Cursed (21 page)

The light at Victor’s forehead dimmed into nothingness. It slid down his arms, his hands, and out through his fingertips, reversing back the way it came. Energy surged through my mind, and, with that, strength and blood in my body.

“No. Stop!” Victor screamed.

I gripped his wrists, brought my face close to his. I wanted to look right in his eyes and know he had been defeated.

“Release me at once,” Victor said.

“I don’t think so.”

Celia placed her hand over mine. Our energies mingled. I smiled down at her, feeling her connection. In that instant, I fell in love with her as completely as I had with her father.

“I’ll get you out of this.” I winked at her. She tried to wink back, but blinked with both eyes.

“Time to give you a little taste of what you have given all of us,” I said to Victor.

I imagined a capsule behind him. It appeared out of the shadows, solid and real in his mind. He backed away from it. He tried to twist his wrists from my grip, but I didn’t let go. I pushed, our combined energies too strong. The back of his leg caught on the capsule. He stumbled, tilting over the edge.

“You can’t do this to me!” Victor said.

“What’s the matter? Can’t take what you dish out?”

I shoved him backward into the capsule. His face contorted, tight and enraged. “You will pay for this!”

“You’re not in any position to threaten me.”

“Please, you can’t,” Victor pleaded.

“Too little too late, Victor. I’m giving you as much sympathy as you gave us.”

I slammed the capsule lid down, locking it. Victor screamed silently through the window, banging on the clear glass. I didn’t waste my breath telling him it wouldn’t break. I smiled down at him. There was knowledge in his eyes. Realization he was going to live his own nightmare: trapped in his mind in an immortal body.

The capsule slid silently into the blackness. I swept Celia into my arms. Hot tears slid down my face, and a relief like none that I’d ever known soared into my soul. It was peace, joy. Love.

With Celia’s help, Victor was gone forever. His body would be nothing but a vegetable, his mind trapped inside the blackness of his head. The nightmare was finally over.

“I’ll tell your daddy I saw you and that you helped me.” I put Celia back on her feet and knelt in front of her. I pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “Can you get back into your body? We have to leave here, but when I get out, I’ll wake you up. Does that sound good?”

Celia nodded, “Then can I have an ice cream?”

I flashed a grin that couldn’t be stopped. “You bet.”

Celia waved and faded from my sight. I closed my eyes, tilted my head back, and took a deep, cleansing breath. I was free.

“Katia.” A whisper. Warm breath across my cheek. Julius.

I slowly opened my eyes. His rich chestnut hair was in clumps, as though he’d run his hands through it too many times. He was at my side, his hand covering mine, forehead pressed against the back of my hand. My heart squeezed.

“I’m here,” I breathed.

He lifted his head, eyes widening. A half smile slipped onto his lips. “You’re alive.”

“Sound ... surprised.”

“I couldn’t hope to believe.”

The absence of the bands around my limbs was Heaven. I tried to move my arm, but it was way too heavy. He gently took the stint from my hand and covered the wound. I was no longer connected to Victor. Utter relief cascaded through me.

“Katia, you have to believe I didn’t want any of this for you. I tried to help you ...”

“I know.”

“I don’t deserve your understanding.”

I tried to smile. “Victor had ... Celia. Know that. Get her ... out of the capsule. She ... helped me.”

“I’ve tried, but I can’t do it. Victor ... He will kill her.”

“She will wake this time.”

He rubbed his palms over his eyes, took a shaking breath. He looked back at me, eyes glistening. “How...”

“I saw her. Spoke to her.”

Confusion clouded his eyes, but relief blew it away. He exhaled, laughing at the same time. He picked me up from the table, wrapping his arms around me. He held me tightly, breath shuddering, hands shaking. He rocked me back and forth.

A shadow reared up behind Julius. “Seth!”

A thick arm wound around Julius’s neck, the other hand at his forehead as though he were trying to twist his head off. Seth wrenched Julius away from me. I fell back on the table.

Julius clawed at Seth’s forearm, struggling for breath. His mouth opened, gasping. Seth was a head taller than Julius, his shoulders twice his width. He was a trained soldier without morals. Julius didn’t stand a chance. I balled up my thought-energy and threw it at Seth.

Nothing happened. Panic surged like a fist in my gut. I tried another hit. I wanted to use it, but my body was totally drained.

