“I don’t know who he is, but they treat him like he’s a general or something. Everyone does everything he says. He made them upgrade security. I didn’t know why at the time. He insisted they add fail-safes that would…”
“That would what?”
“That would stop anyone who ran preternaturally fast.”
Lisa stared at him.
“I know. I thought it was nuts, too, until he and one of his hunters brought the vampire here. He made the vamp run through every hallway to test the fail-safes. And Lisa… that thing ran so fast he was just a blur. The fail-safes worked. They tore him up. And the big guy just kept sending him through more and more until he bled out.” He shook his head. “I saw the vampire’s eyes glow blue. I saw its fangs. I watched it draw its last breath, then shrivel up like a mummy until there was nothing left but his clothes and his fucking dental fillings.”
“Brad…”
“I didn’t understand why the big guy—Gershom—wanted those fail-safes in place until tonight. They just brought in a big group of them—vampires. That’s why I was finally able to sneak in and see you. These vampires are so fucking powerful that almost all the soldiers standing guard in this wing have been diverted to the one holding the vampires. Everyone is distracted. Everyone is excited and nervous as hell.”
“Why nervous?” she asked, wanting to believe him. He seemed earnest. But… vampires? Really?
“Because they’re worried more vampires will come and break the new ones out. And it isn’t just vampires. There are two babies being held captive here, or rather toddlers. A red-haired little girl and a dark-haired boy. They were brought in with the vampires. I don’t know what those kids are—they don’t appear to be vampires—but they are not normal children. One of them can get in your head and…”
Lisa glanced down at her belly. “Did they… did they do something to the children to make them that way? Did they do that to my baby? Are you saying I’m carrying a baby like that?”
He quieted. “No.”
Her heart began to pound. “Is it… is my baby a vampire?”
“No.” His fingers tightened around her hands. “Vampires aren’t the only paranormal beings they study here. They also have an alien.”
She swallowed hard as her breathing grew shallow. “An alien?”
“An extraterrestrial.” His gaze dropped to her stomach.
Her pulse skipped as fear plowed through her. “Wh-Why did you do that? Why did you look at the baby when you said that?”
His eyes were tortured when next they met hers. “It isn’t human, Lisa. I read your file. They fertilized your egg with—”
“No.”
“I didn’t want to believe it either. I don’t know how or when they captured the extraterrestrial. But they’ve had it for years.” It. Not him. It. “Your baby is half-human, half—”
“No!” she repeated, shaking her head in denial. “No! You’re making this up!” She would have covered her ears if Brad had let her.
“I’m not. That’s why they’ve kept you in a medically induced coma. They weren’t sure what would happen when they mixed alien and human DNA.” Again he glanced at her stomach. “That’s why it’s growing faster than a normal baby would.”
It. Not him or her, but it.
Hysteria threatened.
“That’s why it’s more active. They’ve been giving you drugs to keep you unconscious while they waited to see how carrying it would affect you… if gestating a human-alien hybrid would change you. But they started to worry about the effect the drug might have on…”
On the baby.
The baby in her belly that was half alien.
Images from sci-fi movies swirled through her head like a tornado, buffeting her and ratcheting up her fear. “What does it look like?” she whispered.
“The alien?”
She nodded.
All hope that Brad was insane and this was all a lie dwindled when tears welled in his eyes. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “I only saw it once,” he admitted in a hushed voice. “I snuck into the observation room that looks down on where they dissect it. Everyone was distracted by the new arrivals, so I went there right before I came here. And…”
“What?” she whispered.
“It’s a monster, Lisa,” he admitted, his voice hoarse. “And I’m scared to death that thing inside you is going to kill you.”
Her whole body began to tremble.
“Look.” He leaned closer until his nose nearly touched hers. “I’m going get you out of here. I need to do it while everyone is distracted, so it’ll be soon. Kelly’s going to help me. She’s my ex. She did a story on battered women and stalking victims last year. And she has connections who can help you disappear. I know you’re scared. I sure as hell am. If these people find out I’m helping you, they’ll kill me.”
“Then why would you risk it?”
“Because I did this to you,” he blurted, his voice full of self-loathing. “Because I helped them find you. After that first interview with you, I was so excited. I hadn’t really expected to find an actual psychic, but there you were, getting almost every damn answer right. I kept going on and on about it.” A tear spilled down one of his cheeks. “Lisa, I’m the reason they chose you.”
Her own eyes filled with moisture. “You didn’t know what they were.”
“I know. But I have to make this right. And I’m going to.” His watch beeped. He glanced at it. “Time’s up. I have to go.” Releasing her hands, he wrapped her in a tight hug. “I’ll come for you as soon as I can.”
He rose and strode to the door. Removing a plastic card from his pocket, he touched it to a tiny metal square beneath the knob. A beep sounded. Brad eased the door open an inch and peered outside.
With a last look back, he eased out into the hallway and shut the door behind him.
She stared at the door, her mind racing.
The baby in her belly began to squirm and kick.
Lisa cringed, her imagination conjuring horrible images of what might be inside her, and burst into tears.
