Born to Darkness

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “I know I should make you leave, but … Damn,” Shane breathed before he kissed her again.

  And Mac knew she wasn’t going to stop them either. She wanted this too badly. Even though she knew it was going to come back and kick her in the head.

  She wanted …

  God, she wanted to feel good, to erase all of the ugliness that the world had dumped on her in the past few hellish hours.

  And she wanted her integration levels to jump right to sixty. Shit, she’d take fifty-five. But she wanted it to come from no-strings sex. She wanted proof that it wasn’t Shane alone who enhanced her—that she could have sex with anyone and get the same results.

  But most of all, she didn’t want to wonder if—maybe—Shane really did like her, too. She didn’t want to spend any time at all wondering if maybe his wanting to screw her was a natural and honest response to genuine attraction. Like, maybe he honestly had a thing for short women with round faces, shitty hair, and small boobs. Maybe he thought she was funny or smart or interesting, and his wanting to fuck her sideways had nothing to do with her power to make everyone want to fuck her sideways.

  She didn’t want to wonder that, so she purposely took all wondering off the table by letting him have a nuclear blast of her power.

  “Holy shit,” he breathed as he could no longer resist her. He tried to unfasten her pants with one hand as he unbuckled his belt with his other. “I gotta …”

  Mac knew exactly what he needed and she helped him by kicking off her sneakers and pushing her pants down her legs, as he wrestled with his zipper, still kissing her all the while.

  Then, God, her pants were off, and he’d freed himself enough to pick her up—still kissing her—and wrap her legs around his waist.

  And just like that he was inside of her, which felt unbelievably good, but there just wasn’t enough resistance even though he desperately tried to get deeper by pulling her closer. And she thought, then, that he was going to carry her into the bedroom, because he headed in that direction, but she was wrong, he was going for the wall.

  She felt it hit her back and then, God, they both got what they wanted—what she’d wanted since the last time they’d done this—and they both cried out because it was that damn good, except now Shane was laughing, too, as he moved against her, inside her, as he broke away from kissing her to look into her eyes.

  “You’re unbelievable, you know that?” he breathed. “You kill me—you’re just so freaking great …”

  And Mac roughly pulled his mouth down to hers and kissed him again, because, no, she really didn’t want to know.

  This wasn’t going to be fun.

  Bach’s back was twingeing—which happened when he pushed himself too hard, or for too long without significant rest.

  Or when he was under significant stress.

  And yes, his session with Stephen Diaz, learning all about controlled dreaming, had been a tad stressful. Bach had been exposed to a serious amount of TMI about the other Greater-Than’s fledgling relationship with Elliot Zerkowski.

  Diaz had been embarrassed by the content of the dreams he’d programmed himself to have—dreams he’d managed to project, while sleeping, into the mind of a Less-Than.

  Which truly was remarkable.

  And while Diaz had been successful in showing Bach exactly what he believed he’d done both to control and project his dreams, there was no guarantee that Bach would be able to access those same neural pathways and open a connection, via Anna, to Nika.

  Still, he was going to try.

  His back twinged again, but it was nothing, however, compared to the pain of the crash, or of the horrible sensation of no-pain that had followed for so long, all those years ago.

  So he ignored it as he looked at Anna, who’d taken off her shoes and positioned herself somewhat stiffly atop the comforter on the bed. With an IV in her arm, the sleep aid that dripped into her bloodstream had quickly kicked in.

  Bach’s discomfort was nothing, too, compared to the sacrifices Anna was willing to make to find her little sister.

  The lab tech, an older woman named Haley, was sitting at the computer, monitoring both Anna’s and Bach’s vitals, and watching to make sure nothing improper happened—outside of Anna’s head, at least. Her eyebrows went up as Bach took a fleece blanket from the cabinet and opened it, spreading it out over Anna, even though she’d refused it while awake.

  “It gets cold in here,” he told the tech, not wanting to admit that the relaxed abandon with which Anna now slept seemed too private for either of them to witness.

