr. Henderson. Finally, she felt the metal of the cuffs begin to give and she worked to twist them open without hurting William.
She could feel him along their mental bond, tracking her progress. They didn’t sedate him because the sick bastards wanted him to feel the full pain from their torture, so he’d be ready to go as soon as she had him free. Finally, the last resistance from the metal let go and she yelled to William along their mental link. He didn’t need the push as he leapt through the air at Dr. Henderson.
The doctor never stood a chance as the animal attacked him in full fury. As William ripped into the doctor’s throat, she couldn’t even feel sad about the loss of life. Dr. Henderson was one of those people who didn’t deserve to be part of the human race.
While William dispatched him, she tried to work the metal of her own restraints, but her efforts on William’s cuffs had drained all her energy. Dr. Henderson’s screams finally ceased and William stood in front of her, naked. He’d shifted back to human form to help her. “William, you need to go. Get out while you can.”
He looked up at her with pained hope in his crystal blue eyes. “I can’t leave you like this.” His voice sounded deep and guttural after being in animal form for so long.
“Yes, you can. I’m too drained to be of any use to you. I would just hold you back. You need to go. Run. This may be your only chance. You know that. Get out now and maybe someday you can come back and save us all.”
His tortured eyes broke her heart. It went against everything in his nature to leave her here. As a shifter, he had pack animal instincts and she had become part of his pack. But he’d been here long enough to realize this may be the only choice he ever had.
Slowly he nodded, reached forward and kissed her forehead. “I’ll be back. I promise.”
She nodded as she watched him slide back into his panther form and slink out of the room.
She sent a message to Savannah. “William’s escaping. He’s in panther form. Anything you can do to help would be great.”
“Already on it.” As their mental guru, Savannah usually knew what happened in their heads whether any of them—including Lori—wanted it or not. She could read and manipulate minds, and her ability was the most powerful of the group. Their captors had her on really strong drugs to control her, but they couldn’t completely suppress her, especially when she wanted something badly enough. They all really wanted William to escape. Individually they each needed the hope of the possibility of escape. As a group they knew it was the only way William would survive.
Secure in the knowledge that she’d done everything she could, she finally succumbed to the sleep pulling at her and passed out.
* * *
Marcus worried as Lori thrashed around on the bed. The fever had her fully in its grips and she had the hallucinations to go along with it. At least he hoped they were hallucinations. She’d been mumbling about panthers and a doctor. Then she’d screamed at people named William and Savannah. Her strong emotions and terror over the events occurring within her head pummeled at him.
Lying down on the bed beside her, he drew her fevered body into his arms, sending soothing emotions along their mental pathway. S
he seemed to calm when he held her.
Her fever had raged for over twenty-four hours now and Malcolm didn’t know how else to treat her. It worried Marcus. He could feel her energy lagging, especially after the impact of one of these nightmares.
He rubbed up and down her back and she snuggled into his warmth. “Marcus,” she mumbled incoherently into his chest and it made his heart clench. She continued to sense his presence.
“I’m here, sweetheart. I’m not going anywhere.”
He was so tired. He’d been up the entire time since she’d passed out at Bethany’s house the day before. Now he felt the lure of sleep pulling at him, too.
The next thing he knew, he stood in a cold sterile room. It reminded him of doctor’s visits from his childhood before the Veil. Looking around the room, it had hard tile floors, cinderblock walls painted a light grey, and several pieces of large medical equipment. As he searched around the room, he spotted Lori and rushed over to her. “Lori?”
She looked up at him in surprise. “Marcus? What are you doing in my dream?”
He looked around the room again. “Your dream? This is what you dream about?”
She gave a bitter laugh. “Not really, no, this is the stuff of nightmares.” She gestured over to a wall he hadn’t noticed before, a wall filled with bars. They looked into several small cages holding people.
“I don’t understand. What’s going on?”
She looked at him with curiosity. “We’re dream walking. Or at least I was. I’m not sure how you managed to tag along. Probably part of those telepathic skills you’re so proficient at performing. So, you didn’t mean to end up here?”
“No, I was lying with you on the bed. You’re sick.”
“Ah, that explains why I seem to be stuck here.”
“You don’t seem to be too concerned about it.”
She shrugged. “I’m not, because I’m not really here. Unfortunately, they are.” Her tear-filled eyes looked back at the cages.
“This is real? Where is this place? What’s going on? Who are those people?” He gazed in horror at the people locked in the cages.
“They’re my family, but in the ES they’re considered to be Others and are therefore extremely dangerous to the country.”
The bitter sarcasm in her voice bothered him. She cared for these people and they were being hurt. His stomach clenched as he began to get an idea of exactly why nightmares plagued her. Anger rose. Who would do something this atrocious?
“Is it dangerous for us to be here?” he asked her, concern for her foremost in his mind.
“No, no one can sense that we’re here except for maybe Savannah. In fact, she’s probably the one who pulled me here so I would know what happened.” She gestured to a beautiful redhead with long cork-screw curls, singing a light, Gaelic-sounding song while rocking back and forth with her eyes closed.
“What is she doing?”
Lori walked along the row of cages to stand in front of the one holding a seriously wounded naked man. He bled profusely from several wounds on his body. His eyes were open, his face scarred with ragged lines down one side of it, but Marcus feared it may already be too late for him. His eyes were totally blank and completely devoid of any emotion.
Tears overflowed onto Lori’s cheeks and she moved as if to reach out to the man. “She’s trying to calm William. Damn, they caught him again. They’re going to kill him soon if I don’t figure out a way to get them out of here.”
“Where is ‘here’?”
