Love Beyond Sanity (15 page)

"No. No. No." Gabriel came up behind him, grabbing his arm as he reached inside the chest. Trent screamed, trying to lunge backwards.

With his other hand, Gabriel reached inside and pulled out the weapon Trent had been attempting to get. Looking down, Gabriel raised his eye at the .45 caliber pistol.

"This is just ridiculous." Using the man's own gun, Gabriel pressed it straight up against Trent's temple. "Few things you should understand, I think. First, I'm not so easy to kill. I'm not going to explain why that is." Truthfully, Gabriel had no idea why that was. "Second, I don't take kindly to seeing women abused in any fashion. Third, whether you like it or not, you are going to tell me what you made for Sebastian yesterday. You will tell me why you made it, what it did, and any other thing you think is pertinent. So, I'm going to suggest you tell me sooner rather than later."

Gabriel slammed Trent's head into the tabletop. The other man snorted like a pig, which might ordinarily have been amusing; however, Gabriel was in no mood for laughter. Pulling him backwards, Gabriel picked up an extra pair of restraints off the ground and tied Trent's hands behind his back before hooking him up to the same contraption that held the girls.

Within seconds of dangling from the ceiling, Trent's face had turned red. Raising an eyebrow, Gabriel wondered exactly what the right amount of time would be to keep him up there. He had to weigh the information gained versus the possibility that Trent might have a heart attack and die at any time. Turning back to the girls he reached up and slid them down until they both lay on the floor. Glancing around quickly, he looked for anything he could use to stop the bleeding. Finding nothing readily available, he pulled off his shirt and tore it in half with no trouble then tore it in half again. For once, he didn't have to hide his true strength. Something like tearing a shirt in six pieces was like asking him to rip apart a piece of paper.

He wrapped the girls' wrists and necks with the shirt and waited a few moments to see the bleeding slow. He had no way of predicting if they would wake up. Right now what he needed was to get Trent talking.

"Who are you?" Trent's voice was strangled as he huffed and puffed.

"Exactly who I said I was." He moved closer to Trent, keeping his voice even and his movements deliberate. It was important the other man understand that Gabriel was completely in control of the situation. "Let's start at the beginning. What did you do for Sebastian yesterday?"

"I see you are aware of the Master."

The Master?
"You could say that."

Coughing for a second, Trent continued, "I made him the potion he needed."

"The potion he needed for what?" Gabriel moved forward and picked up the knife from the table. Trent had mostly likely used it to slice the young women.

Trent's legs flapped in the air. "To stop the hunger."

"Did you take these women for the Master? Were they part of the potion?"

Shaking his head, Trent bobbed up and down. "Not these two for that potion, but yes, I'm bleeding them for his future needs."

Gabriel stood face to face with the red-faced killer. "What is Sebastian?"

"What are you?"

Grabbing the side of Trent's face, he held the man still so that he no longer swung back and forth. Once he was sure he had the man's full attention, he smiled. "I have no fucking idea, but I have every intention of making whatever it is that I am the thorn in Sebastian's side. So tell me, Trent, what is the Master?"

As Trent explained the truth behind Sebastian, Gabriel raised an eyebrow. Demons and something called an Outsider. Had he done something to try to destroy the people who were out to get the man who basically held Alexa captive and had for years fooled him? Was Gabriel one of them?

Whatever happened next, he was getting to New Jersey.

"Any idea why Sebastian took a trip to the north?"

Chapter Ten

"Are you not going to speak the entire trip back to Maine?" Charma watched as Marina drummed her hands on the steering wheel, and then squirmed in the driver's seat for the hundredth time since they'd gotten in the car an hour earlier.

"I'm not going to discuss Jason with you right now." Charma's head pounded, and she wished she had a pain reliever. "Amend that, I'm not going to discuss Dr. Randall with you ever." That was it. Better to distance herself with the use of his title. It kept him away from her heart. Sort of.

"I can't believe we just left your soul mate back there. Leonardo is going to kill us. We're supposed to be finding our people, not leaving them practically defenseless in a mental health facility." Marina pounded on the steering wheel. "Hell, Charma, what are you thinking?"

