Fatal Strike (2 page)

He had no more misadventures on the long, slow way down, but he was exhausted by the time he got back to his rough campsite, which consisted of a tarp tied over his sleeping roll and pack, a fire pit, and a small gas burner. Too tired to cook. He built a fire, chomped a protein bar without enthusiasm. He’d get scurvy if he went on like this, but foraging for edible plants did not engage his brain in the excellent way that climbing did. And all that chewing, Jesus. It made his jaw sore.

He fed wood slowly into the fire, too zonked to think. Then he felt that hot, shivery tingle on his skin again. He rose, scanning the trees that circled his clearing.

Luminous cat eyes flashed eerily in the firelight. The sounds of the night swelled as his perceptions amplified. He felt no sense of menace, just a hushed, cautious awe, but he pulled the loaded Glock 23 out of his pack all the same. It was too small a caliber for a cougar, but it was better than nothing. He’d have to shoot her right through the brow or the eye if she came at him.

God forbid it should come to that. She was so damn beautiful.

He sat slowly down again, facing her, and fed twigs into the fire. Wind sighed and tossed the treetops, driving shifting swatches of cloud across the glittering smear of uncountable stars. His eyes wanted to close so badly, but the cougar’s presence gave him that persistent little zing of adrenaline that kept them open.

The big cat was fascinated with him. She wanted to figure him out, make sense out of him.
Good luck with that.

They’d told him that depression was normal after a brain injury. God knows, PTSD flashbacks would drive anybody half bonkers. He had iron-clad excuses for everything that was happening to him. But the sex dreams in his sleep were hard enough for him to justify. If Lara started haunting him while he was awake, too . . . oh, Jesus.

That bumped him up to a whole new level of crazy.

He’d taken on the task of finding and rescuing Lara as soon as he’d been capable of functioning after the Spruce Ridge debacle. Lara was another victim of the psychic freak squad that had attacked Miles. It had been Lara’s own mother, Helga Kasyanov, who had developed psi-max, the psi-enhancing drug that augmented latent paranormal ability, thereby setting this whole mess in motion. Helga had been murdered by Rudd’s people. Miles had been the one to find the mutilated body of Joseph Kirk, Lara’s father. Chained up in his own basement.

So Lara had been orphaned, as well as abducted. It made him angry, sick, and sad, which touched off a useless but uncontrollable urge to save the princess. Too many video games in his egghead youth.

He’d tried to find Lara Kirk harder than he’d ever tried anything in his life. He’d found exactly squat. She had stayed stubbornly lost. No clues, no breaks, no hints. Just a smooth, obdurate brick wall.

It burned his ass. No one better than he knew what she’d been up against, what she might have suffered. How could a guy know that, and just take it easy, convalesce?
Sorry lady, I need some R&R to get my brain swelling down before I can rescue you from the slobbering monsters.

And why did he still give a shit at all, with his shield up? He managed not to care about anything or anyone else.

That thought stank of schizo delusion. He refused to think it.

Sleep was like a hand, pressing down hard on his head. He fought it, which left him less willpower to withstand the impulse to grope in his jacket for the plastic envelope. It held a photo, a copy of the headshot on Lara’s website. She was a sculptor.
Had been
a sculptor. He knew every piece in her online catalog. He’d studied them. Pored over them.

He stared at her haunting dark eyes, and then started cursing, low and long, picking up steam. His tantrum culminated in tossing the photo at the fire. He choked it, of course. The picture fell short, landed at the edge of the embers. The plastic envelope began to melt and twist.

He plucked it out of the coals, defeated. Waved it until the plastic solidified. Stuck it in his jacket, defeated. So much for his hissy fit. Why did he even try.

He was keeping his eyes open by brute force of will alone when the images started again, just like it had while he was climbing. Like a dream, but he was not asleep, and he could not stop them. He just watched her, moving through the guts of the big machine that housed him. She wore that gauzy, impractical white thing, like a fairy-tale princess, pale, over-the-top froth. Her hair hung long, tousled. Long, slim legs. The dress swung and fluttered as she sidled through gnashing gears, arching, bending, ducking . . . and she was inside.

Of him. While he watched, wide awake. Holy shit. His muscles contracted. Oh, man. This was so weird. So bad. Crazy bad.

In his dream, or image, or whatever it was, she was in a control room, like the bridge of a futuristic spaceship. A relic of all his late nights with the sci-fi channel, no doubt. She drifted around in the room, twirling knobs, pushing buttons. She sat in a big swivel chair that looked suspiciously like a space captain’s chair, and began typing onto a terminal that took form before his eyes
.