“Julius!” It was no more than a strangulated cry.

Seth grinned, looking as though he was having the time of his life. I tried to move, to get up, to help Julius, but my limbs felt like lead. I was spent, too fatigued to move. Julius’s face turned deep red. He grit his teeth, desperate for air, each moment causing him pain.

He elbowed Seth in his gut and, at the same time, smashed the back of his head into Seth’s nose. Seth grunted, loosening his hold. Julius slipped from Seth’s grasp, falling to his knees.

“Didn’t think you’d get out of this that easy, did you?” Seth asked. He gripped Julius by his shoulders and wrenched him to his feet. His mouth twisted into a deep, ugly sneer. His eyes glittered like twin jewels, as black as tar. He wrenched Julius’s arm behind his back. Julius bit out a cry.

“You’re going to tell me how to wake Victor, or I’ll kill your boyfriend and then his little girl right in front of your eyes. It’ll be fun,” Seth growled. He pushed Julius toward me.

Julius reached for the needle he’d taken from my arm and thrust it into Seth’s thigh. Turning, Julius, slamming a fist into Seth’s gut. He staggered backward, and Julius followed with a snap uppercut to Seth’s jaw.

Seth’s fist snaked out of nowhere into Julius’s midsection. Doubling over, Julius hissed, struggling to catch his breath. Seth’s left fist slammed into his jaw with a sickening crunch. Julius’s head snapped to the side, and he fell to the floor. Deep-red blood ran down the side of his face.

“Julius,” I screamed, knowing it was merely a whisper.

Seth fixed his dead eyes on me. He stalked over to me as sleek as a hungry panther looking at its prey.

I tried to hit him with another ball of thought-energy, but there was still nothing. My head was fuzzy, my body unresponsive. I couldn’t come all this way just to die now. I had defeated the madman, and I was going to die at the hands of his apprentice.

“What did you do to Victor?”

Victor looked peaceful lying on the gurney next to me. If you didn’t know better, you would think him asleep. Only I knew he was trapped inside his mind and that he would never wake.

“Everything he deserved.”

“Bitch. You will fix him right now.”

“Scared you won’t have a job?”

He slammed his fist into my cheek. My head exploded as though it had split in half. Darkness blurred my vision. A salty taste in my mouth.

Julius staggered to his feet. He swung an upper right clip into Seth’s solid jaw. Seth’s head snapped, eyes rolling back in his head. Knees sagged. He toppled, semiconscious, landing half on top of me, pinning me down. His shoulder slammed onto my stomach, forcing the air from my lungs.

I dragged my hand to my forehead. My fingers shook. Every movement was excruciating. Slow. I hardly had any control, my movements cumbersome. I peeled the wire from my forehead and placed it on Seth’s. My hand dropped. I shook all over. I was so utterly exhausted. On empty.

Darkness edged my vision. Pumping heart pounding in my ears. Julius launched at the wires on my forehead, peeling them off, and putting them on Seth. He ran behind the control. Lights dove down the tubing. Seth went rigid, eyes rolling into his skull with a long groan as he went limp. Julius pulled Seth’s body from mine and threw him to the floor.

“Katia, oh my God. Speak to me. Katia!”

I dragged in great noisy gulps of air. Gentle hands enfolded me. Julius buried his face in my hair, sobbing, kissing. A hot tear fell on my cheek, and he rubbed it away, so gently. Tenderly.

“Katia. Tell me you’re all right. Please. I can’t ... I can’t live without you. You have to live. I need you. I ... I love you.”

“Love you ... too.” A smile touched my lips. I couldn’t do anything but curl into Julius and let the tears run down my face, not caring if he saw the real me. The Katia who didn’t need to keep the hard survival shell around her. Who didn’t need to keep people away, emotionally detached, cold and hard. I let him see the me who was glad to be alive, the me he had saved from Victor, the me who was in the arms of the man I loved with all my heart.

“It’s okay. It’s over now. It’s over. Finally over,” Julius said softly while I sobbed into his chest.

Tears choked any reply. There were no words, only raw emotion and Julius’s arms around me. Eventually my sobs became hiccups and stopped. We sat there, the two of us, me in his lap, curled into his chest, his arms holding me tight. I don’t know how long we were there, and it didn’t matter. It was over. No more running, hiding, and fighting for survival. The world was just the two of us. And it was right.