  “Do you need one, too, sir?” Haley asked him.

  “I’m fine,” Bach said tersely, as he pulled up a chair and got to work.

  Even though he knew he had Anna’s full permission to enter her mind, he still felt awkward about doing so. The unconscious mind was more malleable. He could, quite easily, plant ideas and suggestions in her head—as simple as the sky is green.

  After which, Anna would wake up and be convinced that that was a truth—until she went outside and saw the sky for herself. Although, even after a visual, she still might not believe her own eyes. Some people were naturally programmed to reject easily proven truths that challenged ideas and beliefs that had been deeply planted in their psyches. If Anna were in that subset, he’d have to go back into her head to correct this absolute “fact” that he’d put there.

  With a related technique, given just slightly more time, he could have taught her Farsi. Or advanced calculus.

  Or—if he were immoral and twisted—instead of saying that the sky was green, he could implant within her the belief that, in order to find Nika more quickly, she should have sex with him as often as possible.

  And the truth was that Anna couldn’t possibly know that Bach would never, ever do something as heinous as that.

  And yet here she was, willing to lay herself open and vulnerable to him, anyway.

  It was sobering and awesome, and it shook him a little, even as it helped maintain his faith in humanity.

  Of course, he was still shaken by his foray into Diaz’s mind—and not by Diaz’s unbridled sexual attraction to another man, but by the sheer force and enormity of the Greater-Than’s feelings for Elliot.

  Love.

  It had stirred Bach to be surrounded by that certainty, that absolute and passionate conviction.

  It made him remember …

  What it felt like, what it was, what he had once been, what he could no longer be …

  Bach took a deep breath and exhaled and then slipped into Anna slowly, carefully, aware that the drug in her system could provide some incoherence or added mental chaos. But he’d waded through some very convoluted minds before. The key was in staying alert, and in retreating back into his own self with some regularity, as if swimming underwater and coming up for air.

  Bach closed his eyes as he sank into the warmth that was uniquely Anna Taylor, and he forced himself to focus on sensing any trail or train of half-formed thoughts or contemplation that might lead him to memories of Nika.

  That was the first thing he had to do—find and learn to recognize Anna’s little sister—before he could attempt to create a dream message for Anna to send to the girl.

  He immediately found a powerful memory, still deeply linked to Anna’s emotional core—of Nika, needing comfort after their mother died. Anna had stayed strong as the much younger girl sobbed in her arms, even though she was close to overwhelmed herself—not merely with grief from the loss, but with fear of this new and impossibly heavy responsibility of caring for her little sister. We’ll be okay, she’d told Nika. We’re gonna be okay.…

  Her thoughts skittered and jumped then—like an old-fashioned LP recording onto a completely different track—to the image of a man, tall and dark-haired, imposing in a business suit, red power tie, his handsome face stern with anger. He swung his arm and delivered a resounding openhanded blow that knocked Bach to the ground.

  What the hell …?

&nbs
p; But then Bach realized he was seeing and feeling this from Anna’s perspective. He’d slipped, deeply, into this new memory—or maybe it was a dream.

  You think that gives you the right to steal from me? the man shouted at him—at Anna. You owe me, bitch! You get back here!

  But Anna fled the room, sobbing and frightened. She made it out into a hallway, but the man was chasing her. He caught her by the wrist, his fingers bruising her as he jerked her to a stop, as he dragged her through another set of doors and across a plush maroon carpet, where he threw her onto a king-sized bed. She scrambled to get away from him, but she couldn’t because he was on top of her, suffocatingly heavy, pinning her down even though she fought him, kicking and hitting and shrieking—No! No! Don’t do this! Don’t!—as the dark-haired man slapped her again, hard enough to rattle her brain, as he tore at her clothes, and—No!—shoved himself roughly, painfully inside of her—

  Jesus!

  Bach pulled himself up and out, opening his eyes and gulping for air as he nearly fell out of his seat.

