Hunting the Shadows Read online

  She needed to stay awake.

  “I can’t stop him if you make me sleep. He’s going to kill another.” She shuddered, crying out as the guard’s hands curled around her arms and pulled her stiff body forward. “Please don’t.”

  Agony tore her breath away.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re delusional,” Rick murmured, gesturing for the guard to move her toward the bed.

  Rick didn’t think her abilities could get through the mental barriers they’d created around her room to contain them. It was easier to think that they could control her than deal with the truth.

  “People are dying. Why won’t you listen?”

  “You’re hearing and seeing things that don’t exist. And you wonder why we keep you here.” He snickered softly, a sound she hated. “Your ridiculous accusations are going to get someone hurt one of these days. You need to work harder on distinguishing reality from nightmares.”

  The guard nudged her forward, pushing her onto the mattress. She turned her face away when she felt the sting of the needle, swallowing the lump in her throat. The pills she could hide under her tongue and then spit out, but there was nothing she could do against the needles.

  Rick shifted his gaze to the guard. “You may go.”

  “You don’t know what you’ve done,” she whispered, the sound hollow.

  “I assure you, I know exactly what I’m doing.” Rick reached for her chart and jotted something down. “You’ll sleep better now and you need your energy for tomorrow.”

  Turning her head, she glared at him. “You’ll never stop them.”

  “Them? The voices? Amy, we’ve been over this. Your room is protected with the new upgrades. Nothing comes in. Nothing goes out. You need to stop these baseless accusations.”

  She pressed her lips together. Even now, the thoughts of others snuck in through their so-called “upgrades.”

  She could hear them, each one a loud annoyance.

  “Every little pill is necessary. Not being able to leave is for my protection. I’ve heard it before.” She sighed. He didn’t care about her. She was his patient. He’d inherited her case years ago and was the most frequent presence in her life. “When will it be enough?”

  “You’re not right in the head and you aren’t doing yourself any favor by refusing treatment. I can’t help you if you fight me.” His tone was hard and dismissive. “Talk to me about your dreams, Amy.”

  Her eyelids were getting heavy, but she blinked them open. If she let her eyes close, she wouldn’t be able to stay awake. “I don’t want to talk about them.”

  Not with him.

  When he reached to touch her hand, she jerked back, almost expecting to see blisters. “Don’t touch me.”

  “Fine.” The bite in the word made her glance up. She wasn’t fooled into thinking he would drop the conversation. “We can do this in Testing tomorrow. I’m not the bad guy. I want to get to the bottom of your nightmares as much as you want them to stop. Don’t you want to get better?”

  More than anything. She wanted to go outside, to know what it’d be like to walk in the sun. Aside from a few areas within the compound, she’d never stepped foot onto grass, let alone been able to actually socialize with others.

  No one wanted anything to do with her.

  All she could do was watch the others interact through the safe distance of her window on the second floor. What would it be like to talk to them? She would do anything for a chance to.

  She was lonely. She could lie to herself as much as she wanted to and say that she was fine and didn’t care, but at the end of the day, she was still locked in this room. A room she’d been brought to over twenty years ago.

  Because she was “crazy” and not fit be around others.

  “I’m trying to help you but I can’t when you fight me. Wouldn’t you rather tell me than Dare? He’s joining us tomorrow in the lab and we both know he doesn’t like it when you keep things from us. I can’t run interference if you don’t let me in.”

  She’d never known why Dare had taken an interest in her. Whenever she was in Testing, he was there, working her mind until she didn’t know who she was anymore. If she had any doubt about her sanity, after the sessions in the lab she knew she straddled a perilous line. The Enforcer’s sick fascination in pushing her to the breaking point stole her humanity.

  “We’ll talk tomorrow. Sleep now.”

  Amy barely heard him. The drugs had gotten their claws into her. As dizziness spun through her, she turned on her side. It was like freefalling from a high, sharp cliff into nothing. Exhaustion took her with a stealth that always knocked her off guard. Her eyes closed and she felt the heavy weight of Rick’s hand in her hair, stroking the strands away from her forehead.

  Sleep came in the form of memories.

  The woman was dead. She knew because she’d watched Leila’s death a week ago, but it was hard to remember when her dreams were so vivid.

  The whore was alone. Amy shuddered at the whisper in her mind.

  Leila. The woman had her back to him, not understanding the danger she was in. They never did, not until it was too late.

  Did she really think she could leave? That she could get free of this hell when he couldn’t?

  She was mistaken.

  He’d stood in the shadows for years watching her, wanting her. He wasn’t her type. She’d made that clear the few times he’d asked her out. Funny, she’d fuck anything as long as it had a penis and yet, he wasn’t good enough.

  Whore.

  She’d made him feel like a fool. She’d laughed at him. But he would laugh when her blood spilled.

  Lifting his hand, he stared at it as it shook. Her life was strong, flaring bright against the psychic energy in her aura. He could almost sense it reaching out to him, brushing against his skin. The hunger hit him hard, a hunger that food would never satisfy. He could barely feel anymore—except the rage, dark and haunting.

