by Susan Stoker
He had the key in the deadbolt when he heard raised voices from inside the apartment. He unbolted the door, and was slowly and carefully pushing the door open when he heard Casey scream.
And it wasn’t a normal sound. Not in the slightest. It was high-pitched and panicked.
Beatle’s blood went cold.
Without thought, he shoved the door open and it slammed against the wall behind it. He was inside the apartment with his gun drawn before he’d even thought about what he was doing.
He strode into the small apartment, expecting to see Casey being held at gunpoint or otherwise being assaulted, but what met his eyes was hard to comprehend.
There were two young women, he assumed they were Jaylyn and Kristina, sitting stock still on the couch. Their hands were resting in fists on their knees and they were staring straight ahead. An older woman with long brown hair was standing against the wall, looking at him with a satisfied smirk on her face.
And Casey. God.
She was on her hands and knees, frantically slapping at her arms. And the inhuman sounds coming out of her mouth were heartbreaking and horrifying at the same time.
Ghost and Blade moved to either side of the couch and held their guns on the older woman while Beatle went straight to Casey. He reached for her, but as soon as he did, she looked up, saw him, and screamed even louder. She was absolutely terrified. Of him.
Beatle’s attention went from Casey, who was writhing on the floor, to the woman against the wall. She was smiling…and actually laughing.
“You bitch,” he bit out. “What did you do to her?”
“I really only wanted her relaxed and mellow, but I wasn’t sure how much to dose her with. The blotter paper I used when I first got here didn’t seem to be working, so I gave her more. I guess I misjudged though, because this was not the result I’d anticipated. But I have to admit, seeing the high-and-mighty Doctor Casey Shea on a bad trip is fucking priceless.”
Ghost reached the woman before Blade could. He grabbed her arms and wrenched them behind her back. “What’d you give her?”
“Fuck you!” she replied.
Ghost wrenched her arms higher and Marie screeched in pain.
“I asked what you gave her. If you think I’m fucking around, you’re insane. You see any cops here, bitch? No. It’s just us. And right now, I’m thinking my friend, Beatle, really, really wants a chance to make you talk.”
She blanched, and Beatle didn’t feel in the least bit bad that Ghost had threatened her. They wouldn’t hurt her, of course, but she didn’t know that.
“Just a little LSD, jeez, relax. People take it all the time.”
Casey moaned and scooted closer to the wall on the other side of the room. She was holding her hands out in front of her, staring at them and whimpering.
Marie continued. “She handled that hole in the ground so well, I thought she’d be fine with the drugs. All she had to do was tell me what she was thinking in that hole. How she’d realized the water was there for her and what made her fight to live. Is that too much to ask?”
Beatle divided his time between Casey and the doctor. She wasn’t talking to Ghost anymore, she was rambling more to herself than anyone else.
“I can still finish my research. She’ll come down, then she’ll tell me what I need to know so I can write my conclusion. The paper’s not done without it.”
“What paper?” Blade asked. He hadn’t lowered his gun, and the anger on his face worried Beatle.
“My paper! My research. The Effects of Terror on Kidnapping Victims; Why Some Completely Break and Others Get Stronger. I’m going to be famous—but I need that conclusion!”
“Oh my God. You had my sister kidnapped for a fucking human experiment?” Blade asked, and Beatle saw his hand tighten on the gun.
“Blade, put it down,” Ghost ordered, having also seen that Blade was at the edge of his rope.
“She was doing an experiment, and tortured my sister in order to get data,” Blade bit out.
“I know. And she’s going to pay for it. Put. Down. The. Weapon,” Ghost enunciated carefully.
“They wouldn’t approve me! I had to do it! It was easy to organize. She and the others were down there all by themselves. If she’d just died in that hole, it would’ve been so easy!” Marie cried.
Suddenly, Casey lunged for her brother.