  Haley was on her feet across the room, her eyes wide. “Are you all right, Doctor?”

  “Yes,” he gasped. “Shh!” He closed his eyes as he bent almost completely in two, back of his hand pressed to his forehead as he held up one finger, hoping the tech would understand that he needed her to be silent, to stay back, because as awful and as violent as that nightmare had been, there was something about it, something that he’d recognized or seen before or maybe something that Anna had seen before …

  But—damn it!—it was too elusive, too awful, and it was gone.

  Still breathing hard, Bach straightened up and his back tweaked, but this time he ignored it because it didn’t hurt him even a fraction as much as knowing that he was going to have to go back there, into the thick of Anna’s nightmare.

  Or memory—he couldn’t tell which it was. Nightmare, memory, or a nightmare of a memory?

  He had no idea why he felt it was so important—what it was that he hadn’t seen, what he needed to learn. But he knew, unequivocally, that he had to go back.

  So he did, but only after he’d taken several deep breaths and forced his pounding heart to slow. Only then, as gently as possible, did he retrace his tracks.

  Anna with Nika. We’ll be okay. We’re gonna be okay.…

  The dark-haired angry man. You owe me, bitch! You get back here!

  This time as Anna ran down the hall, Bach was ready for it. He separated from her, moving slightly back so that he wasn’t reliving this as Anna.

  But Anna didn’t see him. Nor did the angry, violent man take note of Bach as he pushed Anna onto the bed and threw himself atop her even as he worked to free himself from his pants.

  And that meant …

  This was a memory.

  If it were a dream, Bach could have stopped it, changed it. But even he wasn’t powerful enough to change the past.

  Feeling sick, he turned away.

  And there in the misty shadows at the edge of this memory, he saw another version of Anna. She was watching him watch her assault—with such sadness in her eyes. Her hair was down around her shoulders, a mass of curls, free from the ponytail that she’d worn into the sleep lab. She was also dressed differently, in a simple white tunic that flowed around her, contrasting perfectly with her flawless brown skin. It seemed—at times—diaphanous, revealing brief glimpses of the soft curves of her breasts and the trimness of her legs beneath.

  She was beautiful—breathtakingly so.

  Which of them had chosen that outfit, here inside of her mind? But then Bach looked down to find that he was wearing clothing that he didn’t recognize, clothing that seemed like a costume. Camel-colored knee britches, with a wide, buttoned-shut flap in the front instead of a traditional zipper enclosure. His shirt was as white as her dress, with long, loose sleeves. It was completely open in the front, revealing his bare chest. He tried to close it, but there was nothing to fasten. No buttons, no zipper, no Velcro.

  So he held it together, but Anna didn’t seem to notice or care as she said, “I haven’t thought about this in a while.”

  “I’m sorry that I brought you back,” Bach said. “But I have to ask you … Who is he? I think he might be important.”

  Anna shook her head. “You won’t find Nika here. She never knew what he did.”

  “But she … knew him?”

  “Yes.” She looked over Bach’s shoulder, at the man on the bed. “He was … once … a friend.”

  “Did Nika maybe, I don’t know, did she know at least that you had nightmares about him?” Bach asked.

  “Why does your back hurt so much? I thought you said you were in perfect health?” Anna asked, concern for him in her eyes. But then, abruptly, she vanished.

  In her place was the angry dark-haired man, as if Bach were once again caught in her memory.

  And shit, sure enough, he was Anna again, combined with her, entangled with her, as the man grabbed their wrist and threw them onto the bed, pushing himself between their legs.

  And try as he might, this time Bach couldn’t get away—had the drug in her system somehow trapped him?—and he felt her anguish on top of her physical pain. I loved you! How could I have loved you?

  “Stop, David, please, stop!” She herself stopped fighting to get away. Instead, she tried clinging to the angry man, holding him close. “Please, David, if you ever loved me—”

  But her words didn’t stop him from slamming himself into her again and again and again. And even though she’d stopped fighting him, he now pulled her hair so hard that her head jerked back and she cried out in pain, until finally he came with a shudder and a shout.

