Wild Card (58 page)

I cried; but I cried silently so I could hear him.

“You’re all dosed up. I want to free you, but I can’t until I know you won’t go berserk. It’s very dangerous at this stage. While you haven’t changed yet. Can’t have you going wolf while we sneak out.”

His hand continued to massage me gently. Yes, I was full of drugs. I had to relax.

But I had changed, hadn’t I? I wanted to tell him, but I couldn’t speak.

“Listen, you do everything right and we’ll get out of here.”

I would. I would do whatever he said. Kin. His desires were sacred to me. The rest wasn’t important.

“Concentrate on my voice. Nothing else matters. Just my voice. The voice you want to hear.”

He was right. Nothing else mattered.

“I can’t set you free until you’re steady enough that I can trust you.”

I wouldn’t do anything. He could trust me.

“Try not to be sick.”

He pulled the endotracheal tube out. My stomach tried one last heave, but I stopped it.

See, I can do it.

“That’s good.”

I felt warmth, despite the cold. He was pleased with me. That was so important.

“You mustn’t call out.”

I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t.

He eased the strap across my mouth. The metal fixings released my jaws and then his hand went across to my other shoulder, massaged that as well.

“I need to you to trust me. Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” I whispered. My throat was so sore. My own voice sounded strange as well, echoing in my head.

“Good.” His hand came up to my face and tugged back the blindfold.

The room was flooded with bright, colorless light. A screen surrounded us, like the ones they put around a hospital bed.

Alex was bending over me, his finger on his lips. My eyes were still blurred by stupid tears. I wanted him to hold me. I wanted him to tell me that I hadn’t messed up with him. That it would be all right. He’d get me out of here, he’d save me.

“Shhh. Everything’s fine. You trust me.”

I nodded, as much as the webbing would allow.

“You have to show me I can trust you, too.”

Both his hands moved to my shoulders. They were warm against my skin, almost hot. I was so cold.

“In addition to the psychoactive effects, Benzilate will reduce your ability to control body temperature,” Ben-Haim says. “Recognizing purely physical effects like that will give you a connection to reality. An anchor.”

Benzilate? Had I been given an interrogation drug?

It wasn’t important. Alex was here. I had to trust him.

His hands moved lower.

I gasped.

“Shhh. I have to know I can trust you. You understand that. Just relax. You’re feeling so good. Don’t worry about anything else.”

His hands ran over my breasts, squeezed the nipples.

Wrong!

But how could it be? It was Alex.

“Disinhibition doesn’t mean you’ll do things you don’t want to do. Just things it may not be appropriate to do.” Ben-Haim leans forward and the sunlight falls across his face, making distracting patterns, changing the whole shape of it.

That’s stupid of me. It’s not Ben-Haim at all. It’s Alice. How could I have mistaken her?

“Keep away from physical intimacy,” she says. “It lowers your mental barriers.”

No.
I’d been safe with Jen. She’d been safe with me. This is Alex! I trust him.

“No aural sex.”

A giggle threatens to burst out of me, but I have to stay quiet. My body is not into giggling at all. My back arches with pleasure against the straps. Alex’s hand is moving across my belly. Lower. If only he’d free me. It’s safe. I want his loving arms around me.

“Relax. Let go all your concerns.”

Bad. Shouldn’t. No auras. Alice said no auras. Shouldn’t.

Just a peek.

I felt my eukori unfold like a flag in the breeze, floating out toward Alex. Eagerly seeking the warm embrace of his eukori.

Shocking, slimy, slithering, frozen NOTHING.

SHIT!

My body spasmed and went rigid with shock for a second, then I tried to push him away with my eukori. I started twisting and fighting against the straps. There was confusion on his face and suddenly it looked wrong. It was Alex’s face, but it moved in a different way. Like a plastic mask. How could I have mistaken it for him?

The scream burst out of me.

I turned inward. I could fight with the telergy. I had to reach that anger that I had hidden. It was buried and locked away. The strongbox was open. I thrust a hand down into the formless nightmares and I started to light up like a flare.

My eukori stopped floating and hardened like an axe to strike.