He started to sweat. She’d never spoken in the dreams. Not that he’d given her a chance, the way he came on. Conquering barbarian style. She hadn’t been able to do much more than whimper and gasp.

He’d left a message on his analogous mental computer only once. It had been for Nina, on that fateful night at Spruce Ridge. More a thought experiment than anything else, just to see if it would work, and he’d been privately appalled, at the time, to find that it had.

That had been his one glancing brush with practical telepathy, and he had not wanted to repeat the experience, not ever. He had enough problems. He didn’t want this to go any further. Oh please.

But the message glowed on the screen, beckoning.

where r u?

He shouldn’t answer it. He should not encourage a split-off part of his own fucked-up prefrontal cortex to talk to him. That played along with the fiction that it existed separate from his own consciousness, and it didn’t, goddamnit. It was just Miles Davenport and his own complicated baggage. No more, no less. But his response rattled out onto the screen anyway. piss off i dont want 2 play

Lara’s eyes widened, in shock. She poised her fingers over the keyboard, typed. fck u 2 And she winked out. Pissed. Gone.

He realized three things at once. One, he had a massive hard-on, again. Two, he felt like shit for being rude to her. Bad sign. Three, without him noticing, the cougar had moved in on him. A lot closer.

He grabbed the Glock, jumped up and discharged it into the sky with a shout. The cougar leaped high, and vanished into the night.

The gun report was a hammer blow to his skull. He sank to his knees, let the gun slide from stiff, shaking fingers onto the pine needles. Hid his hot face in his hands. It was time for the meds. Jesus, look at him.

Trying to chase a fucking dream away by shooting it.

L
ara’s eyes fluttered at the glare, stomach clenching.

Back in hell again. She wanted to go back to the Citadel, to her fantasy lover. Just thinking about him made her toes tighten with delight. He was the only good thing in the twisted smoking wreck of what passed for her life—and he had just slapped her away.

It hurt so much, she could barely breathe. Her dream lover had never run hot and cold on her before. He’d always been straight hot. Scalding, scorching hot, like she’d never imagined hot could be.

And now look at her, sniveling. Dissed by her own escapist sexual fantasy. How pathetic was that.

You have bigger problems, girl.
She opened her eyes and grimly faced them. She was bound to the gurney with wrist and ankle restraints, straps buckled across chest and thigh. She used to fight them. She didn’t, anymore, but Hu had a lingering mark in the shape of her teeth on the meaty part of his thumb. He took no chances.

Their faces hung over her, distorted and nightmarish. Tears flashed out, ran into her sweaty hair. She hated crying in front of these hateful bastards. Not that they gave a shit. She was nothing to them, an inanimate thing to be exploited, but still, she hated her own lack of control. Hot teardrops tickled across her temples.

She willed herself to stillness. So difficult to be dignified when flat on one’s back, strapped to a cot, stoned off her gourd. And weeping.

Today it was Hu, and Anabel, the blond bitch telepath, her usual tormenters. Anabel was always there, to follow Lara’s mind wherever it ranged when they pumped her full of their junk. Hu was enhanced with psi, too, but his abilities were focused around the function of the drug itself, not upon her.

They were using her as a guinea pig, to develop a new drug formula. To what end she was not sure, and was afraid to speculate. The effects of the current formula were scary enough as it was. It kicked her loose of the world she knew, launching her into a foggy nightmare world of shifting visions. Usually she made no sense of the visions. Anabel or one of the other telepaths was always there with her, claws sunk deep. Hanging on like a tick. Usually Anabel.

Some of the visions were recurring. Like her mute, nameless friend, the little boy with the blond hair and the raggedy pajamas, for instance. He would have been a comforting figure if he weren’t so ghostly and forlorn. Still, she’d become fond of him. She needed to care about someone, and the little boy was always there when they launched her into the formless fog. He’d become her guide, running on ahead of her, beckoning her on, gesturing and pointing until she saw the Citadel looming out of the mist.

And then she found
him.
The Citadel’s incendiary occupant.

She’d been amazed, the first time, to find that Anabel and the others couldn’t follow her inside. She was safe from her tormenters in there. And
he
was there. Her dream lover.

Not that there was anything that comforting about him, that was for sure. Comforting was not the word for the Lord of the Citadel. Mind-blowing, super-deluxe, over-the-top sexual fantasy was more like it. The masterful intensity of his come-on and his lovemaking had terrified her, at first, but she’d taken to it pretty damn fast. She’d adjusted. Wow.

She’d puzzled at first, the hows and the whys and the whats of it all, but lately, she’d given up on that. It was a gift, and she’d just go with it, accept it, enjoy it.

