Chapter 38
The station swirled with noise and movement, the most activity I’d seen since I started. Fluorescent lights buzzed, casting a clinical glow over the sterile walls and long halls of flat carpet. The air smelled of antiseptic and magic.
Angel strode ahead of us, leading the way into the building with a purposeful, though resigned, stride.
Wade kept to my side, a silent but steadying force.
That he’d said no to booting me from the team meant a lot.
If my gut wasn’t doing a dance of anxiety on spin dry, I might have tried to make light talk with him to ease the tension.
But the weight of Ezra’s anger hung between all of us, or maybe it clung to me as though it were a phantom dagger biting deep.
Angel’s clenched jaw, tight shoulders, and silence made me worry.
I longed to ask if he was okay. If we were okay.
But the words stuck in my throat. My heart pounded hard at the thought of him walking away.
Would he hate me now that he was tied to me?
A spook. Ezra had spat the word as if it were a curse.
Angel led us down through the station, to an area of labs I had yet to tour, and toward a door at the end that read Morgue.
Panic slammed into me with enough force to suck the air out of the room, or at least out of my lungs.
I stopped, gasping for breath as the world around me narrowed.
It wasn’t the first morgue I’d ever visited, nor would it be the last, but the memory of my recent imprisonment at the hospital came back in a wave of chills and the urge to vomit.
The fluorescent lights flickered, their buzz growing louder, more insistent. The walls closed in, the sterile white turning gray, then black at the edges of my vision. I could hear the voices again. Whispering, murmuring, overlapping in a cacophony of sound.
“Help.”
“I don’t want to die.”
“Don’t hurt me.”
I stumbled, heart racing, each beat a thunderous echo in my ears, falling to my knees as the air thinned and my lungs squeezed tight. The voices grew louder, more desperate, and I could feel them tugging at the edges of my mind like a thousand tiny claws, tearing me apart.
“Jude!” Wade called, distant, like he was shouting through water.
His hands gripped my shoulders, steadying me, but I couldn’t focus on him, or even the snapping chill his touch flung at me.
I couldn’t focus on anything except the voices and the cold, creeping dread that wrapped around me like a shroud.
“Angel!” Wade called again; his tone urgent. “Shit. Breathe, Jude. Come on, man. You’re okay. You’re okay.”
But I couldn’t breathe.
The world around me shifted into the hospital morgue.
My left wrist was cuffed to the metal table, which was bolted to the floor.
The voices were everywhere: inside me, around me, pulling me under.
I could see the morgue in my mind, the rows of steel drawers, the cold, lifeless bodies waiting for someone to claim them.
The tables were filled with bodies; uncovered, unmoving.
Only I could feel their pain, their fear, their desperation, their rage at my failure.
I tugged on my wrist, trying to get free and escape the room, the voices, or even just the cuff, but it cut into me, spilling blood that painted the floor with crimson spatters to create spots of color burning through my vision.
A chill crawled into my bones as if a thousand slugs crawled across my skin, delivering icy bites to drain me dry.
Bodies never bothered me before. Not until finding myself in the hospital morgue, staring at bodies stitched back together after an autopsy, their eyes open, glaring at me as if I’d been the one to steal their lives.
Gaping mouths filled with soundless screams, and there I was, stuck, cuffed to the table, heart beating so hard I feared it would burst.
Your fault!
Why didn’t you save us?
Monster!
The doors to the mortuary coolers rattled, the metal banging and drowning out the voices that turned to shrieks, maybe even my own. I tucked my head to my knees, the world sparkling with pops of color mixed with inky blackness, a warning that I was about to pass out. I couldn’t breathe.
“Jude.” Angel’s voice broke through the chaos, sharp and commanding.
His hands were on my face, warm and grounding, forcing me to look at him, though I couldn’t see him.
His magic rolled over me as if he could stave off the nightmare memory with willpower alone, but I was drowning in terror, memories, and power I couldn’t control.
“Baby, please. Look at me. Breathe. Just breathe. Let me help.”
I tried. I really did. But the air wouldn’t come, and the voices wouldn’t stop. “I can’t,” I choked out, every bit of air feeling as if it were forced through a broken straw before entering my lungs. “I can’t.”