And the imposter flipped a valve on a stand next to me. The tube stretched down to my arm. I could feel snow mushroom inside me, like a soft cloud, blanketing everything.

The strap was pressed across my mouth again, the metal forced inside, pushing my jaws apart and locking them.

A door opened. “Everything all right, Doctor?” A voice came from the corridor, hesitant, uncertain about intruding. Not willing to come uninvited into the room, let alone pull the curtain back.

I tried to scream again. The endotracheal tube was shoved violently back down my throat.

“Yes. I’m afraid she’s quickly moving to a complete mental disintegration. I’m going to have to move her to my facilities and start treatment immediately.”

The imposter grinned at me with Alex’s face. Completely confident, hidden behind the screen.

“This IV is nearly finished,” he spoke calmly to the unseen nurse. “Prepare another one, please. The prescription form is on the side.”

“Of course. Ahh…you do know, the weather’s getting much worse. They’re closing the roads.”

“I know. I’ll arrange suitable transportation, but I’ll need to hurry.”

“Okay. I don’t have these here, Doctor. I’ll need to go down to the pharmacy.”

The sound of retreating footsteps was cut off suddenly by the door closing. Through the haze of drugs, I knew it was a solid door. No, not just solid, that wasn’t quite right, it was a
secure
door. This place was equipped for violent inmates.

And wherever I got moved to would only be worse.

He leaned forward, the imposter with Alex’s face, and whispered in my ear.

“That was stupid. Me, for underestimating your ability and you, for trying to fight. It won’t change the outcome. I’ll take what I want from you anyway. This was your easy option—just lie there comfortably for a few minutes and let go.”

His hand squeezed a breast and flicked the nipple painfully. I wanted to struggle, but my body lay there, unable to move even within the limits of the straps that held me.

“You were enjoying it, weren’t you? Well, you won’t enjoy it next time. No more than your little spy did. But she had to die. You, I’ve got to try and keep alive. You’re my passport with your friends from the army.”

He chuckled. “When I’ve finished with you, I may let you beg me to keep you instead of handing you over. Do you think you can do that, Amber? It’s something for you to think about while you wait. What can you do for me? How are you going to persuade me not to give you to Petersen?”

The door opened behind the curtain, and he put his lips against my ear. “You wait right here for me. I’ll be back soon. I’m going to enjoy this so much.”

He stood. There was the eye-twisting distortion of his face, just like a Were change, and then Doctor Noble was smiling sadly down at me, his face the picture of professional concern.

He turned and pulled the curtain aside.

“Be extremely careful,” he said to the male nurse who’d come in. “No release of restraints. Not even the gag. She once bit someone’s finger off.”

“Ah, of course. Can I get you to sign the transfer authorization please, Doctor.” He held out a clipboard.

There was a sound of scribbling before Noble went on. “I can’t take the time to fill in all this background information. I’ll call and explain in detail to the director tomorrow. But I’m going to have to rush tonight to get her moved before the roads close.”

“I’ll pass that on.”

Noble left.

Only it couldn’t be Noble, any more than it could be Alex. He couldn’t be the rogue. He wasn’t anything like big enough to create a wolf that could produce the bite patterns we’d looked at.

Another man came in. He was wearing a security uniform. He and the nurse spoke with their voices low.

“I’m telling you, this isn’t standard treatment,” said the nurse. “I’ve never administered this stuff here. And this one, it’s too much, for too long. What’s he trying to do?”

Blurred at the edge of my vision, I could see their heads bent over the forms.

“He’s the doctor,” the guard said. “You want to get reprimanded for following his prescription or for not following it?”

“I don’t know. I mean, look at that.” His finger jabbed at something. “For fuck’s sake, she’s not a horse.”

“Not far from it.” The guard laughed. “Freaking physical nutcase. Look at her. Don’t get a body like that without serious work. So, maybe she has a super-high metabolism.”

“Yeah, and maybe she’ll have cardiac arrest when I give her this.”

“Hey! Look, buddy, we never had this conversation. I’m just doing my rounds. I see everything is normal in this room. I’m out of here.”

