Snap, Crackle ..., Page 3

Hunter turned to look around and sidestepped a sudden shift in energy. He pivoted to stare at the darkness around him. “What do you want?” he cried out. No voice, no answer. Nothing was more perturbed than he expected it to be. He studied the silence around him in the darkness, looking for an answer.

  “Who are you?” he called out. And again nothing. Frowning, he slipped off to the side and waited and watched, and, when there was nothing, he waited longer. Determined to win this waiting game, he waited more and then another ten minutes beyond that. Then he noted a gentleness of an energy separation, and something small and black moved toward him. An animal. A voice reached into his mind.

  Is she okay?

  He couldn’t see what he was looking at or what was talking to him, but he answered readily enough. Yes.

  Good. Keep her that way.

  And it disappeared. Was that the stale black energy that he’d sensed? No, this was loving energy. The other was not.

  What the hell had that been? Still Hunter had a sense of danger, of old energy dispersing, as if a hunter had moved on. Much out there was unexplainable. Change was happening. And he didn’t understand at all what was going on here. It unnerved him, but it also pissed him off.

  “You shouldn’t hunt for an innocent woman like that,” he yelled into the darkness. The response was almost like a mindless laughter or a sound of mockery, and then another voice, a different voice, crept to him through the darkness.

  “Whatever you think of her,” came that voice, “an innocent young woman, she is not.”

  Just like that, the dark cloud cleared up, and a bright star shone in the sky above, lighting Hunter’s way. Absolutely nothing was around him, nothing to see or to feel. Whatever had been here was now gone. Only the remnants of the voice remained and a sense of warning that, whoever Beth was, she wasn’t what she appeared to be.

  *

  Hours later Hunter and Stefan stepped back from the sickbed, as Hunter looked down at the sleeping woman. “Do you think it’s safe to leave her alone?”

  “No,” Stefan said. “We’ll need to set up a camouflage.”

  The room had big windows, only one interior door in and out, yet the en suite bathroom had another window.

  “I’ll work on the security,” Hunter murmured. He shifted, so he could set up an energy field all around the outside.

  At that, Stefan placed a hand on Hunter’s arm. “Dr. Maddy needs access in and out.”

  He gasped and said, “Right. Shit. So how will we do that?”

  “We’ll figure it out.”

  Hunter nodded and continued with the work, knowing Dr. Maddy and Stefan would tweak the field as needed, and then Hunter stepped outside, searching the darkness all around them. He’d already sent out feelers and alerts to see just what was following Beth. Something weird pulsed in the woods, but he couldn’t figure it out. Energy, yes, but then everything was energy. If somebody could harness the actual soul of the trees, that energy field would be so vast that nobody could get through it. Thankfully, so far in life, that hadn’t come to pass.

  As Hunter stepped back inside, he looked at Celina’s worried face. “I didn’t see anything out there.”

  She relaxed slightly and nodded. “I want to go to sleep, but I’m worried about her,” she said. “We need to clean the wound, and I know Stefan is working on it, but she’s a mess,” she said frankly.

  “In what way?”

  “Her stress level, her muscles.” She tilted her head. “Even though she wore boots, her feet are injured. She’s badly bruised and scratched all over. It’s like she has been on the run forever.”

  “My understanding was just for a couple days, just since she got shot,” he asked cautiously.

  Celina shrugged. “I can only tell you what I see, and I think she’s been on the run for years. Stopping to heal, then maybe getting 70 percent back and moving on.”

  He nodded, then eyed the bedroom doorway with a different viewpoint. Stefan was in there even now, and Hunter saw a blue glow coming from the room. “It’s amazing what he can do.”

  “Maddy is helping. Besides, it’s also amazing what you can do,” Celina added.

  He laughed. “I’m utilizing a lot of energy to source what’s out there. I need to drop and recharge.”

  She nodded and said, “Go ahead to your room. We’ve got this.”