Or rather, cling to it like a lifeline.

She’d gotten into the Citadel today, briefly, though she hadn’t encountered its amorous lord as she usually did. She’d found the room empty, until she typed in that stupid, ill-fated message.

And got his harsh response. Ouch. It still smarted.

She’d gotten in at this morning’s injection, too. Anabel was doubly furious, having been thwarted twice.

When Lara’s eyes focused, Anabel slapped her. Forehand, backhand.
Whap, whap.
“Where the fuck did you go, you sneaky bitch? Where did you learn to block? Who taught you? Helga?”

Lara shook her head, insofar as the strap on her forehead would allow. “Didn’t,” she croaked. “Don’t know how.”

And it was true. She had no idea how to create something like that incredible dream fortress. She had no idea what the hell she was doing when they sent her on those drug trips.

No, she was trespassing in the Citadel. Not that its smoking-hot sex god inhabitant had ever objected to her visits before today. On the contrary. He’d always been happy to see her. To say the least.

“I had her for a while.” Anabel directed the words at Hu. “We were making some progress. She saw that usual weird nightmare with the sleepwalkers, and then she saw the Tokyo bomb thing, and then she shook me off.” She hung over Lara. “Where did you go?” Spittle flew, spattering Lara’s cheeks. “How the fuck do you do that?”

“Don’t remember,” Lara lied, and gasped at the stab of pain as Anabel dug savagely into her mind and raked through her memories.

“What do you get?” Hu asked. “Where was she?”

Anabel closed her eyes, brow furrowed. After a moment, she shook her head. “Usually, it feels like she’s been fucking somebody after she skips off and hides, the dirty little whore.”
Whack.
Another head-rocking slap. “But not today. Where’s your fuck buddy today, cunt? Did he blow you off?” Lara tried not to whimper as she felt Anabel tug the thought thread out, and unravel it. “Ah! I nailed it! He hurt your poor little feelings! Aw, boo hoo for you!”

Lara breathed slowly, trying to keep her mind soft, unfocused. If she stayed very detached, giving no emotional charge at all to her thoughts, Anabel couldn’t tell which threads were important enough to pick up and follow. It worked sometimes. When she was zen enough.

They said that Mother had developed this junk. A drug that enhanced a person’s psi. It was plausible. Mother had been a brilliant pharmacologist, and she’d had a deep interest in parapsychology.

But they said a lot of crazy things. That Mother had died only a couple of months ago, for instance. That her death in that fire at the research facility years ago had been faked. That she’d been alive, all these long three endless years that Lara had been mourning her.

That Dad had been murdered, too. Tortured. Cut to pieces.

Until proven contrary, she would make the blanket assumption that they were all vicious lies. Or try to, anyway.

She would not think about it. Would. Not.

What they wanted from her, she couldn’t imagine. She was just an artist. Working with images on wood and clay and metal, minding her own goddamn business. She’d never bothered anyone in her life.

These people said she had psi. She had to, or she’d be dead, they told her when she’d regained her wits, after that first terrifying episode. That was how the drug worked. It enhanced you, or it killed you.

At this point, after months in the rat hole, she was wishing it had killed her. She’d made a little over two hundred scratches on the wall for what she assumed were days, but who knew, with no clock or natural light for reference? At first, lights had switched on and off in what she assumed were twelve-hour cycles, with three small, wretched meals spaced throughout the light cycle. But when they started dosing her, they started playing with the light and food cycles, leaving her in the dark for what felt like days, or fasting until her stomach was twisted into knots. She didn’t even have a menstrual cycle for reference. After the first weeks, she hadn’t been able to choke enough food down to support that bodily process. Though her appetite had picked up quite a bit since she found the Citadel. And her mysterious sex god.

Too bad the food still sucked. When they provided it at all.

“The boss is not going to be happy,” Hu scolded. “You said you’d have her in hand by the next time he checked up on us. But her shielding is getting better. He’s going to crush us like cockroaches.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Anabel hissed back.

They talked as if she were a doll, never speaking to her directly, other than to torment or threaten. The rest of her time she spent alone in the rat hole, fighting for her sanity. Except for the occasional brief hour in the room with the razor-wire covered window that showed her the horned hill, that was her life. Psi-max flights, and the rat hole.

Until the Citadel—and
him.
She’d dubbed him the Lord of the Citadel. Since a fantasy man should have a fancy fantasy title.

Those dream visits to the Citadel had been keeping her alive.