Because no one was expecting it, all of them distracted by the doctor’s mutterings, Casey surprised him. She grabbed for the knife he had in a holster at his hip and managed to get it out before he could stop her.
She retreated back to the edge of the room, holding the knife in front of her, her eyes wild as her head swung from one person to another.
“Get her out of here,” Ghost said, shoving the doctor at Chase, who’d been standing guard on the other side of the sofa.
“Noooo!” the woman wailed. “I need more information! Jaylyn, why were you such a crybaby? Kristina, what were you feeling when you hit Astrid when she tried to take the food from you? I have to know! Waaaaaait!”
As Chase dragged the babbling woman out of the room, everyone was surprised when the young women on the couch began to answer the questions that had been posed to them. They were talking over each other, but seemed to have no idea. In fact, they didn’t even seem to notice the men who were in the room either.
“What’s wrong with them?” Blade asked.
“Hypnotized,” Ghost said succinctly. “And we have no idea what triggers that she-bitch might’ve placed in them while they were under, or how to bring them out of it.”
“Casey was seeing a psychologist. Said he tried to put her under once but it didn’t work. He might be able to help. His name is Eddie Martin,” Beatle told his team leader.
“We’ll call him,” Ghost said. “They’re okay where they are for now. First, we need to calm your girlfriend down. She’s making me really nervous with that knife.”
Beatle had already turned his attention back to Casey.
She was using the knife to stab at the air. She was obviously seeing something they couldn’t. It was as horrifying as it was heartbreaking.
“Casey,” he said softly, taking a step closer to her. “You’ve been drugged. You’re just reacting badly to whatever you were given. Drop the knife and we’ll get you some help. You’re safe now. The doctor is gone.”
Instead of calming her down, his words seemed to agitate her more and because he was worried, he got a little too close to her. She managed to nick his arm with the knife before he stepped back out of her reach.
Beatle didn’t want to make any sudden moves or do anything that would terrorize the woman who meant the world to him any more than she already was. He could easily disarm her—he’d faced down much meaner and bigger foes—but he didn’t want to scare the shit out of her. This was Casey. His Casey.
He made the decision to simply stand right where he was and watch over her until she either came down off the trip or she calmed—but she blew that decision out of the water when she turned to the window and tried to dive right through it.
* * *
Casey huddled on the far side of the room, away from the giant bugs. They were all standing on two legs, but had faces of insects. The bullet ant had been taken away by a giant snake thing, but there were two scorpions still sitting on the couch, staring at her and hissing. She’d attacked one of the friendlier looking creatures—he only had drool coming out of his mouth rather than acid—and had managed to grab his weapon.
The ants were still crawling on her arms, but more bothersome at the moment were the flying cockroaches. They were hissing at her and trying to eat her eyeballs. They were her pets, and they were screaming her name as they flew around her head. The colors in the room were swirling constantly now. Blacks, browns, reds.
A part of her knew that there weren’t any such things as walking, talking bugs, but Casey couldn’t control her terror that they’d get ahold of her and eat her alive.
One of th
e half human, half bugs was talking to her now. She could see his words swirling around his head as he spoke, but none of them made any sense. He took a step toward her with one of his tentacles stretched out.
As if.
She heard the bug men hissing and chattering behind her, so she turned and thrust the knife at them. It felt as if she got one, so she continued to blindly stab at the creatures with her weapon. The cockroaches were laughing now, hissing happily, but somehow staying out of the way of her knife.
Knowing she had only one chance to get out alive and away from the bugs who wanted to eat her, Casey dropped the knife, happy to see for some reason that made the giant insects stop advancing toward her. Words were filling the room now, making it hard for her to breathe. They were sucking all the oxygen from the room. Using it all up. She had to get out.
Without warning, so the bug men couldn’t stop her, Casey dove for the window. She laughed when she realized that it wasn’t made of glass, but water instead. She almost made it away from the monster bugs, but at the last second, something caught her legs. As she hung dangling over the water, so close to escape, Casey gasped.
