Tenants and Tyrants (Book 5 of The Warden series) (19 page)

“You know how sometimes, you think you know somebody, but you find out something that completely changes the way you look at them. Even though it’s just one tiny detail of their whole personality, you feel like you never even knew them to begin with. Sometimes it’s not even something that they lied about, it’s just something they didn’t bring up, and since you never asked, it was never illuminated.”

“You mean like when I found out Daniel had the power to kill people with his eyes?”

“Yeah, just like that.” Heaton started walking again. Ethan wondered if Heaton even realized he hadn’t actually answered his question.

“It took a bit of getting used to, but my image of Daniel didn’t really change that much. He’s still Daniel. As you said, Daniel’s Daniel.”

“Yes, he is.”

“So, what changed your image of him?”

“My image is changing Ethan, and I don’t think that Daniel’s going to like it. Even if he accepts it, we’ll never be the same. He and I have something so perfect that friendship doesn’t quite cut it.”

“You’re like brothers, so what could break brothers.”

“Not break. That’s the worst of out. We would never break. We would just chip away slowly until there was nothing recognizable left. I honestly think I would rather have him hate me and not know why, than to let what we have together turn into a degrading sitcom that stayed on the air one season too long.”

Ethan caught the smile at the end of his thought, but Heaton was serious. “Are you seriously considering, transferring?” Heaton nodded. “Why? What could be so bad?”

Heaton sighed and slapped him on the back. “Let’s talk about this tomorrow. I don’t want to ruin your impressions of me tonight.” He walked ahead not giving any further information. Ethan hung back wondering what Heaton was hiding about himself. After Daniel’s surprises, Ethan had assumed that there were no other bombs to drop.

31

Cori knew she was gushing about the evening to people who had no idea what it was like to spend the majority of two years without music, television, or computers, but she couldn’t help it. She at least wanted them to understand that their trek into the unknown, was not simply from the whim of a spoiled princess. The dress was probably working against her.

“There’s really no need to apologize for the strange manner of our arrival.” The lead songstress named Jill told her. “Mr. Calabria compensated us very well for the unusual circumstances surrounding this appearance.”

Cori laughed. “I bet he did. He’s pretty tight when it comes to money, but he does know how to spend it on the finer things.”

Jill reached for her plastic case, on the floor. Cori saw that she already had a case of microphones in her right hand, so she picked it up for her. “Let me.” Jill seemed flustered by the loss of her case. “Don’t let the dress fool you, I’m pretty familiar with heavy lifting.”

The singer smiled warmly at her and started heading out of the gym. The guards had already escorted the other band members to the docks so it was just her and Jill. They headed around to the elevators by the main foyer. “So, what do you do here exactly?”

Cori laughed. “In general, or me specifically?”

“Whichever is the least classified.”

“I’m not sure I can answer either, but I am essentially the runner up to the man who will eventually run this place. When I’m not having my ass kicked by my superior, I do a little gardening. When I’m not doing that, I’m usually getting myself into trouble.”

“I see.” Jill came to a stop before entering the hall to the docks.

“I don’t mean to of course, but I just seem to make the right choices at the wrong times.”

“I’m familiar with the feeling.” Jill tried to smile, but her face lost all cheerfulness for a half second. “Was that your boyfriend you were dancing with most of the night?”

“Husband.” Cori flapped her ring finger proudly.

“He loves you very much.”

Cori could feel her cheeks blush. “Yeah, we’ve come a long way. Conflict works for us, I guess.”

“Whatever it takes?” Jill smiled, but her eyes still didn’t meet the demand. “Well, I best get back to my group.” She reached out her hand, and Cori automatically shook it.

“Thank you, again.” Cori could feel a tingling sensation in her hand, similar to what she had felt with Cleos. She didn’t see any images this time, but she suddenly felt profoundly sorry for this woman. She wanted to hold her in her arms, and cry, prey, and scream for her.

She released her hand and backed away not wanting to feel it anymore. The feeling slowly dissipated. Cori looked at her hand as if it were the cause for the strange connection. Her rings shimmered though no particular light source was available to cause it.

Shit.

Jill cleared her throat. Cori looked back at her and her outstretched hand. “My case?”

“Huh,” Cori looked down at the plastic case. “Oh, I’m sorry.” She handed it backed suddenly realizing that the poor woman hadn’t even intended to shake her hand. “Have a safe trip back. Maybe if all goes well you can come back again.”

Jill stared at her a moment. She didn’t even attempt to smile this time. “God willing,” she said and backed away to head down the hall.

Cori made her way toward the exit. She stopped at her locker and picked up her coat. Stepping out into the cold artic night air, was somehow a relief. She didn’t know what had just happened, but she got the impression that it was not entirely unrelated to the fact that her rings were made from gold medallions once worn by a wizard.

She looked at the rings sorrowfully. She didn’t want to take them off, but she knew that this situation probably wasn’t the first time she had experienced their special brand of power reversal. She hadn’t questioned why she was able to resist Efrat’s electricity, or how she was able to open her eyes to Cleos’s mind, but she had no choice but to acknowledge the incidents now.

She gripped one of the rings tightly and pulled. The ring started to slip from her finger, but her hand slipped away. She tried again, but she couldn’t get a grip. She tried the others, but none of the rings would let her get a grip.

Shit.

Her heart started to pound, and she tried not to think of them as an entity. She had already had a sorrow demon living on her, she didn’t need something else wielding power of its own over her. She took a deep breath and resigned herself to reporting the incident to Danato the minute she got home.

