Echo Into Darkness: Book 2 in The Echo Saga (Teen Paranormal Romance) (25 page)

I slipped the bag over my head. The inside smelled of mold and cat pee. The thick fabric blocked out any clue as to my surroundings. I shook like a leaf. Wherever they were taking me, Connor was there, too. I had to keep a cool head, figure out where we were. Find a way to get us out.

A hand latched onto my elbow and guided me out of the SUV. I canvassed my surroundings by listening. Our footsteps landed on smooth concrete. Car doors opened and closed, sending hollow echoes against walls in a closed-in space. I guessed we were in a parking garage.

A bell rang, the doors of an elevator swished open and then swished closed behind us. The floor pressed against my feet as we rose. My stomach pitched each time we stopped. The door opened on various floors. Bodies shuffled on and off. I thought for sure one of them would ask about the shivering girl with a bag over her head. Nobody said a word.

A new sense of defeat found me. Were blindfolded girls so common that nobody thought anything of it? Or was everyone afraid to offer help?

The elevator stopped one last time and Jaxon—at least I think it was him—led me down a corridor and into a room. Bright overhead light broke through the fabric. The smell of antiseptic burned my nose. My ears pricked at the sound of metal objects skimming against a metal tray, and I sensed that I was in some sort of doctor's office.

My pulse raced erratically. "What's going on?" I reached to pull off the bag but someone intercepted my hand.

"Sit," Jaxon said. He angled me into a hard chair. "We'll take the bag off in a minute."

"This is number 293?" asked a voice I hadn't heard yet that night.

"That's her," my captor replied.

"Wow."

"Enough staring. When can we pick her up?"

"Give me an hour."

"What's happening? What are you going to do?" Rough hands held my wrists against the arms of the chair. Someone rolled up the sleeve of my blouse.

"Hold her still," the new voice said.

I felt a prick on my shoulder. The cloth bag slid off my head. Before my eyes adjusted to the light, my lids closed and I slipped into darkness.

*******

I stirred, semi-conscious, under a heavy blanket. I was weighed down with the need to sleep and if my cement-laden limbs were any measure, I needed about twelve more hours of it.

I nestled the blanket to my chin, willing myself to drift back into a dreamless void. It was no use. An itchy spot on the back of my wrist nagged for my attention, and my head throbbed with such intensity, it jarred my eyelids. With each pulse, images crowbarred their way into my gray-blank mind: Jaxon unbuttoning my blouse. Connor telling me to run. The Witch's Castle.

My eyes flew open. In one motion, I swept the blanket aside and sprang out of bed. For one, beautiful second, I thought I was back in my bedroom. A swift glance at my surroundings made my heart plunge.

This bedroom was painted soft yellow. Lightweight curtains hung over tall windows that filled the wall. A plush chair, the kind you'd curl up in to recover from the flu, or from a friend's funeral, sat on an ornate rug. A door next to the bed led to a bathroom.

Any resemblance to niceness, to normalcy, was erased by the framed paintings on the walls: a girl with a monarch butterfly pasted over her mouth seemed to hide unspeakable secrets behind her desolate eyes; men and women modeled unnatural poses with marionette strings leading from their limbs to an unseen controller. One picture showed nothing but rows and rows of chains, some rusted, some polished, all unbroken.

I did not remember anything after the pinprick in my arm. The gray daylight streaming into the room told me I had slept through the night. My suitcase sat on a low table. Everything I had packed the day before was there except for my cell phone. I tried the bedroom door but found it locked from the outside.
No problem
, I thought,
I'll unlock it myself
, and I shoved my hand into the wood.

Instead of plunging through the door and to the other side, my fingers hit the solid surface and folded.

"Ouch." I shook out my stubbed fingers.

I tried to go through the door again with my fist but bruised my knuckles when they smacked into the wood. What was up? I should have felt Mutila energy, too, but I wasn't picking any up.

"Weird," I said. Or maybe it wasn't. My ability never worked well when I was frightened.

I went to the window and looked down. My stomach flipped. Ten feet or two hundred, it was all the same to me, but I guessed I was at least twenty stories up.

The building sat near the edge of a river. On the near shore, I spotted a small ferry made for carrying cars across the water. My mind rolled back to the magazine article that had featured Keenan. Feller Industries was located on a private island in the Columbia River upriver from Portland. I bet that was where I was now. We would have used that ferry last night, but I had been so alone in my misery, I'd given up trying to process every bump in the road, every unfamiliar sound.

Far below, a tugboat chugged through the river's choppy brown waves.

"Up here! Help! Help!" I slapped the glass in time with my cry for help.

My voice echoed through the bedroom. It was unlikely that anyone could see or hear me from the river, much less understand that I was being held against my will.

Aside from Carina, nobody knew what had happened to me. In a futuristic laboratory, one hundred sixty years away, Carina would be at the portal controls, frantically searching for Connor's auric essence. His father, Mr. McCabe, would no doubt be at her side.

"Carina," I called out. "Can you hear me?" I set my intention on connecting with her. That's how time-jumping worked: you gathered your focus to a pinpoint and set it on the person or place you wanted to go. That allowed the portal to find you, if anyone was looking, and they would be.

I held this intention for as long as I could. No column of light materialized in my room.

Absentmindedly, I scratched my wrist and winced. The skin was red and dotted with tiny blisters, like I'd gotten a bad case of poison ivy. I went through my suitcase again, looking for anything I could use to get me out of there. No luck. I hadn't packed with escaping in mind.

I was betting that Connor was somewhere in the building. I blanched at what might be happening to him, and before panic made my head spin, I set my mind to small, simple matters.

