Demon Master (Demonsense series Book 2) (53 page)

Leander continued to regard her steadily, with a look of mixed trepidation and controlled excitement.
 

 
“Unbutton your shirt,” she told him. He did as she said, glancing down at his hands as he undid several, opening his shirt halfway. He looked back up at her, waiting for her next instruction. Without thinking it through in the slightest, Bree stepped forward and arranged herself sideways on Leander’s lap. His eyebrows raised at that, but he shifted his legs to more comfortably accommodate her. Bree wanted to be close this time, as close as she could be. She wanted every possible advantage for the read. She knew that men opened to intimacy through sexuality more than through any other route. If some physical desire could be generated through physical closeness, she knew it would help the read. It wasn’t something she would normally use, though she was sure it had helped in her reads of Daniel.
 

The whole scene was, on the surface, much as it had been that night in Leander’s bathroom. Internally, to Bree it felt much different. This read was more deliberate on both their parts. She still wanted to read Leander out of a desire to ensure her and Daniel’s safety, and for the challenge of it, but this time, she really did want to see more deeply into Leander himself. Bree put her arm around the back of Leander’s shoulders and rested the palm of her right hand on his neck. Her left she raised and settled on the center of Leander’s chest. His arm went around her waist to steady her, and he put his other hand on her knee. “Are you sure?” Bree asked him quietly, though she thought she already knew the answer.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Leander replied. His muscles were tensing under her hands, and his voice was a little rough with some emotion, but Bree took him at his word.
 

She started the read with simply looking at him, letting the edgy anger she’d been feeling drift away as she closely regarded the arch of his red brows, the shape and color of his eyes, the tiny scar by his hairline on the left side of his forehead, the elegant plane of his almost too pretty cheekbones. She felt the temperature of his skin under her hands, the rise and fall of his breath. She let herself sink into Reader empathy, wanting to know him, to feel whatever it was that he felt. She let go of suspicion. When she thought she was ready to go in, she closed her eyes.
 

This time, she went slow as honey dripping from a jar, letting her Reader sense ease out of her and toward Leander. She quickly encountered the kaleidoscopic tangle of his energy, and she slowed down even further, just letting herself be with the whirl of impressions. She could feel herself start looking for the patterns, and she relaxed that part of her Reader function, much like relaxing the eyes to let one’s vision blur.
 

A few half-formed images and feelings flickered in and out of her awareness, a tinge of fear, a flash of Warder energy, the white and grey flutter of bird’s wings. She let them flow by like water. She was trying to find a way to attune at this more surface level, which was not the usual procedure. Usually, attunement was only attempted on deep reads. A good Reader didn’t need much attunement to read basic talents, energy levels, and whatever hits of emotion were closest to the surface.
 

But she tried it anyway. She imagined herself as a leaf on the surface of Leander’s energies, going wherever the little eddies and waves took her. It was a dizzying sensation, and she distantly registered Leander’s arm tightening around her as her body swayed in unconscious reaction. There was a paradoxical tension between the effort it took to keep concentrating and the necessary letting go that allowed her to be receptive and unfocused.
 
Bree’s brow furrowed as she periodically lost the trick of that paradox, but she kept trying, kept keying back in to the flow. And she got better at it, until she felt a hint of a rhythm in the movements of Leander’s energy. Her body dipped and swayed in subtle little motions as she rode the waves of his psyche. She continued to get brief impressions, but she ignored them, knowing somehow that they were blocks in the road, not the eventual destination.
 

As she found the crazy, syncopated, be-bop tune of his energy, she sunk into it further, riding it deeper in wild little jerks and spins. It was like being on an amusement park ride, and now, she could feel Leander starting to move with her. Wondering what his experience of this whole process might be nearly broke Bree’s concentration, but she held on. And the first thing that started to form up out of the non-patterned pattern was the emotion of unease, followed by a soupçon of wonder, then tension again.
 

Then she started to get images, first one of a looming, angry man raising a hand to strike, from a child’s eye view. Then one of a dark eyed woman scowling, a cigarette dangling from her mouth. Another woman, this one surrounded in a sort of soft glow and a feeling of being held.
 