  He smiled, gave her a gentle kiss on the cheek, and said, “It’ll be fine.” He turned and headed off to bed. If he could catch a few hours of rest himself, he would be in a whole different state tomorrow. As he drifted off to sleep, he couldn’t help but wonder about a woman who had been on the run for as long as she had. The big question loomed: What was she running from?

  Chapter 3

  Beth woke up with a start, her gaze darting around the room, struggling to understand where she was and what woke her. She was in a small room, a nice room, except for the weird energies floating around her. She shifted to see better, sending shards of pain down her body. She lay here, trembling for a long moment, hearing a female voice in her head say, Be still.

  A sense of admonishment was in the tone, as well as care. Beth did as she was asked, but she didn’t know who had spoken or where Beth was. She thought she was at Stefan’s, but … panic stepped in. She threw back her covers and stood. The motion itself forced her to lean against the wall, as the pain once again shafted through her. She had to leave. The inner sense was overwhelming. She must go.

  Beth raced toward the window and looked out. The darkness was outside. Mindless black energy. No feel to it, nothing positive or negative, just there, staring at her, always hunting her. She shuddered and looked for her clothes, only now realizing she was nude. Nothing here to wear, except for the old bloodstained things she had had on before. She struggled to get into them, even as she heard somebody moving on the other side of the door. She froze, afraid they would come in. She waited in the darkness, studying the latch on the window to see if she could open it. She knew she could.

  She used the bathroom, got herself a drink of water. When she stepped back into the bedroom, she looked around with a sense of sadness that she had to leave, but, if she didn’t, it would get that much worse. She headed to the window and unlatched it. Even as she pushed it open, it slammed shut with a hard force that she hadn’t expected. She cried out, and suddenly her bedroom door opened.

  Hunter stood there, glaring at her.

  She held her hand to her mouth, backing away. “Am I a prisoner?” she cried out. This was the worst possible outcome. She’d been a prisoner before—never again.

  Immediately the look on his face changed, as he came forward, his hands out, palms up. “No, you’re not.”

  “But I can’t leave.”

  “You can leave,” he said, “when you’re better.”

  “But that’s a when,” she murmured, staring at him, her heart still slamming against her ribs. “Which means I am a prisoner.”

  “You’re safe here,” he said, motioning at the bed. “You need to lie down and to keep healing.”

  “I want to leave,” she said. “You can’t keep me against my will.”

  He hesitated and then gave a firm shake to his head. “No, not tonight.”

  “So, I am a prisoner,” she cried out, her worst fears coming true.

  “No,” he said.

  “How can it not be?” she asked, daring him to argue.

  “This is best for you, for now,” he said. “Please get back into bed and heal.”

  She shook her head slowly. “And if I refuse?”

  He said, “Look at you. You’re dripping blood everywhere again.”

  Surprised, she looked down at her wounded side and winced to see that blood running down her leg and even now dripping onto the floor. “Damn,” she said, wavering on her feet.

  He raced toward her to hold her upright.

  She looked up at him. “I don’t want to be a prisoner ever again.”

  “You won’t be,” he said. “I promise.” He
picked her up, swung her off her feet, and carried her to the bathroom to sit on the counter.

  Once back there, she felt rather than sensed him standing beside her, as he checked her wound, applying pressure to slow the bleeding. He quickly changed out her dressing, before sitting back to stare at her.

  “I’m staying,” she said. “For a while.”

  “You are, indeed,” he said.

  She studied him in the darkness. “Why do you care?”

  “You came here for help. Stefan is helping you. I won’t have you run off on him.”

  She winced at that. “So, you’re doing it for Stefan’s sake.”

  “Maybe,” he said, scooping her up and walking her to the bed where he gently laid her back down. “is there any other reason I should?”

  Her back stiffened, and she shrugged. “No.” She rolled over, shifting uneasily with her wound. Finally she got comfortable, and, even as she closed her eyes and lay here, she sensed him still in the room. “You can leave now.”