“Thanks a bunch,” the nurse said as the door closed again.

I struggled to make my brain work. The dosage would be high to overcome my Athanate metabolism. High enough? Whatever was in the IV was working at the moment.

I remembered burning off the effects of alcohol. I’d been wandering drunk through an alley, and had been threatened by a gang. Elethesine, the Athanate equivalent of adrenaline, had pumped me up and I’d sobered up in seconds. I needed elethesine now. I needed to get these drugs out of my system.

Diana had said anger was my key. But I couldn’t reach the anger.

No. Not quite right. She’d said anger was my key to my telergy, my paranormal mental capabilities.

I needed something else. I wasn’t like Bian, who could turn it on and off when she wanted. I needed help. I needed a trigger.

Was there just one key? Only anger?

No. I’d stirred the Athanate up without anger.

Alex. Jen. Think about kin.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

Those eyes. Jen’s depthless blue. Alex’s brightening to gold as the wolf stirred in him.

Their voices. My kin’s voices.

Alex teasing when I said I wanted to bite him. “Yeah, and? Knock yourself out, vamp.”

The feel of Jen’s tongue on my fang. “We both want this.”

My fangs throbbed. I didn’t push it back down, I welcomed it. The pleasure ran through my body. I didn’t feel so heavy. The drugs
helped
. They overcame my instinct to suppress it.

I took a full breath, slow and concentrated instead of panting with fear.

And the fog burned off like mist in the desert.

My eyes cleared. My head cleared.

Now, how the freaking hell to get out of the restraints? Houdini, I was not.

You know what you can do
, said Tara.

Images flashed through my mind.

The Were in the house at Glenmore Hills. Bound by adjustable shackles around his neck and stomach. Why?

Because it’s not worth trying to put shackles on a Were’s wrist or ankle.

The alley where I’d been ambushed by the punk street gang; my arm rippling, part-changing to wolf.

I don’t dare. I can’t control it. I can’t go wolf. I can’t black out. What if I wake up looking at a dead orderly with his throat torn out? What if I don’t wake up at all? What if I turn and betray the existence of paranormals to the rest of the world?

But there was no choice.

I concentrated on my arms, on the feel of rippling.

There was nothing.

The orderly pushed the privacy curtain all the way back out of the way of his cart with a swish.

He seemed startled that I was awake.

Arms. Change.

He bent down and studied the IV drip, his brow wrinkled in puzzlement. He made sure the tap was open and the needle was in my vein. Then he shrugged and turned back to his cart with the replacement drugs.

Arms.

I could see him looking at the drugs and forms again. He shook his head. Took a couple of the ampoules and put them in his pocket.

I couldn’t kill him. He wasn’t one of the one who had kidnapped me. He didn’t want to give me too much sedative. He was willing to go against a doctor’s orders.

But I had to change.

The wolf moved sluggishly in the depths of my mind, confused.

The flesh on my arms felt as if it was bubbling. My fingers felt bigger and softer. I couldn’t move my head to look, but I tried to follow it in my mind: the pads forming, the nails hardening, curving into claws. The wrists shrinking.

I pulled. My paws squeezed through the grip of the straps. The shock of that sensation stopped the change with my left hand still only halfway out. I had to clear my mind and start again. Slowly the rippling grew until I felt the changes and pulled my hand clear.

Everything felt so slow and heavy, but the arms went back to being human arms.

Now legs.

Too late; he was turning. He hung the new IV bag on the stand.

I wanted to snatch at him.

Wait, wait.

I lay still until he bent to check the catheter in my arm. Then I grabbed him, twisted him around and held him against me in a choke hold.

He couldn’t shout but he sure struggled hard. The restraints worked in my favor. He would’ve been able to lift me alone, but not with a gurney effectively strapped to my back. He tried desperately to get a loose finger on my hand to pry it open, but I hadn’t left any where he could get a grip. I squeezed harder on his neck until I got my message through—stop fighting if you want to breathe.

When his hands stopped scrabbling at mine, I tore the catheter out of my arm.