Then came a quick succession of physical sensations: Of being dragged, kicked and penetrated. That last one made Bree flinch, but now she was caught in the attunement, and the shock wasn’t enough to blow her out of it. More images: a school classroom, of sitting outside a principal’s office, accompanied by a feeling of defiance. Then a tall woman shaking a finger, followed by a feeling of dead emptiness. She saw huddling with a teenaged boy on the beach in the rain, both trying to fit under a single coat. Felt the thrill of kissing a teenaged girl, and horribly, gagging on an older man’s penis. She saw a man with dark hair and green eyes, shaking her shoulders, face distorted with fury, and that same man laughing and holding out a piece of pizza.
 

Bree realized she was so attuned now, she was feeling Leander’s feelings, his memories, as her own. She’d somehow completely skipped all the intermediate levels and gone straight into a very deep read. She felt Leander’s body rocking underneath her, felt a startle in her gut as they almost tipped over in the chair, but she gritted her teeth and kept with it. The memories and emotions felt chronological to her, and if she could just hold on, maybe she’d get something that would tell her about Leander’s time in the Keltoi, how he truly felt about it, and whether he was still involved.
 

She got a brief flash of sex with a gorgeous African-American woman, but again, with that awful emptiness. She saw the dark haired man again, this time holding a gun to her head, then throwing the gun away and striking her in the face. And then, she felt Leander pitch backwards in the chair, and as her body jerked in primal reaction to the sensation of falling, her connection with Leander was broken. Leander grunted in pain as she landed on top of him.
 

At first, Bree was too stunned and dizzy to move. Then, when she tried to move, she realized how weak she felt. She must have been pouring out the power to stay with the read there in the end. She was lying half on top of Leander, and with a little wriggling, managed to get her knees on the floor. She had to push off a little against his stomach to get upright on her knees. She looked down at him anxiously, afraid he’d been hurt in the fall.
 

He was looking at the ceiling, and, amazingly, laughing, with tears leaking out the corners of his eyes. It was pained, choking laughter, and as she watched in concern, he put his hands over his face.
 

“I’m so sorry, Leander, are you hurt?” she asked. She’d had a soft landing on him and wasn’t hurt in the least, but she was worried about whether he’d banged his head.
 

The sounds of his strange laughter continued to come out from behind his hands.
 
Bree got down on hands and knees so she could bring her gaze closer to his face. She put out a hand and ran it over his head, as far back as she could reach, but didn’t come up with anything wet, so she didn’t think he was bleeding. She couldn’t see any blood coming out from behind his head either. The worst of her worries alleviated, she started in on being anxious about his emotional state. She got back up on her knees and scooted a little closer, tossing her hair over one shoulder so her view of Leander’s face wouldn’t be blocked. She put a gentle hand on one of his wrists. She was pretty sure he was crying now more than laughing. She wondered how much of the memories she’d seen were ones he was consciously reliving as she did the read.
 

She’d never before had anyone be aware of her ability to read at that near psychic level, to feel it happening, not even Daniel with all his experience. But given Leander’s tears, she thought maybe he had been aware. If those were, as she thought, his literal memories, he'd had one hell of a hard life. Tears came to Bree’s own eyes as she thought of a sensitive Reader child going through all that, able at times to feel the emotions of those hurting him, able to perceive their lies. She thought of those flashes of profound emptiness she felt in him, a kind of dead zone, and she could easily imagine how that had come to be.
 

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she choked out. She was still so open from the read that she was having trouble managing her own emotional responses. Her hand moved from Leander’s wrist to his hair, stroking slowly, trying to offer some kind of comfort, sniffing back her own sympathetic tears. Gradually, he seemed to calm, and finally, he dropped his hands from his face. At first, he just stared at the ceiling, then he turned his head and looked at her. And the emptiness she’d felt in him was on his face. Her hand froze in its ministrations. “Don’t,” she whispered. “You don’t have to do that with me.” She wasn’t sure why she said it, but somehow, she hated to see that shutting down.
 