Finally I stirred. “The others ...” There had to be other soldiers around. They could easily come into the room any moment and see what we’d done to Victor. I didn’t have the luxury of crying into Julius’s arms forever.

Julius nodded. “Can you stand?”

I swept my legs over the side of the bench. Julius helped me stand, but I was far from able to do it for myself. I leaned heavily, waiting for the lightheadedness to dissipate. There were bodies on the floor I recognized as the technicians that helped work on me. I frowned at Julius. “How?”

“Knocked them out with a hypodermic needle. I came prepared.” Julius gave me a weak, lopsided smile. “They’ll be out for hours.”

Anger swept through me. These people stood idly by and would happily have let me die knowing what Victor was doing to me. They had no morals. If they did this, there was no end to what else they could do. “Sleeping is too good for them. I want to make sure they don’t do this to anyone else.”

Julius stooped to unclip a gun from Seth’s side holster. He flipped his body over and retrieved a knife from the side of his boot and another gun from a shoulder holster. He handed me a gun, a grim expression on his face. “Would you like the pleasure?”

A splinter inside of me broke. I was tired of the killing, the
violence
. As much as I wanted to kill these people, neither of us was an outright murderer. There was no defense in killing these people. Fighting for survival was one thing, but I couldn’t subject him to the mental pain of knowing he’d killed someone in cold blood. “Let’s just get out of here alive. Get the authorities to clear up this mess.”

The door burst open, and a technician stopped short when he saw us and the bodies on the floor. His eyes widened before he plunged sideways and pushed a button next to the door. Lights flashed as a distant alarm sounded. Julius plowed across the room and coldcocked the man on the side of his head. The man crumpled, lifeless to the floor.

Julius wound his arm around my waist, almost picking me off my feet. “We’ve got to get out of here. Now.”

I tried to keep up with him, but he more or less carried me down the corridor. There were muffled shouts. We paused midstride, waiting to hear which way the noises traveled. Footsteps pounded, becoming louder.

Julius hauled me into a room that housed five capsules. All contained bodies. We flattened ourselves against the wall as soldiers thundered past. His arm stayed around me, for which I was grateful. I didn’t have the strength to stay on my feet. The blood loss I had suffered had zapped me of any strength I had.

I indicated the capsules, whispering in his ear, “How many?”

His face darkened, eyes hardening as he studied them. “This is just the top of the iceberg, but finding you halted his progress.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’d thought the part of the building you were in was damaged beyond repair, so he didn’t monitor that part of the factory. He’d had free reign here for years, beneath the radar. The government. Everyone. It was only when you were found that the rest of this secret facility was threatened to be discovered as well. He stopped all work, getting me to wake up his men. So far I’ve woken up fifty, but this building is riddled with rooms. I don’t know how many men he has in total. But I do know he wasn’t up to anything good.”

“Fifty!” That was staggering. Fifty men like Seth. Fifty soldiers that were unstoppable, and that was only the men Julius had woken. Who knew how many were still sleeping. “He was building an army.”

“A coup.”

“God on earth,” I said on a breath, “He really was mad.” Suddenly I ached to get out of here, to be free, leave it all behind. It was too big to take on single-handedly, and we were too weakened to try. “Do you know where Celia is?”

His eyes darkened to midnight as he nodded. We slipped out of the room and hurried down the corridor. There was a distant shout, an exclamation of discovery. “They’ve found Victor,” Julius said.

I nodded, too tired to utter a response. Julius took me down a series of corridors, each one taking us farther away from where we were. We turned into another darkened corridor, the lights coming on as we hustled along. Sounds faded the more we wound through the warren of corridors. “This area is rarely used. We should be safer here,” Julius said.

I recognized this was where I’d seen Celia. The room I’d stumbled upon. Celia was in an unimportant part of this building. Too irrelevant to be placed with the men Victor was turning into monsters.

Eventually Julius tugged me into a room. The door opened silently, and my eyes fell on the capsule. Celia. I moved over to the silent capsule, heart beating in my throat. This was her. Julius’s daughter. So alive in Victor’s mind, so helpless, so
violated
here. Sleeping. Forever.