Through the black fog of terror, I barely registered another pair of arms coming across my midsection. The hard chest plates of the first one pressed into my back as he grabbed me from behind.
I finally got a target for my feet now, furiously kicking him in the shins and stomping my heels into his boots. The men holding my arms let go of me, and I immediately smashed my fists against his forearms at my front.
Unsurprisingly, he remained unfazed by all of it. If I had a sliver of sanity left, I would realize that I was just hurting myself on the hard bracers of his armour without causing him any harm whatsoever.
As it was, though, I had no common sense left. After who knew how much time being locked up alone with not a single word spoken to me by anyone, I finally lost it. Who could blame me? It was a miracle that I’d lasted as long as I had.
Blinded by panic, I didn’t even care if they killed me at that moment. At least it would be the end of this and they wouldn’t be able to force me to do anything for them anymore.
Then, the desperate rage—the hopeless terror—stopped abruptly. The feverish panic that consumed me from inside out cooled. The sensation of calm numbness was so sudden that I looked around, half expecting to see a discarded syringe with some kind of a fast-acting drug somewhere, although I was positive I didn’t feel a needle sting for this explanation to be valid.
The side effect of my newly found calmness was that I no longer worried about anything, not even about why and how it had happened. I stopped thrashing, and the arms holding me released me a moment later.
HANDLER
He scanned the Source for emotions as he entered the cell. She was curled on the mattress with her back pressed into the wall, as if she wanted to push herself into it and disappear.
Her hair was matted, tangled, and of the same dirty-grey as the surrounding walls. She glanced up, her eyes wild and unhinged. He couldn’t tell what colour her irises were because of how wide her pupils had dilated. Her eyes appeared black, empty, with a wild, glossy shine.
He reached inside her mind, and the powerful hurricane of her emotions assaulted him. The impact felt almost physical, forcing him to brace himself by digging the heels of his boots into the concrete floor, as if to avoid being knocked over.
Horror, anger, and hate raged in a black pool of panic.
The realization came to him with unusual clarity—she couldn’t go through a Feeding in this state. She shouldn’t even be presented to the Council like this or she’d be drained immediately.
Unless . . .
If he were to take her negative emotions, she might be able to function long enough to survive the Feeding. Except that if the Council ever found out about what he did, he’d be punished severely—taking from Sources directly was strictly forbidden to anyone outside of the Council.
She was his very first Source. He had spent three months in training to become her Handler, and he was about to lose her on his first day on the job.
He knew everything he was allowed to know about her from her file.
She was taken just over a year ago and had been used for Feedings almost daily. During the past several weeks, she had become increasingly more aggressive.
He also knew something that was not in the file. The average length of useful time for a Source was about a year at best, and it appeared her time was up. The Council gave her to him in one final attempt to extend her useful life. However, nobody would blame him if it didn’t happen.
He stared at her again.
Her body shaking, she was too thin and filthy. Sources were provided with highly nutritious food and with water to bathe. However, whether or not she actually ate and bathed was entirely up to her. By the looks of her, she hadn’t done either in a while.
Well familiar with pangs of hunger, he wondered why anyone would decline food when it was readily available.
He searched for the light of her life force and found it enclosed in the dark shell of her current emotions. Deep in the churning mud of them, it was still burning bright and pure—just a tiny sliver of beauty.
It seemed so painfully fragile.
A long-forgotten urge to protect rose inside him—a single emotion of his own. It had been a long time since he felt anything other than pain and hunger, and he frowned behind the mask of his helmet at the foreign invasion of a feeling in his chest.
He stepped forward and reached for her. The gesture was not intended to intimidate. Neither was he trying to comfort her in any way. He just wanted to get a reaction, any reaction, out of her.
Was she still lucid?
Suddenly, she shrieked and dashed past him with a speed and purpose he did not expect from her. Startled but not worried, he knew the Janitors by the door would stop her.
He heard a loud growl and turned around to see that they had indeed caught her and now held her by the arms as she struggled in their grip like a trapped animal. The frustrated growl was coming out of her throat, turning into a deafening screech a second later, mixed with incoherent yelling and cursing.
He didn’t need to scan her feelings to see that she was suffering. His concern about the Council melted into the background, as an overwhelming feeling of pity joined the protective instinct inside him.
Even if temporarily, he had to stop her sufferings and ease her emotional pain. He wanted to help her to survive the night.
Stepping forward, he folded his arms around her middle, pressing her back to his chest, then motioned to the Janitors to let her go.
Her kicks and punches landed on his legs and arms immediately, but he did not care. She had no strength to hurt him.
To help her, he needed to touch her skin-to-skin. Unfortunately, his clothes were designed specifically to prevent any direct contact between a Handler and a Source, as touching skin-to-skin was strictly forbidden.
Trying to concentrate through the thick fog of hunger clouding his mind, he moved one of his hands under her arm, simultaneously turning her away from the Janitors’ view, lest they guessed what he was up to and reported him.
He dragged his hand out of the glove a little, exposing a narrow strip of his skin, and pressed the outside of his wrist directly to the bare skin of her underarm while she continued to thrash desperately.
For a moment, he was afraid he had forgotten how to do it. It had been so long since he’d touched anyone like that. So long that he wasn’t even sure if it had ever happened at all. He closed his eyes, reached into the toxic pit of her dark emotions, and drank . . .
His starving demonic essence opened up hungrily, ready to swallow any nourishment, even if it was poison. He drank greedily, reeling from the false sense of fullness, knowing it would not truly sate him that it would only hurt him in the end.
Yet he took everything. The acrid hate, the foul anger, and the putrid-tasting fear. He stopped only when he reached the sweet fragrance of her life essence, without touching it.
The toxic cocktail of her emotions filled his mind, clamped his brain in a vise, and twisted his insides. Bile hit the back of his throat instantly, and he was glad it had been days since he last consumed any human food. Otherwise, he would have vomited it onto the concrete floor of the cell.
His arms around her, he bent over in pain, hoping he could pretend that he was still restraining her while he struggled to remain upright. He needed just a second to let the poison settle a little in order for him to get his bearings. However, he would have to deal with the consequences later and pay the full price for foolishly consuming toxic negative emotions from a human.
She no longer fought in his arms, he noticed belatedly then straightened and released his grip on her.
She stood upright with her back turned to him, her shoulders relaxed. Slowly, she took a long breath in, as if waking from a long sleep then raised her head.
He scanned her emotions carefully, trying to focus through the pounding ache in his head.
Nothing. There was nothing there, just a blank empty space.
Was it enoug
h to go ahead with the Feeding? Would she survive it now?
She didn’t give him much time to consider, as she calmly walked towards the door. He signed to the Janitors to let her pass and followed the required three steps behind her. His stomach twisting in knots, he tried not to stumble and keep his pace steady.
He knew the pain would gradually get worse, reaching unbearable levels by morning before it would finally decrease and dissipate. He just needed to make it through the Feeding.
About the Author
MARINA SIMCOE LIKES to write larger-than-life love stories with characters, who may or may not be entirely human, because she firmly believes that our contemporary world could always use a little bit of the extraordinary.
She has lots of fun exploring how her out-of-this-world characters with their own beliefs, values and aspirations fit into our everyday life.
She lives in Canada with her very own sexy beast, their three little cubs and a cat, who is forever wild at heart.
For more illustrations of all of her books please visit Marina Simcoe Author page on Facebook or www.marinasimcoe.com.
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