Sabotaged (The Sundance Series Book 3)

by C. P. Rider

  The warden's smile tightened. "Then perhaps she should be seen by one of our physicians. Fiera, would you escort Esther to the medical—"

  "No," Milton shouted, then he seemed to catch himself. "I mean, that's okay. She's just tired is all. Needs rest."

  "I won't keep her long. Unless you want me to?" The warden gave the boy his most venomous smile and the rage in me bubbled to the surface.

  "No, sir." Milton nudged his sister. "Go on, Estie."

  With marked reluctance, the girl slid off her brother's bed and shuffled toward us. She had one tiny fist pressed to her mouth. Her black hair was braided and threaded through with blue ribbons. I glanced at my matching blue shirt. I would bet those ribbons had come from Fiera.

  The warden bent to one knee. "I have a treat for you." He gestured toward me. "This is a new friend. Her name is Neely. She's spending some time with you today."

  Esther nodded politely. She seemed too mature for four, and I reassessed her age. The child was old enough to respond to intimidation, so she had to be older.

  "There's pizza and a new movie waiting for you all." The warden stood, pivoted on his heel, faced me. Gave me another one of those awful smiles. "You're going to like these kids."

  "You're a bastard."

  The smile fell away and he stepped into my space. I siphoned power from Julio, Sampson, and Fiera, and clawed at the trancer's command in my brain. The edges start to lift, ever so slightly.

  "Harris." Sampson kept his voice low. "I can feel her. Be advised that she's up to something."

  The warden took a step back. His jaw was set, mouth pinched, as he stared down at me. "Think before you act, Neely."

  Oh, I was thinking, all right. I was thinking that I was about a minute away from breaking the trancer's spell and spiking him dead.

  "Eww. What's that smell?" Estie, the little girl, waved her hand in front of her nose.

  I smelled it, too. Burned hair. The skin on my spine near my bra strap heated up and I pivoted in a circle as I peered over my shoulder at it.

  "Hold still." Sampson smacked me on the back. He picked up my braid and clapped the end between his palms. "Your hair is on fire."

  "Fiera," I snapped.

  The fire witch glanced up from her reading and shook her head. One slow shake. A warning. She was telling me not to spike the warden.

  The little girl stared up at me, her tiny brows drawn together. "Is your hair okay?"

  I forced a smile. "It's okay. Don't worry."

  The child visibly relaxed, giving me a sweet, wide grin. "I have scissors if you need to cut the burned parts. I can help. I'm good with scissors on paper. Hair is the same."

  "No, it's not, Estie," her brother said. "No cutting hair. Leah is still mad at you for what you did to her braids."

  "I said sorry." She scowled. "Plus it looked really good."

  Leah looked up from her magazine. She was identical in looks to her baby sister. "No, it didn't. You need lessons."

  "I don't need lessons. I need practice." Estie beamed up at me.

  The warden was right. I liked these kids.

  "Adorable, huh?" Harris spoke directly into my ear. I hadn't realized he was standing that close. "I'm sure you won't mind being attached to them."

  "Attached?" I jerked my braid out of Sampson's hands and flipped it over my shoulder so I could inspect the damage. It was an inch shorter. Good thing my hair grew fast.

  "Connected, joined, bound." He leaned closer. "From now on, when I tell you to do something, keep in mind that what happens to these children will be entirely dependent on your response."

  "Guess I know how he's holding you. How long have the children been here?"

  I said this to Fiera after she'd tucked the two girls in together. Milton had gone to bed earlier to read, and he snored softly, his book on his chest. There were three beds in the room, but the fire witch said Estie and Leah liked to sleep in the same one, holding onto each other.

  "They arrived about six months ago, with their parents."

  I recalled the hybrid shifters Fiera had avoided looking at when we walked through the cells. "The tiger couple."

  "Yes. I give them updates. Let's clean up."

  Fiera stacked plates and gathered up napkins, dumping them into a trash container outside the doorway of the room. The leftover pizza was in a cardboard box on the children's table. She'd made me take a slice at dinner since I hadn't eaten since Wednesday and it was now Friday night. My head was clearer after the food, but I still had no hunger pangs. I didn't feel any discomfort at all.