  “No, I can’t,” he said. “You’ve already shown you can’t be trusted.”

  She hated that, hated that somebody could judge her for fighting for survival. Then he didn’t know what she’d been through. “It’s for the best.”

  “It’s not for the best,” he said in exasperation. “Now go to sleep.”

  She wanted to; she really did. But having him here was unnerving. “I can’t sleep while you’re sitting there, staring at me.”

  “Fine,” he said. “I will leave, but, if you try that stunt again, you won’t like the result.” He turned and walked out, shutting the door hard behind him.

  Still, she was alone, and, with that, she closed her eyes and slipped off into dreamland.

  *

  Hunter waited outside the bedroom door, not exactly sure what he saw, but definitely something was going on. He opened the door quietly and stepped back inside the room. A woosh of energy. No rhyme or reason to it. It flared and sparked. Hunter whispered, “What the hell?”

  He didn’t understand it, but this huge energy ball moved toward the window. Instinctively he knew that it was part of Beth. Was it her, assessing the window to see if she could get out, and would then go back and wake up the body? He knew it sounded like something from a freak show, but he didn’t quite understand how and why her energy was everywhere. Like somebody had taken a high-voltage line and had plugged her in, exposing her to it, just shattering everything. But a part of Beth remained calm and contained in this outlying mess.

  He couldn’t imagine it would be very nice for her to live this way, but somehow she had managed. That’s the thing that always got him, when he saw these gifted people with abilities. The things that they survived and managed to live with just blew him away. No real reason for her to have survived something so like a high voltage of energy.

  But she had, and that brought them back to what Stefan had said about the childhood torture, the “training” that had occurred, and that she would have been a test subject. Stefan didn’t explain too much about it, but enough grimness was in his tone that Hunter knew any further discussion would hurt Stefan to relive that time as much as anybody else. And Hunter didn’t want to do that.

  Stefan had done more for everyone in their psychic world than anyone Hunter knew. And Stefan was still fighting the good fight, but just so many bad guys were out there that sometimes Hunter wondered if it was worth fighting at all. And Hunter had to admit that, given what he’d seen of her, Beth probably felt the same way. And that had to be hard too. What were you supposed to do when everything broke down and became this constant torture? It’s not what anybody would want for themselves.

  Hunter watched as a huge ball of energy shimmered in place at the window. Neutralizing his own energy, Hunter stepped forward and made sure the window was locked. The energy flashed around him, and, whether pissed off or frustrated, he didn’t know, but he quickly stepped out of the way. It reached forward and back, over and over, until Hunter had backed up against the door.

  “Go back and lie down,” he ordered. The energy shimmered in place and then headed toward the window. This time as Hunter went forward, he saw the window unlock. Swearing, he stepped forward but came up against the energy and immediately bounced back, as heat seared through his soul.

  He shook his head. “That’s not allowed,” he snapped.

  The energy shifted toward Hunter in a threatening move, but he stood his ground. “No, you’re not leaving. You might get through that window, but you can’t get through the energy shield.”

  It shimmered again in frustration. He was used to seeing energy; he was an energy hunter. He followed energy, hunted it down, based on its individual energy pathway. Just like a dog could scent a certain smell six feet under and miles away, Hunter saw it, and he could follow it, but he needed something specific to follow. He must have a signature, and this energy didn’t seem to have that.

  He studied it carefully. How would he possibly recognize it in the future? The best way would be to understand that it didn’t have a signature at all. It just flared in a multitude of colors and energy patterns, and he shook his head. “That makes no sense,” he cried out. “What the hell is going on?”

  The energy stepped back, as if not liking his questioning. And he nodded. “You need to go back and lie down.”

  The energy shifted a little bit closer to the bed. He nodded. “Go … now!”

