Fatal Strike (McClouds & Friends #10)(6)

“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 f*cking somebody after she skips off and hides, the dirty little whore.” Whack. Another head-rocking slap. “But not today. Where’s your f*ck 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.”