  She would help him, if only for a little while.

  She had to. He was empty inside, cold. She would warm him again. It would never be enough to cure him, but he could hold on to humanity, for a little while longer at least.

  She wouldn’t see his attack. Literally. He’d blind her, his psychic ability striking out and stripping her of her senses. She wouldn’t see him. Wouldn’t be able to fight back with her own abilities. In the end, all he would smell was the sweet scent of blood permeating the air.

  Her terror excited him, more than the bared flesh of her body. He slit her throat, tearing through the physical boundaries so that he could tap that deep reservoir of her life energy. It spilled free, cool and refreshing. Starved, anemic cells sucked it in, greedy for more.

  Blisters bubbled against his palm where he’d pressed his hand to the side of her face, helping the infusion process. Leila’s blood stained his skin, the personnel identification, double helix tattoo at his wrist covered in it.

  More…

  Amy couldn’t break free of the memory, as helpless as she’d been the first time he killed the woman. The swirls of his psychic energy would imprint on the victim’s skin, invisible to all but her. A mark that was more like a signature than anything. She fought against the force of his hunger, against the raw arousal that violated her. In the end, she’d find another piece of her soul ripped away, replaced by a blackened stain that would never be erased.

  When she did manage to get away, she woke with a rattling gasp. She shot up in bed, just in time to see the shadow of a man slip out the door.

  Chapter Three

  “You’re back.”

  J.C. fought free of the astral world, clinging to those two words. He hovered between the living and the dead, painfully drawing gasps of oxygen into his lungs. His heart began to pound, slowly pumping life into
his body.

  That’d been too close. Stefan’s attack had been severe enough to stop his heart, sending him into the darkness and straight into Dare’s playground. He’d barely escaped. He could still feel the Enforcer’s touch, an imprint that was branded on his soul. The monsters nearly had him. If the Council found him guilty, Dare would kill him and then J.C. would never escape the nightmares the Enforcer could create there.

  “I was worried. I thought maybe you were gone.”

  At the sound of the woman’s voice, he sighed inwardly. He couldn’t put his shields up to block her.

  He could feel the woman, a presence that solidified within his mind. It made him uncomfortable knowing that another was inside his head. A stranger who had access to all his secrets. Until he figured out who the hell she was, there was no way he wanted her in his head. Especially if she was the one selling out information to the Council.

  His head pounded as though someone had taken a sledgehammer to it, but under the circumstances, it was nothing to complain about.

  “I’m not a spy,” she whispered.

  She would make an ideal one. She could rip information right from his brain without the Council having to do anything. The question was who was she? As far as he knew, no telepath existed among the agents.

  Tentatively, he asked, “How are you speaking to me?”

  “You’re a low grade telepath. You don’t have enough telepathic ability to register on any scale, but you have enough for me to actually communicate with you,” she answered. “Otherwise, you’d be able to hear me, but not respond back.”

  It was part of his job to catalogue the various abilities among the thirty-two agents and children living at the Centre, not counting all the workers. There were no true telepaths. Telepathy was a volatile ability and those with it had never survived past the age of four.

  “What do you want with me?”

  “I don’t have anyone else to go to. You need to convince Broderick to plead your case. I have information you need to know about the Psychic Vampire. Please, don’t shut me out.”

  Pressure built in J.C.’s chest, making it hard to breathe. They had given the name to the murderer because he was going after the psychics, draining them of their life.

  “What do you know?” Remorse and the heaviness of Leila’s death weighed his heart. “How do you know about the deaths?”

  “I know because I’m linked to the killer. If you don’t listen to me, J.C., your friends are going to continue to die.” She whispered the words, the sound broken, making him wonder if she was close to losing control.

  Fragile.

  “Prove it. What do you know about the Psychic Vampire?”

  There was a pause, a flutter. Somehow, the move spoke more of nervousness than anything else. “The knife he uses isn’t military issue. The blade is curved with an edge of obsidian. He also has a tattoo on his wrist… A double helix.”

  J.C. mused over those points. All of the psychics had similar tattoos. It was based on their identification code, their case number imbedded within. That meant the killer was one of them. Whether bred for the taste of death, or molded into a killer, he was part of the Shadow Ops.

  J.C. didn’t know what was worse, thinking that this monster was created because of the actions of the Council, or that it was a friend.

  “What identification number? Could you tell?”

  “Sorry, no. I was a bit preoccupied by all the blood.”

  Damn. “Who are you?”

  “I’m just another case in someone’s file cabinet. I have to go. Someone’s coming.”

  Like a figment of his imagination she was gone, leaving him alone to his thoughts.

  Although he found his eyelids ridiculously heavy, J.C. lifted them. He found himself in the sterile Medical unit which made up the north wing of the Centre, the smell of antiseptics strong.

  “It’s about time you woke. How do you feel?”

  He turned his head to find Dr. Mackenzie Black watching him. She moved to his side, pressing lightly to his stomach. He sucked in a breath against the heat that radiated from her touch, her energy healing a particularly dark and nasty bruise covering his skin. He watched as the color of his skin faded from black and purple back to normal.