Odd, that she would fixate on sex in her extremity. She’d never put much importance on it before. She had trouble letting go in bed, trust issues, blah blah, so sex had never caught fire with her. So messy, so complicated. She could take it or leave it. So mostly, she’d left it.

But in her dreams, there were no such inhibitions. The Lord of the Citadel was a smoldering figment of her own overheated imagination. In those dreams, she could be a princess, a siren, a goddess. No fears or insecurities or hang-ups of any kind. What a relief. She finally knew what an orgasm felt like. She’d thought that she knew, but before the Lord of the Citadel took her in hand, she’d had no idea.

She wondered if amazing sexual fantasies were a random side effect of this particular version of the drug formula. If that aspect might change, if Hu changed his drug recipe.
Please, no.
They would make billions on the stuff, just as it was. Hell, she’d buy it herself, if it was for sale. In a heartbeat. But for now, this aspect of it was her dreamy little secret. One that made choking down her food worthwhile. And washing herself. Trying to sleep, exercise, meditate. Stay alive.

And now he just wanted her gone. piss off i don’t want 2 play
.

Her ass. Rude, ungrateful bastard. Maybe they already changed the drug formula, and this was the result.

She pushed the stupid, painful thought away. The Citadel’s lord was just a wishful figment of her own imagination. He was a goddamn coping mechanism, no more. She was hurting her own freaking feelings.

And it
still
hurt. Fuck logic.

She gasped with pain, as Anabel jerked her chin around. “Tell us what you saw, bitch. Since you won’t show me.”

She shook her head again. “I don’t really remember. I wasn’t out there very long.”

Hu and Anabel exchanged glances. “You’re going to have to do better than that,” Anabel said. “The boss is coming. We need results.”

Lara shrugged. “Can’t help you,” she murmured. “Sorry.”

“You will be, you stupid whore. Very sorry.”

Lara tried not to laugh, preferring not to get slapped again. Sorrier than she was now? Really? She’d been longing for death for months now.

Her jailors had lots theories on how to mine the benefits of her gift. Their current technique was to shoot her up with a hypnotic drug, and then force her to watch taped material on whatever subject they wanted her to focus her visions around. World events; wars, troop movements, weapons development. Then they hit her with the psi-max, and Anabel took her for a spin. But even before she’d found the Citadel, her visions had been frustratingly unpredictable for their purposes. Present, past, future, all over the map. She saw a duffel bag full of explosives on a commuter train in Tokyo almost every time they dosed her. Over four hundred people dead. She’d begged them to notify the Japanese police, but they didn’t care. She tried not to think about it.

And the other vision she had with maddening regularity. Empty-eyed, shuffling people wandering through a silent urban landscape. Quiet and morose, not particularly violent, but terrifying all the same.

She saw Hu’s and Anabel’s pasts and possible futures, too. It was uncomfortable, knowing so much about the intimate histories of the people she hated. She didn’t want to understand them, or to have compassion for them. Hell with that.

Anabel unstrapped the restraints. Hu steadied her before she fell off the table. They hauled her wobbling body toward the door. Back to the rat hole. She turned to Hu. “How’s Leah?”

Hu’s face twitched. “Shut up.”

“Did she get the medical tests I recommended?” Lara persisted.

The tension in Hu’s jaw said it all.

“It’s just like I said, isn’t it?” Lara asked. “She thought it was just a little gastritis, but it’s esophageal cancer, right?”

“I said, shut up. She’s none of your damn business.”

But Lara was too stoned to act in her own best interests. When things started coming, one thing pulled another until it was a tumbling avalanche. “She doesn’t know what you do here,” she said. “You tell her you’re just a researcher, and she buys it, or pretends to. On some level, she knows what you really are. It makes her uneasy, but she stuffs it. Because she’s a nice person, you know? She actually cares about you. She deserves better than a sadistic, lying—”

“Shut . . .
up!
”
Whap.
Hu didn’t hit as hard as Anabel, but the blow smashed her lip against her teeth, and once she tasted blood, there was no way to stop the words from flying out.

“You’re poisoning her, Hu. If she stays near you, she will die. It won’t take too long, either. Want to know exactly how long?”

Anabel slammed her against the rat hole door. The blow knocked the air from her lungs, left her gasping. Anabel’s face, which would have been beautiful if it had not been so tight and sunken, leaned into hers.

“Don’t fuck with us,” she hissed. “Your life hangs by a thread.”

Then cut it, already. Set me free.
But she had no air to speak.

Hu opened the many locks on the massive door. They muscled her through it. Anabel’s shove sent Lara stumbling to her knees.

Lara coughed. Licked blood away. “I saw you, too,” she said.