Below her was a giant Hercules beetle. His horns opened and closed obscenely as he reached tentacles up toward her. Casey squirmed as hard as she could, but the bug men in the room had a tight hold on her.
She began to scream and thrash as the bullet ants that had been crawling on her before decided to start biting her again. Her hands throbbed with pain from hitting the water so hard.
Even as she screamed, she watched the Hercules beetle get smaller and smaller as the bug men reeled her back into their lair.
* * *
“Jesus Christ!” Ghost swore as he struggled to hold on to one of Casey’s legs. “Blade, call nine-one-one! Tell them your sister has been drugged against her will and she’s experiencing a mother of a bad trip. She needs to be sedated.”
“Already done, dammit!” Blade yelled back.
Beatle blocked everything out that was happening around him, all his concentration on Casey. He’d never seen anything as terrifying as what was happening to the woman he loved. He had no idea what was going on in her head, but she definitely wasn’t seeing him or her apartment.
She’d slashed out at him with the knife, and when he got too close trying to comfort her, had actually cut his arm. The slice hurt like a mother but he ignored it, as her next step was to dive headfirst out the fucking window. And she’d almost made it, but he’d caught her feet at the last second.
He heard Truck yelling from under the window that he was there and could catch her if she fell, but it didn’t make him feel any better. The window was made with some sort of safety glass, so she hadn’t been sliced to ribbons, thank God. It had spider-webbed upon impact, and probably would’ve held, if the frame around the window hadn’t given way. Fletch had obviously made sure the apartment was safe for Annie, and any other child who might stay or play there. But the frame was no match for an adult’s weight.
He and Ghost managed to haul Casey back inside the window, but she was still fighting them as if her life depended on it. Nothing he said was getting through.
Beatle had never been as scared as he was right this moment. He and Ghost manhandled Casey away from the gaping window, and then Beatle sat on the floor with her in his lap. Her back to him, his arms around her like a straightjacket. She couldn’t move except to writhe and jerk against him.
Blade and Ghost held his body still so he could keep control of the crazed Casey.
The room quickly filled with the rest of the team, and Beatle vaguely heard Ghost ordering Fletch to keep Emily and Annie in the safe room. They didn’t need to see Casey like this.
All they could do was watch Casey remain lost in the nightmare of her mind as they waited for the ambulance.
Chapter Twenty-Three
It took another six hours for the worst of Casey’s bad trip to finally wane. The doctor said it had taken about an hour for the drug to start working, and she probably would’ve been okay with the initial dose, but the additional drug-coated marble in her hand, combined with the stressful situation, had triggered the bad trip.
And it had been one hell of a trip.
Casey had screamed for hours about giant bugs coming for her. She constantly saw ants on her body that weren’t there, and she had absolutely no idea who anyone was around her. After she was sedated, she was less violent, but she’d still had to be held down for her own safety, and that of everyone around her.
It was the most heartbreaking thing Beatle had ever witnessed. He hadn’t ever really thought one way or another about recreational drugs. He’d smoked some pot in high school, but nothing more than that.
Seeing Casey go through what she had made him vow right then and there that he’d never, ever put any kind of recreational drug in his body again. Ever. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to take another drink of alcohol in the near future either.
He’d been allowed to stay in Casey’s room at the hospital, and now that her vitals all seemed normal and she’d been sleeping for a few hours, he felt confident that the drug had finally run its course through her body.
Beatle eased onto the mattress next to her and gathered her carefully into his arms. The doctor had stitched up the wound on his arm. He’d also gotten Casey fixed up with an IV in the last hour, now that she wasn’t constantly trying to pull it out. Beatle hadn’t showered or eaten since they’d arrived at the hospital, but the last thing he was thinking about was himself.