"Thinking? I'm
thinking
that he abandoned me on purpose eighteen years ago. I fought off a damn demon—which he refers to as Self-loathing and seems to think is his own personal delusion—and he still thought I was an invention of his own mind. With my soul mate, I shouldn't have to justify my existence."

"Mine took one look at me and ran away. None of this is going exactly the way our girlish imaginations once thought it would." Marina's voice was hard, and Charma sat back in her seat. She wasn't used to the other woman's high emotions making sense.

Maybe he wasn't perfect but she had just run out on him, not the other way around. Marina was right.

She needed to say something. "I'm sure it wasn't how you looked that made Drew leave. That would be impossible. You're gorgeous."

Marina snorted, and Charma grinned. "Okay. Then he just didn't want to be involved in our fight, even knowing what he is. That's worse. Let's give Jason a few minutes to catch up to the idea he's an Outsider. For most people, it's just not that easy to accept."

Charma nodded. "Turn the car around."

"Oh thank heavens, because I've been driving this thing fifty miles an hour on the Interstate so that we wouldn't get too far away from him. I think the guy behind me is going to have an aneurism in a moment." Marina sped the car up significantly and Charma braced herself as she took the next exit at top speed.

Clearing her throat, Charma smiled. "If you say so." Her eye caught the unconscious woman in the backseat. "How much sedative did you give her?"

"If you had seen her as I did you would have drugged her, too. She was banging into walls. She'd injured an orderly. It was nuts."

"I'm sure being tied up didn't help the situation. I don't know too many Outsiders who could handle that."

"I don't even know her name." Marina sighed, and then glanced at Charma out of the corner of her eye. "Can you do me a favor?"

"No." Charma slammed her foot down on the floor of the car. "I am not going into her mind. I just spent hours roaming around in Jason's. I don't think I can take it if I had to go rummaging around in anyone else's. We'll just return to the hospital, pick up my reluctant soul mate and drive to Maine. I'll deal with whoever this is tomorrow."

Charma hoped her tone was firm and unyielding. Marina might actually not argue.

"Please Charma, I need a name. We can't just keep this stranger in the back of our car while we go and retrieve Jason. There has to be at least a name to call her."

Crossing her arms over her chest, Charma raised an eyebrow. "You can't get this information yourself?"

"No." Marina sounded forlorn, and Charma had no idea if she was just putting on her distress to make her do what she wanted. "That's not my area of expertise, it's yours. I can go in and alter someone's perception but not find out their name or what the most expensive baseball card they ever collected was."

"I only ever did that once, and it was important because the poor dude was obsessing over it." She wished she'd never shared that story with the others. Now they thought she just looked for random pieces of information and picked it out like she was some kind of thief of identities.

Marina's eyes glowed. "If you say so."

Groaning, Charma unhooked her seatbelt and crawled to the back of the car. The woman was laid out flat on the seat, her eyes open but sightless as she breathed shallowly. Her mouth looked dried and cracked. Her arms and legs, visible under the hospital gown she wore, were cut up. Evidently she hadn't warranted as good of care as Jason, and no one had been keeping her virtually pristine despite her illness.

Thinking of how scrumptious Jason looked even laid out on the bed made her stomach flip flop. She pushed the thought away. Lusting after him would get her nowhere. She had a job, a purpose even, to get through here, and she needed to do it despite her raging hormones.

The woman had light red hair. Some people might even call it blonde, but Charma thought when it was clean it would probably look more like strawberry then actual gold. Her skin was pale and freckled. The unseeing gaze contained green eyes. Most notably, power radiated from this woman like she'd been bathed in it.

Charma sucked in her breath. She needed to touch the girl to find out who she was, but the very idea terrified her. Truth be told, she'd had less trepidation about reaching out to embrace the evil of the night or taking on a demon. In her whole life, she'd never met anyone who radiated power quite like this.

"I know." Marina's voice caught her by surprise, and she jumped, whacking her arm on the back window of the car. "It's freaky. I almost couldn't enter the room. The humans don't know anything about the power, and they're all a little terrified around her."