  "Six months?" I mulled over the timeframe. "If the kids have only been here that long and you've been here three years, how did Harris hold you before?"

  "There have been other people here I cared about. No children, though. That was a new one." She motioned me to follow her into the hall. "I used to resist, you know. Harris would ask me to burn something—the house of a senator who was proposing a bill that would cut sanctuary funding, the cars, trucks, homes of shifters brought here so people would think they were dead, things of that nature—and I would refuse.

  "When the kids arrived and the threats began, I stopped refusing. So, while I'm sorry about what I did to your bakery, I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I won't allow my inaction to cause these children pain."

  Knowing what I knew now, I felt guilty shooting at her. "You didn't break the windows in my kitchen."

  "I broke enough."

  Not an answer, but I knew what she meant. She'd done enough damage to satisfy Harris and no more. "You didn't touch the ofrenda, either."

  "The altar honoring your dead?"

  I nodded.

  "Offending the dead is a huge no-no in the witching world. I intend to rest in my afterlife, not be eternally tormented." She peered into the room to check on the children, looking relieved when they were all still asleep.

  "Why does Harris do this? What's his deal with paranormals?"

  She plucked at the hem of her shorts. "I'm not entirely sure. But the man has the biggest case of cognitive dissonance that I have ever seen."

  "Why do you say that?"

  Fiera ticked off the reasons on her slender fingers as she strode up and down the short corridor. "Garrett Harris subscribes to the Judeo-Christian belief that murder is wrong. Harris also believes humans should be treated equally. He believes killing in wartime is justified, and this creates some dissonance with his ideals, but he's able to function at that level. He believes he is currently at war with our kind, which allows him to perpetrate violence against us without it upsetting his emotional balance."

  "But we aren't engaged in battle against anyone. We're just trying to live our lives."

  "Harris doesn't see it that way. He can't. If he does, he's faced with a magnitude of dissonance that makes him unstable. For a few months after he let a young witch die—" Fiera rubbed her chest above her heart, making it obvious that she had known the witch and that the death had cut her deep. "—he was merciless with the prisoners here. The witch was his daughter's age and that created a problem for him. Against his will, he had humanized her in his mind."

  "Seems like a good thing." I leaned against the cool gray wall and watched her pace.

  "You would think. However, when faced with a greater amount of ideological discordance than he is capable of processing, Harris doubles down on the contradictory belief instead of reconsidering his actions. He becomes even more dangerous."

  "Hard to fathom." I regarded the fire witch. "Are you a psychologist or something?"

  "No, I told you. I'm a witch." She came to a halt in front of the children's doorway. "I read a lot. There's not much in the library here outside of medical journals. What I wouldn't give for a romance novel."

  I pulled away from the wall, faced her. "I don't get it. Why does he keep us alive? Why not kill us on sight?"

  "From what I can tell, Harris's orders are to gather intelligence. He is tasked with learning as much about us as he can, using any methods
necessary. Torture is one of those methods. Murder. In his mind, he's doing it for a good cause."

  "We're experimentation subjects to him, nothing more. We're important for as long as we're useful." This should have made me furious, but the apathy had taken hold of me again and I was disconnected from it in the same way I was set apart from the rest of my emotions.

  I tapped the little lock on my bracelet. In the next instant, pain engulfed me as I flashed back on the night Lucas gave it to me. I deep breathed my way through the onrush of feelings, forced myself to set them aside.

  "Yes, and when we aren't useful, we're a burden." She put a delicate hand on my shoulder. "Please believe me when I say, you don't ever want to become a burden to Garrett Harris. I've seen what happens."

  I glanced at the children in their beds and waited to feel the way Fiera felt about them. I already knew I liked Estie, Leah, and Milton. They were funny, smart, resilient kids. But I was waiting for that protective part of me to kick in. The part of me that had once risked revealing what I was to an alpha leader I feared to save a child in danger from a poacher.

  Nothing happened. My emotions were as flat as a concha with no yeast.

