Chapter Two
L orelei cowered in her cell, with her arms wrapped around her knees as she stared fearfully at the door. Even though the walls, floor, and ceiling were white, and not a speck of dust lay in the sterile environment, it was still a cell. The monster could walk in any moment and order his men to continue the torture. Hitting her. Hurting her. Drawing blood after every test. The age of every beating documented from the color of the bruises decorating her body.
They wanted something from her and they didn’t care how they got it. If this was to be her life, she didn’t know if she wanted to stay in it. She missed feeling safe. Missed living without someone watching every damn thing she did.
The hard slap of footsteps made her whimper because she knew what that noise meant. He was coming. She tried to make herself smaller. Tried to disappear in a cell that offered no place to hide. The tears started as her heart raced in fear, and she wished she could talk. If she could only say how much all the experiments hurt, maybe then he’d find compassion. Maybe he’d let her go. She opened her mouth, fully intending to say something ... but nothing would come out. Not a single little peep.
The door slid open, causing her to jump, and Dr. Costello Birsha entered.
“Your services are needed.”
She shook her head, fear flooding her body as she started to shake. Not again. Please, not again .
“It’s amusing that you think you can tell me no,” he said, not looking amused at all. He snapped his fingers and a big brutish man came in, one she hadn’t seen before, eyeing her up and down lasciviously. “Now, you’re going to demonstrate to a new client just how much your services are worth.”
Again, she shook her head. Once more, she was ignored. The brute grabbed her arm and yanked her up. Lorelei tried to pry the thick fingers off her, but they only tightened. Once more a prisoner being led to the gallows. They marched down the blindingly white hallway, like she had done a dozen times before, and the word “exit” caught her attention. She often fantasized that if she could just reach that door, she’d escape. However, she hadn’t had an opportunity in the five years she’d been held against her will. He’d made her afraid of her own shadow. At the end of the hallway, Birsha swiped his key card and the door light turned green. Right before she was dragged into a hospital room, he leaned down to talk softly in her ear.
“I know what you’re thinking.” The fire and brimstone of his breath burned the side of her face. “You’re thinking I won’t kill you, and you’d be right. But just remember there are other ways to suffer.”
His gaze flickered upward to the man squeezing her arm, advertising without words exactly what he meant. Before dread could settle in, Birsha straightened and opened the door. The big guy holding onto her yanked her forward, and she stumbled across the threshold into the medical bay.
A withered man lay on the hospital bed, with tubes embedded into various areas of his body. Monitors beeped from the machines surrounding him. An older man held his hand, with a devastated look on his face. His eyes were bloodshot. His clothes wrinkled. More than a day’s worth of whiskers peppered his chin. A few other men were stationed around the room, watching everyone carefully. Lorelei caught a glimpse of a gun holster under a jacket.
Birsha stepped forward.
“Welcome, Mr. Thorp,” he greeted. “May I present to you the healing goddess.”
The old man studied her, looking her up and down. Hope warred with skepticism. His gaze flickered a few times to the young man on the bed. Lorelei could see the love he had for the patient and her heart went out to him.
“What’s your name?” Mr. Thorp asked her.
“She has many names,” Birsha replied for her. “Eir. Ninti. Kamrusepa. Iaso. You can pick any one of them.”
Mr. Thorp leveled his gaze at her. “He has brain cancer. If you save my son, I’ll pay anything.”
She truly felt sorry for him and his son, but she just couldn’t. Not only because she couldn’t talk, but also because healing involved pain. Lots and lots of pain. When she tried to back away, the arm holding her only tightened more. In her head she screamed no, no, no , but the monster didn’t care. He stepped up close and gripped her jaw. Fingers dug into her cheeks, warning her without words what awaited if she didn’t comply. Lorelei lowered her eyes and gave a reluctant nod. The tight grip on her arm ceased, allowing her to step toward the infirmed man’s bedside. The stench of disease clung to him, leading him toward death. She estimated he only had about another week.
Taking a deep breath, she pushed the sheet aside and laid a hand on his leg. Closing her eyes, she slowly sank into the sick body. Moving through tissue. Through blood and bone. From the leg to the torso, up and up, until she reached his head. There, she discovered the tumor. It pulsed with a purpose, wanting to take the life it had infected. To devour the soul. Tentacles spread like poisonous leaches. One by one, she broke all the tendrils branching out from the mass. Burning the tumor. Pushing it out of existence. Sweat formed on her face and upper lip. Her heart thundered in her chest. When the last ember faded away, her head exploded with pain. Curing someone took a sacrifice, more specifically her sacrifice. She took the agony out of the man and made it her own. That was her curse.