  At that, maybe the tone of Hunter’s voice, maybe something completely different, but the energy turned and lunged toward him. Almost immediately, another energy stepped in place, blocking the space between them. It slammed up against him like a wall, flattening like a cloud of smoke hitting a pane of glass and spreading along the edges. Then another energy—and he didn’t even understand what that energy was—touched the same energy, like a lightning bolt. It immediately shrunk down to almost nothing, then slowly drifted back to the form sleeping on the bed, where it laid down on top and slowly dissipated. Soon gone, the shield in front of him immediately dispersed too. Taking a long slow breath, he stared down at the woman, who even now twisted on the bed in obvious pain.

  He whispered, “Dear God, what the hell was that?” He slipped from the bedroom and locked the door. Then he turned, finding Stefan standing in front of him, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

  “Are you okay?” Stefan asked urgently.

  Hunter nodded. “I am. But what the hell is going on here?”

  “I don’t know,” Stefan said, “but we need to find out.”

  “She’s dangerous,” Hunter said.

  “We all are,” Stefan said, giving him a lopsided look.

  Hunter took a deep breath. “I get that. But I don’t know what the hell just happened in there.”

  “And we’ll find out,” Stefan said, with a firm nod. “We will find out. It’s okay.” He nodded again. “You should get some rest.”

  Hunter looked at him strangely. “It’s a little hard to rest.”

  “As long as she stays in there, we’re okay.”

  Hunter shook his head and said, “How will you contain that?”

  “I don’t know,” he murmured, “but I’m hoping she’ll do it for us.”

  “Are you saying that wasn’t her?” he asked in astonishment.

  “Well, it was,” Stefan said, “and it wasn’t.”

  Chapter 4

  When Beth opened her eyes the next time, sunlight poured in through the window, adding a brightness to the world around her, a world she barely recognized. She was used to the darkness and used to hiding. Sunshine was a joy for her, something she hadn’t had a chance to appreciate in a very long time.

  And, when she had, look what had happened. She was so sure she’d been safe, so sure she’d made a new life for herself. One that nobody could track down. Yet not only had they found her but they had taken her out so fast. If she hadn’t moved at the last moment and managed to keep moving, she would be dead by now. At that, she laughed bitterly.

&nb
sp; No, she wouldn’t be dead; she would be living a life much worse than death. She would be their captive again and forced to do their bidding because the only other option was death. And, even after her escape from the compound, they had found her, and now she couldn’t do anything except live her life as they allowed her. Not a whole lot of good escaping did for her.

  It was hard not to think on it now that his thoughts were in her head. And she hated her tormenter for it.

  Showered, dressed in clean clothes, courtesy of Celina, Beth sat in the living room sipping tea, surrounded by the others. She didn’t want to be here, and neither did she think they wanted her here, but it seemed like she had to deal with that right now. Finally she looked at Stefan and said, “You’ve done well.”

  He nodded slowly. “I have,” he said, “but it didn’t come without cost.”

  “Isn’t there always a cost?” she asked. “It seems like the price is higher than most of us can pay.”

  “It’s not higher than we can pay. It’s higher than most of us want to pay,” he murmured, studying her.

  She shrugged, feeling oddly disconnected from the whole thing. A part of her didn’t even think she should have come, though she wasn’t sure what other options she’d had, if any. Obviously she needed his help, and he’d given it willingly, and, for that, she was grateful. “I need to leave, you know?” she said.

  He nodded. “I know you believe you need to leave.”

  She gave a bit of a laugh. “What does that mean?”

  He said, “I think there might be another way, but, if you’re not ready to hear it, that’s a problem.”

  “It’s not that I’m not ready to hear it,” she said. “You just don’t understand how difficult this is.”

  “So help me understand,” he said.

  “No,” she whispered. “You’ve already been through life on the compound. You need to stay out of it. You’re getting me back on my feet. That’s enough.”

  He gave her a deep blossoming smile. “What you don’t understand is, I’ve been out for a long time, and my skills have gotten stronger, better, and faster.” He gave a self-deprecating laugh. “No, I’m not Superman, but I am not the victim I was before.”