Taelon stared, unseeing, at the bright lights above him.
Something was different. Pain remained a constant companion. The torture continued. But the butchers were distracted. They did not taunt him today. They made no malicious comments. They did not humiliate him. They made no vows to finally elicit a scream.
They did not speak to him at all. Nor did they speak of him, though such did not still their scalpels.
Their merciless eyes practically glowed with anticipation.
Something was going to happen, something they would relish.
“Any day now.”
“Any hour by the looks of her.”
“…pains coming closer together…”
Whatever it was did not involve him. For once.
Some other poor soul then. He knew there were others. More victims. More subjects for these animals’ degenerate experiments.
“…fever rising…”
“…will probably kill her.”
“Who cares? She’s dead either way once we get it out of her.”
Get what out of her? An organ? Her heart?
He hoped they weren’t talking about the woman whose mind he had briefly touched upon. Or the children.
His abhorrence of these Earthlings had trebled when they referenced a large new group of victims and he’d felt the presence of two children, so young they barely spoke.
One—a little girl—had touched his mind briefly. She was crying for her mommy and daddy, whom he suspected were among the new group brought in.
“I’m more interested in the vampires.”
A flurry of excited comments erupted.
Taelon didn’t know what a vampire was. But the butchers were so distracted by them that they were slipping. They were late dosing him with their foul serum, the one that kept him immobile and clouded his mind enough to hinder his gifts.
Perhaps they had forgotten entirely. They seemed to be in a
rush to finish so they could hurry off and inspect their new victims.
His mind began to clear, though blood loss and the severity of his wounds continued to weaken him.
Despair inundated him. Not his. Someone else’s.
Distancing himself from the pain, he focused on the fear and hopelessness and tentatively tested his powers. Since the butchers hadn’t taken the time to attach wires to his head today, the vengeful idiots leaning over him would remain unaware of his search.
There. It was her—the female he’d spoken with telepathically. Somewhere in this building she wept.
A scalpel stole another slice of his flesh.
He focused harder on the Earth woman.
This isn’t real. This isn’t real. This isn’t real, she chanted over and over again, every word rife with fear and denial.
I, too, wish it were not real, he murmured.
The chanting ended abruptly.
There is no need to fear me. I mean you no harm. I am a prisoner here, like you, he reminded her. Pain carried to him over the link he formed with her. Why do you weep?
She hesitated, then confided bleakly, There’s a monster inside me.
Aware of the physical pain that battered her, centering around her stomach, he assumed she meant the butchers were performing one of their favored exploratory surgeries on her. He had lost count of the number of times they had opened him up so they could see if he could regrow an organ, or how this system or that reacted to the poisons with which they injected him. He could never determine the purpose of the latter. Were they testing the poisons on him in an attempt to find a biological weapon to use against his people if they ever came for him? Or were they simply satisfying morbid curiosity?
If it was the former, no poison would protect them. His people didn’t have to set foot on the planet to annihilate every Earthling it supported.
The butchers used no anesthesia during any of their procedures, always hoping he would at last reward them with screams or pleas for mercy. The fact that they appeared to do the same to this woman with the soft, heartbroken voice only infuriated him more.
There is a monster inside me, too, he responded at last. Even now he felt them slice another piece of him somewhere deep inside and fought back a shudder.
She didn’t understand, but he opted not to explain. If they had not yet begun such extensive torture on her, he would not fill her with the fearful anticipation of it.
A shiver shook him. The surgery was weakening him again. He would have to sever his mental link to her to keep her from feeling his agony. I will leave this place soon, he murmured. If his mind continued to clear, he should soon be able to search the butchers’ minds. Once he determined with certainty Amiriska’s fate… her location… he would do what he had come here to do.
How? she asked. Is Brad helping you, too?
Who is Brad?
She hesitated.
He didn’t blame her for not responding, for fearing to trust. Until he had touched upon her mind, he would’ve thought there were no Earthlings worth saving. If you tell me where you are, he vowed, I will come for you once I’ve secured my own freedom.
Another moment passed. I don’t know where I am. They still won’t let me leave my room.
Then I will search for you. If his mind cleared enough for him to read the thoughts and memories of everyone here, he would use those as his guide, find the woman, rescue the children, then leave and find his sister. If I manage to escape with my life, I will find you.
“Hurry up, damn it,” one of the butchers—a female—snapped. “I want to go see the vampires.”
The scalpel slipped. Pain shot through him anew.
If I manage to escape, the woman said softly, I’ll come for you, too. I’ll free you.
Those words and the kindness they bore—a kindness he had not experienced once since he’d been captured—nearly succeeded in doing what the butchers had failed to. They nearly made him weep. It had been so long since anyone had treated him like a person rather than a creature they could maim and study. What is your name?
Lisa. What’s yours?
Taelon.
She whimpered.
What is it?
The pain. It’s getting worse.
For me, too, he admitted. I must go.
Please don’t.
He felt the same reluctance. I will find you, he promised once more.
Wait.