She made it another three steps before the images overtook her mind. At first they were all a blur like they had been with Cleos, but she stopped and closed her eyes, and the images refocused. They collected like photographs, then like a projector the photos had movement, and finally the voices overlapped connecting the emotions to the words, the words to the voices, and the voices to the faces.

All at once she knew. In a hair split second, she understood the pain and sorrow in Jill’s eyes as if it were her own. She understood why the elementals had been brought here under General Clark’s supervision. She even understood why Jill had worked so hard to get to this prison. She was here to kill someone.

32

Dr. Jillian Frank stared at her clipboard. She was certain the answers to life, the universe, and everything could be determined if she could only keep proper notes. Why was there no date on the sample from September? Had she suddenly decided that dates weren’t important that day?

Jill put dates on everything she did. Blood samples, tissue samples, signatures, medications, and even her lunch. How did it occur to her at one singular point in time, not to do what she did every damn day, a dozen times a day.

She sighed and scratched the month and year down beside the blood sample. Was that good enough? Probably. Was it good enough for her fastidious brain? No.

Jill tossed aside her clipboard as her project guinea pigs came in the door. The lab wasn’t large, but it was well stocked. Every wall held vital instrumentation and shelving for whatever she needed. On one side of the long room were hospital beds and one the other were several long metal tables that she used for microscopes, bacterial culturing, viral agents, and the one she was behind was just used for paperwork and occasionally lunch, which grossed out more than one of her staff.

“Dr. Jill,” Efrat called as he shoved through the glass doors leading into the lab. “Your lab rats have arrived.” Efrat Alston was one of her favorite subjects. His enthusiasm for the project had made it worth her while. He was young, handsome, and according to General Clark the smartest man in his unit. He had originally trained to be a navy seal, but Clark had snagged him for this private project. Efrat was more than happy at the prospect of becoming a “superhero.”

Paul Hirem followed Efrat in. He was one of her more interesting subjects. He was a contradiction to everything he appeared to be. His Indian lineage made him seem foreign, but his Kentucky upraising, left him with a smooth slow drawl. He gave her a nod before finding his way to his usual bed. He hardly ever said two words to her at a time, but in recent weeks he had started opening up to her. She actually had the privilege of hearing him laugh in her presence.

Garrett Malone, who the other’s decided to nick name “Garr” for reasons that were still unclear to her, arrived with his arm around Remi Steele. Upon meeting Remi, Jill had asked if her mother was a fan of Pierce Brosnan. She got a chuckle from Efrat, but Remi’s faced donned confusion.

Garr and Remi were both young, and had only entered the project for the money. To her knowledge they didn’t know each other before, but that hadn’t stopped them from jumping head first into a romantic relationship.

Jill envied their ignorant youth. She had already been married and divorced, and that was just her serious relationships. She wouldn’t call herself a slut, but her work left her with few dating options. Either find a man who is likely going to cheat on you when he realizes you have no time for him, or stick to the bar scene and get an honest lay when you find someone clean and safe enough to take home.

“Okay, take your places. Who wants to be first?”

“Oh, us,” Remi raised her hand. “We want to catch the matinee.”

“Okay,” Jill agreed smiling at her. She grabbed a tray and started with her first. Remi squealed as she started with the blood samples. Garr dutifully held her hand through it. Jill was of course disgusted by the attention he paid to her. She hated weak women. Especially, squealing ones.

Never the less, she did comment on how sweet Garr was. Jill may have been emotionally stunted, but she was a good actress. She knew just what everyone wanted to hear. She had even learned to flirt with her male patients, so they would put on a brave front when she brought out the big needles. She hadn’t quite figured out how to do that for the women.

As she was taking the blood draw, she checked Remi’s scar on her forearm. She had healed well from the surgery, and for the most part like everyone, her motor functions had not been affected. Which for known medicine was impossible, but to Jill and her underground experiments, that was a fairly normal result.

Jill had never thought of herself as an evil mad scientist, but the Dr. Moreau comparison for these experiments was not completely off base. She rationalized that first medicine must push beyond legal and moral limitations; then it can find where the line for pragmatism should be drawn. After all, most of medicines first advancements were done on cadavers, and at the time that was considered gruesome and barbarous.

“Ouch,” Remi drew out the word, as Jill took tissue samples from internal organs. She couldn’t blame the girl for that. Internal samples felt about as pleasant as a pap smear. There really wasn’t anyway to make that feel better. After saliva samples, and a quick behind the curtain vaginal sample that only applied to Remi, she gave her a container and instructed her to fill it to the line with urine.

She moved onto Garr next and he did his best not to wince at the many pokes and prods that he endured at her hands. She couldn’t help but smile at how his chest puffed up when Remi re-entered the room. Men were still as much peacocks as women. It was a wonder to her how people actually managed to stay together after they realized how many lies they told each other in the early stages of their relationship.

Jill never lied to her friends, boyfriends, or one night stands. She wasn’t afraid to ask for what she wanted. It was surprising to her how often that didn’t work. Men claimed that a woman looking for a one night stand, only needed to ask, but that wasn’t true. Most men were put off by her forwardness. Even if she did flat out offer sex, the men tended to stall or make excuses as if she had offended their delicate balance of predator-prey. Honesty was never the best policy in relationships.

After Garr and Remi had bounded out for their early movie, Jill moved her rolling cart over between Efrat and Hirem. Hirem was deep into his magazine, while Efrat watched the muted television that had long since gotten stuck on the retro rerun station. “Oh goody, the kids are gone. Maybe we can have adult conversation time,” she quipped. Hirem smiled from behind his magazine. His smile was almost as rare as his laugh, but he had been more liberal with that as well recently.