Arms caught her as she collapsed. Although the last thing she wanted was to languish in anyone’s embrace, she didn’t have the strength to break free. Through the narrowed slits of her eyes, she stared into the shocked face of the elder Mr. Thorp as he cradled her. She patted his hand as a moment passed between them. Despite the pain ready to pull her under, she was happy he had his son back.
Then she was yanked out of his grip by the brute. She heard a faint protest from Mr. Thorp, but by that time she couldn’t stop the tumble into oblivion.
****
F or the next few days , tormenting agony ripped through her body. She wanted to scream, but even that was denied, so the screaming reverberated in her head. The more severe the sickness, the longer it took to recover. At some point she wished for death.
Then little by little, over the course of days, the sickness purged from her system.
On the fifth day, Lorelei opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling. A tray of food slid through the pass in the door, but she ignored it. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she wished for it all to end. How long did it take for a person to starve to death? Time blurred. Perhaps days passed, she wasn’t sure, until Birsha entered the room and yanked her out of bed.
“My dear,” he said. A snake-oil salesman trying to sell that he was a kind man. “I was informed you’re not eating. Now, you know the rules. You can not starve yourself. There are tests we need to perform on you if we’re going to learn what makes you special. So, I’ll give you one more chance. Eat your food, or I’ll have someone strap you down and force-feed you.”
When she said nothing, he grabbed a chunk of hair, yanking her head back. “Do you understand?” he snarled.
She nodded as much as she could, but he seemed to have felt it because he loosened his grip. Tears rolled down her cheeks. He smiled, although his eyes remained cold and unforgiving.
“See? How hard was that?”
Her hand shook as she wiped the tears off her face. The small flap at the bottom of the door opened, and a tray of food slid in. Heeding the monster’s warning, she knelt and methodically ate everything. As much as she hated to admit it, he was right. Every bite she took, a resolve deepened. She could no longer just sit in this cell, slowly losing her mind. She had to escape, because it was blatantly clear that no one knew about the horrors of Noble Vale. Sink or swim, it was escape or die trying.
She paced the small room, counting her steps over and over. Trying to figure out how she was going to get out of there. When she sat down on her thin mattress, the bed squeaked, and her heart skipped a beat as an idea washed over her. The camera in the corner of the room pretty much kept an eye on her twenty-four seven, but it had a small blind spot at the foot of the bed. The usual spot she cowered in whenever she wanted a moment of peace.
Did she have enough courage to try a prison break?
“You’re stronger than you know.” The last words her father said to her flashed through her mind. It had been right before the monster entered their lives. Her parents thought Dr. Birsha could help her understand the so-called gift she’d been born with. They trusted him, and he led them all into hell.
Easing off the bed, she made sure not to look at the surveillance camera. The stare felt through the lens burned her skin and she sat down in her corner to escape what she was doing. Carefully, she reached under the bed and felt the metal bars holding up the thin mattress. There was a long rod in the center with smaller rods angling on each side. Wiggling one after another, the third one slightly moved, indicating it was loose. She banged it with her palm. It moved some more. Over and over, she hit it, until it finally broke free. Lorelei caught it before it could fall and make noise. Slowly, she pulled the metal bar toward her and slid it behind her, under the waist band of her white scrub pants.
Then she waited. She’d wait forever if she had to.
That evening, when the luminosity dimmed to indicate lights out would be in thirty minutes, she waited for the nurse to arrive and administer a shot to help her sleep. The low ambiance would work to her advantage. Her plan was simple. Attack the nurse, get the key card, and then run like hell. Hopefully, the guard behind the cameras wouldn’t be looking her way.
The door opened, but instead of the night nurse coming in with her medicine cart, the beast walked in. His large girth blocked the doorway as he entered. The receding hairline met both sideburns, which formed into a scraggly beard, framing his face like a picture. Deep-set eyes stared at her with a fanatical glee that scared her. He wasn’t there to do anything but hurt her.
“Lookie, lookie,” he goaded. “I spy a pretty little thing that can’t talk. But I wonder if I can make you scream?”
She pushed to her feet and glanced at the camera watching over them. Now she hoped someone was watching.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” he said dismissively. “The bird’s eye is temporarily disabled, giving me time to fuck your tight little body.”
This was bad. This was very bad. She shook her head no, making it very clear she didn’t want that. He only laughed and closed the door behind him. The keypad turned red, indicating the lock had engaged. The only way to open it now was with the key card hanging off his scrub top.