Leander closed his eyes, turned his face back ceiling-ward, and heaved in a ragged sigh, then another. He wiped a final time at his face, and said, “I’m going to try to move. I think I hurt my back.”

Bree got out of his way. He was still awkwardly arrayed atop the chair. He pulled his knees closer to his chest, then rolled sideways off the chair. He lay like that for a minute while Bree got to her feet, pulled the chair away from him and righted it, then crouched down next to him.
 

“Hands and knees next?” she asked.
 

“I think so,” Leander replied.
 

She hovered, and put out an arm to help pull him as he got to hands and knees, then onto his knees, then, with her hand under his elbow, onto his feet. “Let me have a look,” she commanded. She unbuttoned the rest of his shirt, then pulled it halfway down his arms so she could see his back. It was red in stripes with the imprint of the back of the dining room chair, but the skin was unbroken. She went into professional mode, running her hands over his neck, his shoulders, and over his back, gently digging in her thumb here and there, feeling for the tightness of spasming muscles. She found some in his neck and mid-back. “How much does it hurt?” She raised the shirt back over his shoulders as she spoke and moved around to face him.
 

Now he looked more guarded than empty, an improvement in her eyes. “Banged up, and like maybe I’ll be sore for a couple of days, but not too bad. I managed keep my head up off the ground for the most part, but I think I strained my neck doing it.”

“I’m afraid you’re right about that. What I’ve found works best in these situations is to rotate cold and heat packs. It really helps the muscles to let go of the spasm they’re in.”

He shrugged. “Whatever you think best, doc.”

“Why don’t you go sit on the couch, or in one of the chairs in the living room if that’s more comfortable. I’ve got some cold packs ready to go, then I’ll microwave some hot packs.” He nodded, avoiding her eyes, and moved off into the living room.
 

Busying herself with the packs in the kitchen gave her time to gather herself. She felt guilty about what had happened in the read, although Leander had said he wanted her to try. She’d only gotten that much detail on a deep read on a handful of occasions, and had certainly not expected to be able to go to that level with Leander. In fact, she had been hoping to get a general feel for his energy, dark or light, as well as perhaps an overall sense of whether he was hiding something, something like being a plant for the Keltoi.
 
Well, she’d failed spectacularly in that, and instead laid bare what might be some of Leander’s most traumatic memories. She couldn’t imagine that he would have wanted for her to see all that if he’d been given a choice. She was glad of the opportunity to do something concrete to help him.
 

She went to where he was sitting with stiff, upright posture on the couch. She sat next to him, directing him to lean forward slightly as she positioned the larger pack across the middle of his back, then had him lean back to keep it in place. She put the other across the back of his neck. He drew in his breath between his teeth at that one. He’d buttoned up his shirt, and Bree reached over to the arm of the couch where her fuzzy white blanket was draped and laid it over his lap

Then, with some trepidation, she took his hand in hers. After a beat, he returned the pressure of her grip. “Just let me say I’m sorry if that was a bad experience for you,” Bree told him. “I never dreamed I’d be able to go that deep. I’ve never had anyone report any ill effects when I do, but you seemed upset.”
 

“Upset,” Leander echoed, seeming to taste the word as it left his mouth. “I was upset.” He shook his head slightly, then winced as the motion strained his abused neck muscles. “I felt, you were, I thought you were…” He stumbled through his words in a way that seemed totally uncharacteristic of him. “Did you see what I was remembering?” he finally got out. “Because it felt like you were there.”

“I saw what I thought might have been images from your childhood, and some later,” she said carefully. “You’d been giving me a kind of summary a few minutes earlier, so maybe those memories were stirred up.”
 

“What gives you the right,” he began, anger seeping into his tone, then he stopped himself, and went on in a more even voice. “I didn’t know that was possible. I didn’t know when I agreed to let you try to read me that that kind of attunement was possible. I guess I’ve heard rumors that high power readers can come close to reading your mind, but I’ve never heard anyone say they’ve actually experienced it, or done it, and I certainly can’t do it, so I blew it off as some kind of fear-based rumor. Have you done that before?” He turned his head slightly, though it obviously pained him, apparently wanting to see her reaction to his question.