“This served as my home for the last six years. Isn’t it cozy? They call it BET-labs. The Biological and Experimental Technology Laboratory, but that’s just a fancy way of saying torture chamber.” Her eyes got hard and her jaw clenched. “Let me introduce you to the worst the ES has to offer. But be warned—these are seriously dangerous specimens here. You already met Savannah and William.” She gestured to another cage holding another beautiful redhead also rocking with her eyes closed. “This is Shar. She’s Savannah’s sister. Her crime…she turns into a bird, a hawk.” She gestured toward his wings. “You should be able to appreciate the injustice of that one. Right now she’s shoring up Savannah, trying to help with William.”
She walked along the cages to stand before one holding another man, who appeared to be sleeping. “This is Tim. He can teleport, so they keep him pretty heavily drugged all the time. They can’t run the risk of him teleporting out and escaping, although he probably learned his lesson the last time he tried. After they caught him, he spent four days straight receiving electroshock therapy after they’d broken several bones in his body.”
She looked over her shoulder at Marcus like she simply told him a nice little story, but this was a horror story. “Have you ever been electrocuted after having a broken bone?”
“No.” He couldn’t say anything else in the face of her pain. His stomach clenched.
“But you’ve had a broken bone, right?”
He nodded.
“Well, then you can appreciate how incredibly painful it is to have your muscles seize around that bone over and over again with no warning. Thousands of volts of electricity running throughout your entire body along with how much the broken bone already hurts.”
She walked back over to where Savannah and William were. Nothing much had changed there since they’d come in.
They continued to rock as he asked, “What can they do?”
“William is a panther—animal shifter like Shar. Savannah’s abilities fall entirely in the mind. She’s better at telepathy than even you all are and she can also use those abilities to manipulate minds. Right now, she’s working to convince William that he’s anywhere but here. Unfortunately, he hasn’t been anywhere but here in eleven years so it’s getting harder and harder to pull him back from the edge.”
“Jesus, eleven years?” Marcus looked at the poor damaged man.
Suddenly Savannah stopped rocking and her brilliant blue eyes flew open. She looked directly at him. “Warrior, you need to help her save him.”
The sudden shock pushed Marcus out of the dream and back into his physical body in his home among the trees. Marcus opened his eyes to find himself still on the bed with Lori curled up in his arms. The heat continued to emanate from her. His hold on her tightened as he considered what he’d just witnessed. Damn, had that been real? He’d never known anyone who could dream walk before.
He brushed the hair off her forehead and thought about what he’d learned. Was it real or was it just a dream? And if it was real, could he ignore the plight of those poor people especially knowing Lori had been one of them for six years?
Regardless, he needed to let the others know. He sent a mental call out to Malcolm and Bethany. “Something’s happened. Can you come to my home right away?”
Bethany responded quickly. “Aaron and I will be there in about fifteen minutes.”
“I’m coming. Has she taken a turn for the worse?” Malcolm sounded worried.
“No, there’s no change with Lori. She’s still pretty out of it and her fever hasn’t broken yet, but there’s been another type of development.”
“Okay, I’m less than a minute away.”
Marcus untangled himself from Lori’s embrace. She whimpered.
After six years without anyone in his life like this, this tiny show of need for him felt amazing. He’d missed that connection with someone else. He leaned down and kissed her cheek. “Shh, I’ll be right downstairs. I need to talk to Malcolm and Bethany about something, but I’ll be back as soon as they’re gone.” She settled and he quietly left the room.
He arrived at the main level of the house at the same time as Malcolm. Malcolm eyed him critically as he came into the house. “Have you gotten any sleep?”
Marcus nodded. “That’s actually why you’re here. Do you know anything about dream walking?”
“I’ve read some about it when we all developed telepathy, but I’ve never known anyone to actually do it. Why?”
“I’m
pretty sure I did it this afternoon with Lori.”
“Seriously?”
He nodded. “I’ll explain more once Bethany and Aaron are here. I don’t want to go through it twice.”
“Good enough. In the meantime, how about I go check our patient?”
Like Marcus suspected, there’d been no change in Lori’s physical state. She still ran a high fever as her body worked to heal itself. She wasn’t in a coma, just a deep sleep. Malcolm was worried, but didn’t know of anything else he could do to help her.
When Bethany and Aaron arrived, they headed back downstairs. After they were all settled, Marcus explained what happened. “I know Lori claims to not have strong telepathic talents, but she’s obviously connected telepathically with a group of people in the ES that she calls the Others.”
Bethany immediately looked alarmed so he raised his hand to calm her down. “Don’t overreact yet. Listen to what happened first. This afternoon, I lay down with Lori and fell asleep. She’s been having awful nightmares and talks in her sleep and just generally isn’t getting any rest because she gets so worked up and frightened. When I lay with her, it settles her some. But this afternoon, I dozed off, too. While asleep, I went with her on a dream walk. She seemed surprised that I was there, too.”
“You do seem to have a strong telepathic bond with her,” Bethany noted.
He nodded, although he still didn’t understand why they were so connected. “We were at a medical facility, some sort of lab, where these Others are being held prisoner, in fucking cages like animals. She considers them her family and says she remained a prisoner there for six years. There were four people in the room being held prisoner. They all have special skills—animal shifters, telepathy, teleportation, and mental manipulation. It sounds like they’re all there for experimentation purposes. Lori called it torture and from what I could see, I’d agree. There’s a panther shifter who’s practically dead.
“I don’t think Lori initiated the dream walk. That seemed to come from a female named Savannah. Lori said she’s their mental guru. This Savannah knew I was there and instructed me that I need to help Lori to save the panther shifter.”