“Go ahead,” he taunted, accurately predicting what she was thinking. “Try it.”
Lorelei glanced back up at the camera as fear filled her, but when the brute only grinned, she knew that avenue of help was truly disabled, just as he said. The man licked his lips like a typical movie bad guy, and she knew she’d rather be dead than raped by this man. It was either him or her, and this was a situation that was going to turn ugly really quick.
He reached out for her, and she knocked his hand away. Anger lit up his mean, beady eyes and in the next second, he backhanded her across her face. Lorelei crashed into the wall, falling to her knees as pain exploded through her skull.
“Violence is never the answer, except when it’s violence against you. Then you must do anything and everything to survive.”
With her heart pounding in her chest, Lorelei knew she had one chance, so she had to get this right. Slowly, she pushed to her feet and reached behind her to grab the metal rod. Could she hurt him? Could she actually hurt another human being? Emboldened by his actions, he took another step closer, and she knew without a shadow of a doubt that she would defend her life with everything she had.
Then her time was up and he lunged for her. At the same time, she brought up the rod and plunged it into an eye socket. Surprise lit up his remaining eye a moment before life left it. She had to quickly move to the side as he tumbled forward. The adrenaline crashed through her, causing her stomach to rebel. She leaned over and vomited up the meal she had eaten. Then reality set in and she knew she had to run. This was the only chance she was going to get.
As she yanked the key card off his scrub top, the jingle of keys in his pants pocket let her know she had a means to escape the area quickly. She couldn’t help but look at the rod protruding from his eye socket, keeping his head elevated at an odd angle, and she almost vomited again. Grimacing at the bad taste remaining in her mouth, she pushed down her emotions. She’d fall apart later. When she held the key card up to the plate, the green light popped up, allowing her to leave the room. No alarm went off.
Knowing it could be only a matter of moments until she was discovered, she hurried through the sterile corridors toward the exit. Only a skeleton crew worked the evening shift and she prayed to any god listening that she would avoid another person. Whatever good luck she managed to catch answered her prayer and she hit the exit door with force, stumbling out into the night. The perimeter had a gate but the key card served her once more. Then she was out.
Freedom. She vowed never to take it for granted again.
Hitting the fob, car lights blinked, telling her which vehicle had belonged to that man. Running toward it, she ignored the fact that she wasn’t wearing shoes. The pain from stepping on rocks didn’t even register.
Just as she was ready to turn on the engine, the passenger door yanked open and a very large man slid into the seat. Fear exploded through her. She couldn’t go back. She might have defended her life by killing a man, but she’d rather die than return to that cell. As she fumbled with the car handle to open in a desperate move to escape, the man reached over and caught her wrist. Instinct and desperation caused her to fight back, thrashing around to free herself.
Why? Why couldn’t luck be on her side for once?
“I’m not going to hurt you!” the man muttered. “You can’t take this car to escape. They’ll track you. Listen to me, Lorelei!”
Her name slipping from his tongue jolted her, and his words slowly penetrated the terror robbing her of sanity. Then she took a closer look at the man. It was hard to tell his eye color in the dark. Short hair. Bold, masculine features. Tattoos on one side of his neck. He wore a leather jacket, jeans, and black boots. By his look alone, he wasn’t an employee.
“My name is Aera Cross, and I’ve come to rescue you. Although you managed that very well on your own.”
Suddenly, the alarm sounded, and lights flooded the perimeter. For a moment, she froze. Panic overrode any logical thought. Then Cross left the car and ran around to the driver’s side. Before she could blink, he took her hand and yanked her out. He looked down at her feet and frowned.
“Where’re your shoes, woman? Actually, never mind. We must get away from here.”
He picked her up bridal style and ran into the darkness. She threw her arms around his neck and got a closer look. He wasn’t classically handsome, but there was something dark and rugged about him. Who was this man? How did he know her? It seemed foolish to trust him, but he was leading her away from the monsters so he couldn’t be all bad. Could he?
They ran over a hill to the road below, where a motorcycle waited. Suddenly, the leather jacket and riding boots made sense. Once they reached the bike, he placed her on her feet and plucked a helmet off the backrest to slip it on her head. He hopped on the machine and looked pointedly at her.
“Get on,” he barked. “Don’t burn your feet.”
She’d never ridden a motorcycle before, but it seemed straightforward. Sliding onto the back seat, she wrapped her arms around him and was careful where she placed her feet. The engine roared to life, and then they screamed off into the night.