  “What happened? I feel like the shit someone scraped off the bottom of their shoe.”

  “Lovely comparison.” Her lips twitched. She slid her hand up his arm to press her fingers to his pulse. “You and Stefan happened.”

  He tried to sit up but the muscles in his arms tightened, shaking violently until he fell back onto the table with a muttered curse. When she steadied him, he felt like a fool needing her help. With each brush of her skilled fingers over his skin, his aches lessened and the headache that pounded behind his eyes turned to a dull throb.

  He studied her as she fussed over his tired, worn body. “What did Stefan do to me?”

  He saw the loyalty to Stefan in her gaze. No matter if she disagreed with Stefan’s assessment, she would do what he wanted. The two were inseparable. It was a bond J.C.’d never understood.

  Years ago, he’d been part of that close group…it felt like an eternity since they all had been friends.

  “Damn it, Mackenzie, tell me.” J.C. scrubbed his hand over his face.

  He began to pull off electrodes that were attached to him, easing off the bed. His feet touched the tiles and pain pulsed up to his fingertips, making them tingle. Her hands were on his shoulders in an instant, holding him down when a burst of silver and black spilled into his vision.

  “Don’t move. I’m serious, J.C.,” Mackenzie snapped. “You can’t handle another seizure right now. Why do you always insist on pushing the limits? Don’t you think you should take it easy considering I’ve spent the last five hours keeping you alive?” She trailed off with a frustrated shake of her head, her lips pursed into a sharp line.

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, concentrating on easing the tension in his body. While Mackenzie set about performing various tests, studying his reflexes and taking vials of blood, he stared off at the wall.

  “This pissing contest is going to get one of you killed. I’m getting tired of patching you guys up.”

  He snorted out a laugh. “Spoken like a woman. There’s more to it than that.”

  “He used his ability on you, J.C. I don’t fucking care if there’s more to it. It’s been over ten years. You two need to grow the hell up.”

  Ten years since Stefan had tried to kill him when he was sixteen. There’d been so much damage that J.C. had spent weeks in Medical recovering. Instead of dealing with what had happened, Stefan ran away, returning six months later with newly acquired tattoos. But something had died that day of the attack, something they could never get back. Stefan was different. Colder. A stranger. More intent on his training than ever.

  Some things could never be forgiven.

  “Not to sound ungrateful, but why am I still alive?” Lifting a hand, J.C. tested his fingers, ensuring they still moved and that he wasn’t imagining the tingling…the numbness.

  “Because I’m a doctor and I excel at what I do.”

  He stared at the blood that stained her green scrubs. His blood. “You’ll have drained yourself healing me for nothing if the Council decides to kill me.”

  Mackenzie shook her head. When she put her hands on his chest his breathing eased, and the tension in his lungs disappeared. “Like I said, I’m a doctor. I took an oath.”

  She walked to a tray of equipment. With a muttered curse, she whirled back around on him. “Tell me that you murdered those men, J.C. Tell me that your actions were callous and that you weren’t trying to shut down the program and get the kids out. You tell me that I’m wrong and then I’ll consider not doing my job.”

  He shook his head. “Of course not.�
�� He’d messed things up and his actions got too many people killed. Including a woman he’d cared about. A woman he was supposed to protect.

  “Fine then, that’s settled. There are some who don’t trust you and think you’ve gone rogue, but there are some of us who’ll always have your back, J.C. No matter what stupid stunt you pull. You should have told us what you were planning. We would have helped you.”

  “Then we’d all be on trial.”

  He pushed away from the table. As good as new, he thought bitterly. Just in time for judgment day.

  Through the glass wall, he watched Broderick’s approach, flanked by Stefan and three other guards. J.C. squared his shoulders, gaze level on the men as they stepped inside.

  “The Council has come to a decision.” Broderick lifted his hand and gestured toward J.C. Two of the guards stepped forward. “The guards will return you to your cell until tomorrow morning. You’ve been charged with treason and sentenced to re-programming with Ashton.”

  * * *

  Madness was a slick and seductive master, luring Amy with the promise of relief. It whispered at the edges of her mind, filling her thoughts with things she didn’t have the right to want. Like freedom or feeling the touch of another without worrying it would shatter her mind.

  Freedom. She couldn’t fathom what it’d be like. She’d never stepped outside the Centre before. Never felt the wind against her skin or the sand under her feet unless she slipped into someone else’s mind.

  That was her reality.

  Rick’s fingers brushed against her forehead, the touch briefly jarring her from the voices in her head. She didn’t pull away as he pressed a fallen electrode back to her temple, but she wanted to. Instinct lifted the small hairs at the base of her neck, the air all around her charged by the force of the thoughts of others.

  “Amy, I thought we had an understanding that we wouldn’t have another repeat of our last session.”

  She looked away from the two-way mirror, avoiding eye contact with the prisoner on the other side.

  “I can’t.” Her voice shook as she forced the words out. “Please, don’t make me do this.”