“You can,” he commanded. “I’m here. You’re here. With me. With Wade. You’re safe. No one can hurt you. Let me in. Please, baby, you’re safe.”
Safe. The word echoed through my mind like a lifeline in the storm. I clung to it and to him.
“I’m here, baby. Remember, you’re my mate. Focus on me. You’re not alone.”
I struggled to draw air into my lungs, his handsome face emerging through the folds of my overlaid memory right in front of me. “Angel,” I wheezed, focusing on his moody brown eyes glowing through the memory, instead of the rising voices.
“I’m here. Breathe, baby.” He brushed his thumbs over my cheeks, a small, steady rhythm that matched the cadence of his voice. The walls of the hospital dissolved around me as I realized I had hallucinated at a level I’d never experienced before.
“In,” he said, his tone calm but insistent. “One. Two. Three. Out. There you go. Again. In...” We were at the SED precinct, not the hospital.
I followed his lead, lungs tight and heart racing as the voices continued. “They are so loud,” I whispered. Were we surrounded by a thousand dead I couldn’t feel? Or was I really going mad? “Don’t make me go back there.”
“Where?” Wade asked.
“Focus on me. Not them. I’m right here.”
“Hospital,” I whispered.
“No hospital,” Angel promised.
“What the hell did they do to him at the hospital?”
“Variance testing,” Angel said grimly.
“That was a PTSD attack,” Wade said.
“Yes,” Angel agreed.
“What the hell kind of testing do they do on SVs?” Wade asked.
“You don’t want to know,” Angel said.
“Mad at me?” I gasped out the question, needing to know if there was a reason to continue breathing.
How had he become everything to me in such a short time?
I barely knew him, and yet longed to learn every detail of his life and live every moment I had left with him.
“Please, don’t hate me. I don’t know why this is happening. ”
“Never, baby. Jude, breathe. Let me hold you. Focus on me.”
I sank into Angel’s arms, burying my face in the crook of his shoulder and sighing as his scent eased the strain of my lungs and I could finally suck in air.
The voices faded, their whispers growing quieter, more distant, until they were gone.
The world around me came back into focus with sterile walls, buzzing lights, the faint smells of antiseptic and magic, and Angel—wrapped around me, spreading his warmth to stave off the bitter cold of my power, his expression a mix of concern and determination.
“They locked me in the hospital morgue for hours,” I whispered, having tried to bury the memory but finding it kept coming back. “Cuffed to the table. Alone.” Everything I’d experienced had been a dream or a hallucination. At least, that’s what I told myself over and over again.
“You’re safe now,” Angel said.
Was I? Would I ever be again? I’d been enraged when they first left me there.
Demanding to be freed. Calling out their inhumane treatment.
The first hour had been fine. Then I’d tried to ease the boredom by examining the corpse on the table I was bound to.
An older, white male, who seemed to have died from a bullet to the chest. Murder, or accident?
I’d spent a while looking over what I could of the wound and the man, his obvious autopsy. But had no answers.
Hours passed. I’d gone without food, water, or even a bathroom break.
Which had been the worst. That sort of pain and embarrassment had begun to unravel my narrow hold on my control.
In the end, I’d pissed myself. Not due to fear—at least not that I could recall—only being unable to hold back the pain anymore.
The voices had risen to a deafening volume.
Had the doors moved? Or was that in my imagination? I’d thought I’d gone mad.
I couldn’t remember how long I’d spent locked in there. Hours? Days? I’d passed out after screaming myself hoarse and woken up in the mental ward, my heart racing at the idea of being dragged back down to the morgue.
“Let me see if we can get us moved to an interview room. No reason he needs to look at the other remains. At least, not right now,” Wade said.
“Sorry,” I said. Fuck, I was useless like this. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“It’s called trauma, and you have nothing to apologize for,” Angel assured me. His hands cradled my face, keeping my focus on him. “You’re okay. You’re safe. I’m here.”
“Lame superpower number eight billion and one comes with a free side of crippling existential dread. What a bargain.” My legs wobbled like jelly and my heart raced, but the world seeped back in with each breath.
I heard Wade wander away, but kept my forehead pressed to Angel’s, soaking in his warmth and calm.
If this was what it meant to have a shifter mate, I could get used to being pampered.