  Something was very wrong with me.

  "It's not the trancer." There was no worry or panic attached to the statement. It was just a pile of words that had fallen out of my mouth.

  Fiera wiped her eyes. "Sampson? What about him?"

  "I thought he was the reason I've been on this weird emotional rollercoaster since I got here. But it's not coming from him. It's coming from me."

  "How do you know?"

  "I'm not reacting the way I normally would. To anything. It's not like me to spike without hesitation. Or fire a gun at someone. Or slap them. And it's very much not like me to not care about the welfare of a child." I walked a short distance from the children's doorway and Fiera followed. "I know the difference between right and wrong in here." I pointed at my head. "The thing is, I don't feel it in here." I put my palm over my heart. "I'm numb. I don't feel pain, fear—"

  "Or hunger." Her eyes widened. "That's why you didn't eat the pizza until I made you take a piece. I heard your stomach growling. I knew you were hungry."

  I nodded. "Strangely, I don't seem to have a problem feeling angry, but it's the flashes-bright-burns-away-fast style of anger. I can't hold onto it."

  "Let me take a look." Fiera peered into my eyes, her pale blue irises turning to rings of blue flame. After what Sampson had done to me, I wasn't comfortable with the magic in her stare, but she didn't force me to hold her gaze and wasn't annoyed when I looked away. "Strange."

  "What is it?"

  "I'm not sure. But we're not going to worry about that. What we're going to do now is connect you emotionally to the children so that you don't do something foolish to harm them, either directly or indirectly."

  "I don't want to hurt anyone. I know it's wrong. In here." Again, I pointed to my head.

  "That's an encouraging sign. You're a kind person deep down, I can tell. I had a good feeling about you from the start." She smiled, and her blue flaming irises joined in the merriment.

  "I thought you were straight up bonkers from the start." The second the words were out of my mouth, I realized they were rude. "Sorry."

  Fiera didn't appear to mind. "You have good instincts. Wonderful. This will go smoothly then."

  The rings of blue flame spun. Staring at them made me sleepy, dizzy, and as frightened as I was capable of being. "Are you a trancer, too?"

  "Nope. I'm one hundred percent witch and that should scare you even more." She clasped my hands in hers. "Think about someone you love. Focus on the person's face, smell, voice. Say the name aloud, please."

  I didn't even have to think. "Lucas."

  Have you noticed that you're the only one who says we aren't serious? You keep saying what's between us is about sex. Friendship.

  As if merely thinking about the man conjured up his presence, Lucas's breath blew hotly on my cheek, his low, purring voice tickled my ear, his strong, nimble fingers twined in my hair. The corners of his whiskey eyes crinkled with humor, and a sexy half-grin strutted across his lips. He wore the expression of a man who had just thought of something that would get us both in the most delicious sort of trouble.

  …if you honestly think that what's between us isn't serious, then sugar cookie, you haven't caught up to me yet.

  …I truly understand why I fell for you, sugar cookie.

  A flash flood. A deluge. A monsoon of sorrow drenched me. I missed him so much the emotion stabbed into me, a knife wound in my guts, my belly open and spilling blood.

  My gaze locked to Fiera's, I went to my knees on the cold linoleum floor, retched. "Stop. Please. It … hurts."

  "Perfect. It'll only take a second more."

  An image of Lucas and the children shimmered in my mind. They stood in the center of a windowless room, not unlike my cell—Estie sobbed, Leah shook, and Milton squared his trembling shoulders. Lucas curled up at the children's feet in Bengal tiger form, his striped tail wrapped protectively around his enormous body, my birthday bracelet hooked over his right lower canine. A door opened, and Garrett Harris strode into the room. With his every step, the scene grew darker, finally fading to black. In the darkness, my bracelet clinked, the tiger whimpered, the children cried, and the warden laughed.

  Fury rocketed through me, along with sorrow and helplessness. I wanted to wrap my hands around the warden's throat and squeeze until his eyes bugged out. I wanted to cry. I wanted to curl into a ball and hide.