He ended their connection, unwilling to let his pain become hers. Moisture beaded on his forehead. His body began to tremble. He hated betraying even a hint of the pain they caused him.
He closed his eyes and made his muscles go limp, hoping they would forget to dose him again if he appeared to be unconscious. But he remained very aware.
Lisa huddled on her bed.
Hello?
Nothing.
Are you still there?
No answer.
Maybe he had passed out.
She had never spoken with anyone telepathically before. Though it felt odd, she missed him. His deep, gentle voice in her head comforted her and provided a welcome distraction.
He had said he would come for her. Would he really? If Brad failed to free her, could this man, Taelon, succeed in helping her escape?
There is a monster inside me, too, he’d said. She looked down at her bulging belly.
How was that possible? He was a man. According to Brad, she had an actual monster—or human-monster hybrid—in her womb. Men didn’t have wombs. So how could he have a monster inside him?
Pain shot through her abdomen.
Gritting her teeth, she breathed through it. A flurry of movement in her womb increased the pain.
What was in there? What did it look like? She needed to know.
Was it… was it grotesque like the creatures in the Alien movies with Sigourney Weaver?
The idea of something like that gestating in her body made her want to vomit.
She desperately wanted to believe it wasn’t like that. But the look on Brad’s face left her with no hope that the baby would instead resemble Thor or Superman or any of the other humanlike aliens in fiction. Whatever Brad had seen when he’d sought out the alien had horrified him.
Please, let it be like Superman.
Or better yet, please, let this all be some hideous nightmare from which I’ll soon awaken.
The sharp pains lasted another thirty or forty minutes before they began to recede. Lisa slumped back against the pillows.
Her eyes began to burn. Not with tears this time, but from a rising fever.
Rolling out of bed, she waddled into the bathroom and turned the faucet. Cupping her hands beneath it, she bent over the sink and splashed some water on her face.
Ahhhh. The cool liquid felt almost arctic against her hot skin.
She splashed some more, then drew her wet hands down her throat. A shiver raced through her.
Leaving the moisture to air-dry, she straightened and studied her reflection in the mirror.
“You look like hell,” she muttered. She had already been fair-skinned to begin with. But now—after months in a coma in a room with no window—she seemed to have no color at all save for the blotchy pink both the fever and her tears had left on her cheeks. Dark circles beneath her eyes stood out starkly against the pallor.
Her gaze lowered. She had lost weight, too. The little bit she had managed to gain when her finances had improved enough for her to eat three meals a day had vanished, leaving her as lean as the scores of professional actresses who always looked fifteen pounds underweight. Skinny arms bracketed a beach-ball-sized belly. It just looked wrong.
The only part of her that didn’t look pitiful was her hair.
She shook her head. What an enigma. All of her life, her hair had hovered between a light and medium brown—mousy brown, some of the snotty girls in high school had called it—the same shade as her eyes. Thick and straight, it had defied curling irons, hot rollers, and everything else she had tried to add som
e of the pretty waves her friends’ hair bore. Once her mom had gotten sick, Lisa had kept it shoulder length. Slow to grow but easy to care for, her hair had been convenient if nothing else. Just wake up, brush, and go.
But now…
She turned her head to one side, then the other. Now it fell to her waist in luxurious waves so thick they hid the second row of ties on the back of her gown. And despite the cheap shampoo she’d been using since waking up, her hair was as shiny and beautiful as that of a model in a hair-conditioner commercial.
“So weird.” Grabbing the hairbrush the nurse had given her, Lisa started tugging it through the tangled tresses. She’d braid it to keep it out of her face and see if she couldn’t find a thread or something to tie the end with.
Muffled pops reached her ears.
Pausing, she listened.
More followed.
Frowning, she released her hair and left the bathroom. Was that… gunfire?
Wonk! Wonk! Wonk!
Lisa jumped about a foot when an alarm began to blare. Her heart started to race.
Was it Brad? Did they know he’d visited her? Had they caught him coming back for her?
More pops. A lot more pops. That was definitely muffled gunfire.
Surely they wouldn’t need so much just to stop Brad.
Her thoughts went to the deep voice that had spoken to her telepathically.
Was it Taelon? Had he escaped? Would he really come for her if he had? Could he survive all of that gunfire if he did?
Energetic movement in her stomach drew her attention to it. A cramp seized her.
Crying out, she braced a hand on the bed.
Beep.
Her gaze shot to the doorknob as it turned.
The door flew open. Brad raced inside, turned, and slammed it behind him.
“Brad?”
When he spun to face her, his face was pale, his blond hair ruffled, his eyes wide. “I don’t know what the hell is happening, but we have to leave. Now.” He lowered one shoulder, letting a backpack slide down his arm. “Here.” He flung it at her.
Lisa caught it. “What is it?”
“Clothes. Put them on. Fast.”
Hands shaking, Lisa unzipped the bag and dumped its contents onto the bed.
Brad stepped up behind her and started untying her hospital gown.
The Lasaran (Aldebarian Alliance Book 1) Page 6