I still wore my clothes from yesterday. My pants were muddy from the hike and my shirt stunk with adrenaline and sweat. I pulled my blouse over my head, and the fabric brushed against something papery on my left shoulder blade.

Reaching back, I felt a square of gauze taped to my skin. I didn't remember getting cut and could not imagine why I needed a bandage. Carefully, I peeled the tape away and checked myself in the mirror.

"What the--?" A monarch butterfly tattoo stared back at me.

This had to be a sick joke. Connor and Manny had called me Butterfly with love and adoration, and now someone had marred my skin without my permission.

Tears sprung to my eyes. "No," I ordered my reflection. "You will not cry. You've lived in gang territory. You stood up against drug dealers when they wouldn't let you walk to school. You will not let these people get to you."

The tattoo was scabby and oozed clear fluid. I replaced the gauze and checked myself over. I didn't find any other out-of-place markings.

I finished dressing and heard the deadbolt click. Jaxon stood in the doorway, rail-straight. His eyes drifted onto mine, lazy and possessive.

"About time you woke up. Did you sleep well, Princess?"

A depth of hatred that I had never experienced until that moment made me lunge for him. Before my fists could land, he grabbed me by the wrists.

"I trusted you! How could you do this to me?" I yelled.

"Oh, settle down. You were so desperate for a friend you would have sold your soul if I asked you to.
Oh Jaxon
," he imitated in a high voice, "
nobody understands me but you.
"

He freed my wrists.

"I never said that. I never said…" I stopped because what was the use in arguing? My blood steamed. I rubbed the red circles where his fingers had gripped me and concentrated on driving white-hot electricity into my palms.

He leaned against the wall, his arms loosely crossed. "You know what Connor once told me? He was convinced I had power that I could develop if I worked hard enough.
It's the ultimate rush,
he said,
moving objects with your mind, or levitating for the first time
. He was wrong.
This
is the ultimate rush. Handing you over to the Mutila. Wait, I take that back. It was the look on his face when I told him we had you."

I jabbed my palm forward and waited for the bolt to blast him in the stomach. He flinched and his smile faltered, but the electric charge never materialized. I tried again.

"Don't waste your time, Princess."

My face heated. What was going on? "Connor will get us out of here. He's stronger than all of you."

Jaxon laughed, hard. "His Highness's superpowers aren't working so well right now. If you want to do your prince a favor, you'll keep your mouth shut. Keenan thinks he's nothing more than a low-grade psychic."

I read the scheming in his eyes. "And what if I tell Keenan the truth?"

"Go right ahead. See what Keenan does to him and carry that around for the rest of your life. Connor is here because of you, and what happens to him next is up to you." He leaned in close enough that his breath left condensation on my cheek. "Have you ever heard Connor scream? You will if Keenan finds out about his abilities. I wouldn't mind hearing it myself, but I have other plans for him." The corner of his mouth twitched. "How do you like the tat? That was my idea. The monarch is the Mutila's symbol, and you know how much I love ink on a girl."

He turned down the hallway, expecting me to follow.

"Mr. McCabe is going to kill you for what you've done," I yelled after him.

Jaxon huffed. "The portal can't find you here. There is no knight on a white horse coming to your rescue. You are property of the Mutila now, and the sooner you accept that, the better."

Chapter 30

I kept up with Jaxon's clipped pace. To keep from falling to pieces, I memorized my surroundings.
A half dozen doors in this hallway, a corridor to the left.
Connor and I might use this knowledge to escape Keenan's tower.

The hallway opened to a wide-open living space. Opulent artwork hung on white walls. White furniture sat on white wall-to-wall carpeting. I'd seen this space before, pictured in the financial magazine. I was in Keenan's penthouse. I made a mental note of the elevator door on the far wall.

The wall nearest me was covered with what must have been a hundred photographs, all showing Keenan hugging and shaking hands with various people. Some of them were celebrities. One of them had run for mayor recently. All of them found a way to discreetly flash the upside down peace sign. If what Gianna said was true, I was looking at a Mutila Hall of Fame.

Keenan was waiting for me. "Good morning. You're looking well." He said this without an ounce of sarcasm. The psychotic glint in his eyes was gone, replaced by stone cold calm.

"I want to see Connor now," I said, trembling. Hearing Keenan's voice again reminded me how easily he had sent Mr. Crane into the woods with his soldiers. How little human life meant to him.

"You will. I guarantee it," he answered.

"What does that mean? What have you done to him?"

"Every time you ask, you will prolong the reunion." He noticed my incessant scratching. "Jaxon, get her some ointment and a cuff." Jaxon exited the room.

"The itching should go away in a day or two," Keenan explained. "Your body isn't used to the chip we inserted under your skin."

I jerked my fingernails away from the raw patch. "Chip?"

"It sends an electromagnetic pulse through your system to prevent, shall we say, unwanted outbursts?"

My mouth fell open. "You cut off my ability."

"The chip ensures you won't give us any trouble."

What a sad irony, that the gift I once hated was gone when I needed it most.

Jaxon returned with a tube of ointment. He tossed it at me. "Smear that on your wrist," he commanded.

It was a common anti-itch remedy. I spread a gob over the red area. The ointment stung on the open blisters, but the irritation eased.

Next, Jaxon held out a metal cuff. "Give me your arm."

"No."

The look Keenan gave me was a silent reminder that my resistance was pointless and my attitude was not appreciated.

I extended my wrist and Jaxon clasped a metal cuff over the chip. The cuff was about two inches wide and the color of tarnished silver. It was heavy, like it was made from the same iron you'd find on prison bars.

"Good girl," Keenan said. "You'll notice a tingling in your arm. I understand it's bothersome but not painful. Am I right?"

"Yes," I answered obediently.