  "I have to help them. Please let me help them," I rasped, as my breath flew out of me in a harsh gust of air. I tried to pull away from Fiera, but she gripped my hand tight. "Please let me go. It hurts."

  "Soon." A grim smile broke across Fiera's tiny mouth. "But first, I have to hurt you some more."

  Chapter Twenty

  I went away for a while.

  Not physically—I was still standing in the hall outside the children's room—but mentally. As Fiera chanted softly, I sank into my own mind. When I emerged, tears poured down my cheeks in gulping gushes.

  "What happened?" I'd cried so hard my voice was hoarse. My body ached and I was ravenous. I swiped a hand over my wet cheeks and beelined to the dinner table in the children's room.

  "You got a little … emotional." Fiera accompanied me to the table, grabbed a paper napkin, and flipped open the cardboard pizza box. "I'm not a trancer or a spiker, but I can cast a short-term, mind manipulation spell. It won't last long unless you help it, though. You'll have to make yourself think of your Lucas when you feel the numbness creeping back in. He's your polestar, your focus."

  Lucas. My heart jumped into my throat and I went cold all over. Sweat trickled down the sides of my face as I doubled over in pain, gasping for breath.

  "Sorry," Fiera said. She didn't sound sorry. She sounded pleased.

  It took a moment for my panic to subside. When I was calm again, she handed me a cold slice of pizza on a napkin.

  "Why haven't you manipulated the warden's mind? Maybe give him a little suggestion to leave the place unguarded for a night?" I asked around a bite of pizza. It tasted a hundred times better than the pizza that betrayer Julio had brought to my bakery, which was the last time I'd had pizza before tonight.

  "I'm not very good at it, to be honest. Even worse on an unwilling victim. Also, Harris has failsafes built into the security systems here. I've seen others attempt to push back. Their punishments were … severe."

  I finished chewing the last bite of pizza even though it had turned to sawdust in my mouth. Warden Harris had to die. There was no way around it.

  Fiera pointed to Leah, Estie, and Milton sleeping in their beds. "How would you feel if Garrett Harris harmed them?"

  My stomach seized and I retched. I ran to the trashcan in the hallway and threw up.

  "Huh." She leaned in the doorframe and watched me, her tiny mouth sewn into a frown. "I may have gone a little overb
oard, but it can't be helped. There's no time for delicacy."

  "What did you do?" I wiped my mouth with the napkin and threw it in the trash. Rage bulleted through my body and I instinctively drew energy from the witch and from the children. I was damned tired of people messing with my head.

  Leah made a pained sound in her sleep and I drew back.

  "Calm yourself or you'll wake up the kids." Fiera lowered her voice, looked around as if she feared being watched. "All I did was remind you that you have the capacity to feel. I asked you to think about the children, and once you had a picture of them in your mind, I attached the love you feel toward your mate to them. Really, you did most of the work."

  "Mate? I don't have a mate." Anger boiled in me at the suggestion.

  "It's all right." Fiera studied me as if she were expecting an attack—which was smart of her. "Everything is okay. No mate."

  Somewhere in the back of my brain, a little voice told me that I overreacted. I took some deep breaths, released the energy I'd drawn. "Guess that spell really works."

  "Just remember what Harris threatened to do to the children and make sure you don’t challenge him into acting on his threat." Fiera patted the anti-me charm as if to make sure it was there.

  "I'm not going to spike you." I felt ashamed that I'd been thinking about doing that exact thing only a moment ago. "I'm not usually such a volatile person. In fact, I'm a little too nice. Lucas—" Saying his name aloud was like taking another stab to the gut. I leaned over the trashcan, exhaled slowly, breathed out the pain. "—says I don't use my abilities enough to protect myself."

  "Won't he be surprised when he shows up here?"

  "I'm not sure he will. He has no idea where I am." Hopelessness washed over me. I played with the lock on my bracelet and sniffed. "What if he isn't even looking?"

  Fiera whispered in my ear. "Lucas."

  I clutched my chest. My heart felt as if half of it had been ripped out.

  She patted my shoulder. "He's looking."