The second he put his arms around Casey, she murmured something he couldn’t understand and Beatle held his breath, hoping like hell she wasn’t still under the influence. But instead of pushing him away and ranting about how he had a giant ant’s head, she merely snuggled as close to him as she could get.
The small mattress reminded Beatle of the times they’d slept in the hammock like this back in Costa Rica. Plastered to each other, both their bodies sweaty and dirty.
He kissed her forehead lightly, and as if his lips had touched a magic button, her eyes popped open.
Beatle held her gaze, waiting to see what, if anything, she remembered.
* * *
Casey licked her lips and looked into Beatle’s concerned face. His brow was drawn down and his lips were pressed together in a tight line. She brought her hand up to run her thumb over his brow to smooth away the lines, but was stopped short by the IV in her arm.
She looked at her arm, and a bunch of confusing images burst into her brain. She closed her eyes again.
“Case?”
“Hmmm?” she mumbled.
“Can you open your eyes and say my name?”
Confused as to why he wanted her to say his name, she opened her eyes into slits and looked at him and obediently did as she was told. “Beatle.”
“Fuck.”
That was a weird thing to say. The more she thought, the more awake she became. “What’s going on? Don’t you have to be up for PT by now?” she asked quietly. “What time is it?”
Beatle lifted her chin with a finger and asked, “What do you remember about yesterday?”
It was her turn to furrow her brow. But now that she thought about it, things did seem a bit fuzzy. “Ummm, Annie was playing in her tank?”
“Yeah. Anything else?”
Casey shook her head back and forth. She had a headache and felt kinda floaty.
“Do you remember your friend from Florida coming by the apartment with Jaylyn and Kristina?”
She started to shake her head, but then more random images started to flicker in her brain. Marie sitting in a chair in front of her. Jaylyn and Kristina hugging her. Giant ants and flying cockroaches. It was all so confusing. “Beatle? What’s wrong with me?”
“Shhhhh. Nothing. You’re okay now.”
“Now?”
When he didn’t say anything else, Casey took a deep breath and awkwardly propped herself up on an elbow. “Tell me,” she demanded.
Beat
le didn’t look happy at all, but he acquiesced. “Marie Santos came to the apartment, and you apparently agreed to meet with her and the other girls. She drugged you, and hypnotized Jaylyn and Kristina. You flipped out, she was arrested, and Doctor Martin dealt with your students. Everyone’s okay.”
Well. That was certainly a short and succinct description of what Casey instinctively knew wasn’t as simple as he made it sound. “Everyone’s okay?” she asked, deciding that was the important part.
“Yes.”
“All right then.”
“Sleep. I need to go meet with Ghost and the others, but I’ll be back later to take you home.”
“Umm hmmm.” It was more a random sound than actual words, but Beatle seemed to understand her anyway.
“Love you, Casey Shea. You have no idea how much.”
“Love you too, Beatle.”
She felt him kiss her forehead, and smiled. She loved when he did that. Then she was asleep once more.
* * *
“She really doesn’t remember any of it?” Blade asked Beatle an hour and a half later. All the Deltas were meeting with their commander and going over what had happened.
“Not much. Yet. The doctor says that the higher the intake of the drug, the less memory the person usually has of the incident. She may remember snatches of things here and there, but probably never all of what happened.”
“I hate that fucking bitch,” Truck said under his breath, obviously referring to Doctor Santos. He hadn’t been in the room for most of what happened, but he’d seen the absolute look of terror on Casey’s face as she’d hung above him out the window. “Not once had Casey ever looked at my ugly mug and been scared. Until yesterday. Even in Costa Rica in the fucking jungle, she was never scared of me.”
“If it makes you feel better, she wasn’t seeing you,” Beatle soothed. “From what I could understand in her ramblings, she thought you were a Hercules beetle.”
“Now those are ugly fuckers,” Hollywood said with a shiver. “We came across one in the jungle and we didn’t have Casey there to reassure us they were harmless. I thought I was gonna shit my pants.”
