CHAPTER TEN #2
Sam cried out in frustration. Then she strode to the video system and hit the power button, stopping the tape. She stood there, trembling in rage.
Hemmer was allied with an evil entity that had given him demonic power.
And that video…she wished she hadn’t seen it.
She reminded herself it had only been a boy in a cage, but the reminder didn’t work. Because that boy had been broken…
When they’d taken that video, had he been their prisoner for months? A few years? Or had it already been decades?
How long had they kept him in there?
Had that been Moray’s hand?
And in that single moment, she knew that she’d get Hemmer the page of illusion if pressed. She would not allow Maclean to suffer again.
But they weren’t at that impasse yet.
Sam hurried over to the dead demons. They were beginning to disintegrate and she gathered up her weapons.
The dagger went into a thigh strap under her skirt, the disk into a case strapped around her waist beneath her tank top.
His office was adjacent to the vault. Maybe she could find the code to get inside, if she were really lucky. She doubted she had a lot of time.
“I told ye to stay away from Hemmer.”
Sam hadn’t even felt his presence. She jerked, looking up. Maclean stood in the media room doorway, as still as a statue, his face unusually pale. “How long have you been there?”
“A moment,” he said harshly.
She stared. She couldn’t tell if he knew what had just happened with the video. She prayed that was not the case. “You know what they say. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Why are you here?”
“Hemmer is dangerous. I said it before and I’m saying it again.”
She stood. “No kidding. In fact, he happens to have some superbad friends who’ve given him some superbad powers. What brings you down to this neck of the woods, Maclean?”
“I knew ye were here.”
She stared sharply. “Were you spying on me?”
He shrugged.
She was grim. If he had the kind of visual telepathy she was coming to believe he had, he could lurk on her at any time. It was unnerving. “I know you didn’t come down here to rescue me.”
“Yer a tough girl. Ye don’t need me to rescue ye.”
“Even tough girls can use a helping hand from time to time,” she snapped.
“Anyway, your timing is perfect. Hemmer vanished—into time. Yep, he has the power. Isn’t that great?
” She started toward him. He didn’t move.
She halted in front of him. “I’m asking you for a big, fat favor.
I want to get inside the vault before he returns. ”
His gaze held hers. “It’s a trap.”
“He knew I was going to jack his chain and wrap it around his scummy throat. He left because he was afraid.”
“He’s not afraid of ye. It’s a trap.” His stare was unwavering now.
She seized his wrist and said, “Open the vault for me.” But the moment she held on to him, she recalled every heated moment of the night before, much to her dismay.
He stared at her, his eyes changing, too. They became a darker gray, warming.
She dropped her hold. “Let’s go. Time’s a-wasting.”
He seized her hand now. “Who’s afraid…of who?”
Her insides vanished. “Last night was a bad idea.”
He slowly smiled. “Really? Forget the vault.”
Unbelievably, she was tempted. She wet her lips and shook her head. “The vault, Maclean. We can debate the merits of our having sex another time.”
He released her. Whirling, he started toward the vault. She hurried to keep up.
He reached for the lever, pausing. Sam glanced at his face. It was hard and set. He was angry, but she wasn’t sure why. Again, she wondered if he knew about Hemmer’s video.
If he had to put an effort into disarming the security system and the locks, she couldn’t tell. He pushed down hard on the lever and the steel door opened. He then stepped back. “Go ahead, Sam.” He was disapproving.
Sam ignored the tone of his voice. She stepped past him quickly, excited now to find the evil in the vault. Once inside, she paused. Maclean remained in the doorway. She realized she didn’t feel a thing. Softly, she cursed. “I’m not sensing it. Can you help me out here, Maclean?”
He stepped into the vault reluctantly. As he did so, his blunt fingers went to the collar of his polo shirt, adjusting it as if he were warm. It crossed her mind that he often acted as if his shirt collars were constricting.
He nodded behind her. “It’s over there.”
Sam turned. As she did, she felt a finger of black malice touch her and she shivered. Suddenly she knew it had been waiting for her, before making its presence known. But she still didn’t know what “it” was.
Maclean walked over to a dark painting of a family gathered at a small table in a cottage. He lifted it from its hook.
Sam hurried over. An inscription was engraved on the cement wall behind the painting, consisting of hieroglyphics that glowed, as if burning embers. “What is that?”
Ian didn’t answer her. Sam realized he had paled. “Ian?”
“I’ve seen this before,” he said grimly.