That resonated with her. "You did say she injured an orderly."

"Before they sedated her."

"I don't know anything about drugs; I'm not a doctor. But…"

Marina interrupted her. "But you're wondering just how much medicine they needed to feed her to get any kind of reaction at all. All the while considering that nothing works on us for very long."

"I had to get my tooth drilled once." Charma shuddered at the thought. "The Novocain wore off in two minutes, and the dentist didn't believe me. He said it was impossible."

"We're lucky the woman's not dead."

Charma stared into the green depths of the woman's eyes. "I think it would take a lot to kill her."

Deciding not to be a coward, Charma reached down and grasped the woman's hand. For a moment nothing happened, and then her unknown kinswoman squeezed back.

Swirls of color crossed Charma's eyes. She blinked several times trying to clear the images she saw. This was much more akin to what she was used to than what happened with Jason. The human brain was not usually this fast.

Name. Charma concentrated on a name. What did this woman go by? A vision of a garden met her eyes. Not the same one she and Jason visited, but a beautiful, wild, untouched place with wildflowers everywhere.

A soft-spoken voice met her ears but she knew only she could hear it. Everything was within her own mind.

"My name is Eden."

"Like the garden. I see." Charma nodded. Vaguely, she was aware of her head going with the movement of the car, but she was so focused on her internal observation she paid little attention to it.

"How are you doing this?"

"It's what I do. Most people don't know I'm visiting them."

In real time, Eden blinked her eyes. "I've felt so strange for so long. It's been hard to communicate." She paused for a second. "I'm sorry, that was rude. What is your name?"

"Charma. Spelled with a ch, pronounced like a k."

"I can't seem to wake up, which is probably a good thing."

Sighing, Charma smiled. "Why is that a good thing? Are you dangerous in some way?"

"No. I don't think so, or at least, I don't mean to be."

"Tell me what you mean."

Marina's voice interrupted her communication. "Five minutes from the hospital, Charma."

It felt like she had stabbed Charma in the head by speaking to her while she did this. Closing her eyes, Charma didn't know if she wanted to pull out of Eden's head or not.

"Please don't leave me in here." The frantic plea in Eden's voice made the decision for her. Raising a hand to indicate Marina should stop speaking, she continued her communication with Eden.

"Okay, for now I can stay. However, when we get where we are going, I will have to leave you for a while so I can go inside and get Jason."

"Who is Jason?"

"He's my soul mate. Right now he doesn't believe it, and even though it would give me a certain amount of satisfaction to leave him strapped to a bed for several days, I can't seem to leave him defenseless." Charma squeezed the other woman's hand again. "But I won't leave you forever, and when the drugs wear off you'll be able to speak to everyone. Tell me why it's better to leave you uncommunicative."

"Because of the things I can see. No one believes me. The terrible visions. Violence, death, hell. It's coming. Since I turned thirteen, I've been able to see what will happen. I touch someone, and I know if they will die soon. The more violent the visions become, the more I can't control them. Sometimes I do things when I'm in the throes of them, and I can't seem to help it."

A tear slipped from Eden's eye. Charma gasped. Visions? She'd only heard of this happening to one Outsider. "We've been looking for you, Eden. You're with family now."

A gasp slipped from the strawberry-blonde's mouth and Charma pulled back from her consciousness. Giving herself a second to regulate her equilibrium to the 'real world,' Charma climbed into the front seat.

"Rina?"

"What did you learn?" The car was stopped at a red light and as the light turned, Marina gunned the gas. The car jerked forward.

"You found the Great One's daughter. Her name is Eden."

Marina's mouth formed an O. "You're sure."

"Visions and everything that comes with them."

"Leonardo is going to freak out."

Charma shrugged. "It will be good for all of us." She smiled. "And for Eden. She's been suffering alone since she was thirteen."

The imposing view of the mental health facility came into view. Stopping at the security check went faster as the guard nodded his head at the approaching vehicle and opened the gate. "Did you mess with his head again?"