  And then she was crying, soundlessly, tears just spilling down her cheeks. The man—David—lay there, on top of her, his breath hot and foul in her face, and she turned her head away, once again pushing at him and trying to get free.

  This time he let her go, releasing her hair and rolling off of her to sit on the edge of the bed as she scrambled away and off the mattress, hitting the carpeted floor with a thump. She’d lost a shoe, but she didn’t care. She pushed herself to her feet and ran for the door.

  As she ran down the hall, heading for the stairs that led to the foyer and the front door of his house, David called after her. “I never loved you. But we’re even now, don’t you think?”

  It was only then, as Anna flung open the door that led to the street, that Bach was able to pull away from her—to pull out of both her memory and her mind.

  But before he left her, he saw with dismay that instead of reaching the freedom outside of that house, she was thrown back into a loop of that same awful memory, where, once again, David hit her, where it was all going to happen, over and over and over again.

  This time Bach couldn’t catch himself as he fell out of his chair. He hit the floor hard, but even that wasn’t enough to help him identify where he was or even who he was.

  And when someone, a woman, came to help him—“Dr. Bach, are you all right?”—he pushed himself away from her, on his butt and his elbows, much the same way that Anna had finally gotten out from under David, on that bed.

  Bach was out of there—he realized with a gasp. He was free.

  But, God, she was reliving it again—and again.

  “Assistance needed—STAT—in lab seven!”

  And with that, Bach was back—enough, at least, to identify the lab technician who’d called for help—Haley. He also recognized that, for some reason, the drug that had been coursing through Anna’s system, to help her stay asleep, seemed to be impacting him still. He was disoriented and nauseous and his legs didn’t work right.

  Although he was definitely doing better than Anna—she was curled tightly into a fetal position on the bed, visibly shaking beneath that blanket he’d used to cover her.

  “This is not okay,” he tried to tell Haley, pointing toward Anna.

  “Sir, I swear, she just did that—right when you hit the floor! I think she’s havi
ng some kind of negative reaction, either to the drug or to your intervention.”

  He was closer than Haley was, so he crawled to Anna’s IV tube and swiftly disconnected it.

  It would take a few minutes for the drug to leave her system and for her to awaken—and when she did, he knew that he was the last person she’d want to see.

  Okay, maybe not last. This man, David, whoever he was, whoever he’d been to her, probably still held that dubious honor.

  Despite that, Bach knew Anna wasn’t going to be thrilled to see him.

  And that was too bad, since he wasn’t just leaving her here, alone. “Scanning both Dr. Bach and the subject,” Haley announced to the doctor who’d burst into the lab, as Bach dragged himself up onto the bed, beside Anna.

  As another doctor came in, and then yet another, Bach pulled Anna’s still-tightly-clenched body into his arms. He was so dizzy himself that he couldn’t sit up, so he sagged back, but he still managed to wrap himself around her.

  “The subject is having a negative reaction to the drug,” Haley reported.

  One of the doctors—it was Elliot, thank God—spoke up. “Joseph, it’s going to be ten minutes before Anna comes out of this state. I have to recommend that you—”

  “Do not interfere,” Bach ordered, working hard to make sure his words came out clearly. “As long as the scan shows I’m within normal range, just stay back.”

  They all spoke at the same time—Haley and Elliot and all of the other doctors—but Bach didn’t wait to hear what they said. He just closed his eyes and plunged back into Anna’s mind.

  Because even one minute was too long for her to have to relive that bullshit, all by herself.

  NINETEEN

  Mac was using her voodoo on him.

  It was freaking great, because it heightened and amplified everything Shane was feeling, making this moment—without a doubt—one of the best of his life.

  He tried to remember if the sex they’d shared back in her Kenmore Square apartment had been this incredible, but then he stopped thinking about anything but Mac, moving against him and with him.