Laughter sounded.
As one, Sam and Ian whirled. Hemmer stood in the doorway, grinning at them. He simply shut the vault door in their faces. The locks clicked.
Ian inhaled sharply.
Sam glanced at him and saw that he was very white now. She didn’t get it. Ian could leap—or so he said. He could not be locked inside a vault.
“Ian? Hemmer’s obviously toying with us.”
He ripped his collar open, breathing hard.
It took Sam a split second to realize he was having some kind of attack. “Do you have asthma?” she asked.
He didn’t answer, choking. He was turning red now.
“Ian!” She put her arm around him, alarmed. “Is it asthma?”
“No…I can’t breathe!” He went down to his knees. Sweat streaked his brow and temples. He gasped for air.
He was either claustrophobic or having a panic attack. She knelt with him, keeping her arm around him. “Ian, there’s plenty of air in here. And we’re not locked in. You can leap.”
He looked at her. His eyes were wide with panic.
Sam was stunned. He was truly afraid…
And then he simply vanished into thin air.
But she heard his screams.
ON HIS BACK, he stared up at the ceiling of his library, moaning uncontrollably.
Tears streamed. There was so much pain. He couldn’t bear it.
He had to remind himself that he wasn’t a child now or a prisoner.
He had to consciously recall that the pain would pass.
It felt like he was broken in a thousand bits and pieces.
It felt like he was dying. He’d leapt before, when there hadn’t been a choice.
Or when a desperate and reckless urgency had outweighed his fear of the leap.
But just then, he wanted to die. Not for the first time, he prayed he would finally find release.
“Sir!” Gerard knelt beside him.
He felt a finger of relief. Even as he moaned and shuddered, racked by the torment of broken bones and shattered limbs, he was vaguely aware of Gerard’s presence, of a cooling compress, of pills being pushed into his mouth.
He closed his eyes tightly. The leap through space and time was horrific.
Traveling at that velocity turned a man inside out.
It felt as if his every limb was being ripped from each socket, as if the skin was being torn from his body, as if his muscles were shredding, the bones cracking apart and then splintering into a million pieces.
His organs felt like balloons, overfilled and then bursting.
He’d begged the gods for mercy.
No one had been able to hear him, of course. He’d begged them for mercy long ago, too, but silently, so his tormentors wouldn’t hear him.
The gods had ignored those pleas, too. Because they’d wanted him alive. To this day, he couldn’t comprehend why.
The pain was finally easing.
“Sir, is that any better?” Gerard asked softly.
Tears moistened his face. He had the ability now to swipe at them. He hated himself.
But the pain had receded to mere tremors.
He hadn’t been flayed until he was more dead than alive, or electrocuted, or ripped apart on a rack.
He wasn’t in a dungeon, a cellar or a cage.
He was in his twenty-million-dollar Park Avenue town home.
He lay on a beautiful Oriental rug surrounded by works of art and antiques, with his majordomo kneeling beside him.
“It’s better,” Ian gasped. Then he rolled onto his stomach and vomited.
Then, somehow, he sat up, with Gerard’s help.
It always shocked him to find out that his body wasn’t broken after all, that he could still function.
Gerard pressed a glass to his lips. He swallowed aged scotch whiskey.
As he did, the panic and fear finally rolled away, as the ocean did at low tide. He breathed deeply.
Sam.
Ian stiffened in disbelief. He’d left her alone in the vault. “Gerard!” He struggled to stand; Gerard helped him.
“Sir, you should rest. Whatever possessed you to leap? You cannot withstand the reminder!”
He met Gerard’s concerned gaze. “Bring my car around. Now.”
He should leap back to her. It would take less than a second.
He simply wasn’t brave enough.
SAM WAS in disbelief.
Ian had leapt into time, leaving her a prisoner in the vault!
And Hemmer could come back at any time!
She would have laughed, because it was so absurd, so unbelievable, for him to abandon her that way, except that nothing that had just happened was funny. He had panicked.
In that moment, there was absolute comprehension. Ian Maclean came across as an arrogant self-centered jerk, at once wealthy, seductive and powerful. Most people would think he had the world at his fingertips. He sauntered about the city as if he had no cares.
It was a facade.
He’d just become unglued by being locked in a vault, when he had the power to leap through time and space and free himself.
Of course he had. They’d put him in a cage.
That much she knew. They had probably locked him up a hundred different ways.
Being locked in the vault had triggered reactions he couldn’t control.