Strangers of the Night

  They’d started assuming he was a sociopath.

  Samantha had grown up among sociopaths and didn’t believe Jed fit that diagnosis. On the subject of telepathy, she wasn’t certain, but right now, she was going to try.

  She concentrated, not sure what exactly she was even trying to convey, other than a sense of...comfort? Protection? Reassurance, she thought, though watching Jed scowl, she didn’t feel like he was very reassured.

  As his caregiver for the past eighteen months, she’d done little more than check his vitals and bring him food once in a while. Their conversations had been necessarily limited. Their physical connection even less so. So why, then, did she feel closer to this man than she’d felt to anyone else in her entire life?

  “You’re going to feel sleepy,” she told him quietly as she put the sharp into the small red box in her pocket. Her eyes searched his for any sign he was on board with this, but there was no way to know what would happen.

  “I’ll be fine,” Jed said.

  Something sifted through the air between them like a breeze, moving the tendrils of hair that had escaped around her face to tickle her cheeks. She closed her eyes at the embrace—and it was an embrace. A caress. As soft and specific as if he’d reached a hand to cup her face.

  She hadn’t meant to go off plan, but the idea of sedating him had not settled well with her, no matter what Vadim had said. Jed had not lost his talents. She felt it. She wasn’t sure how much control he still had over them, but the last thing in the world she wanted was for him to be left unable to defend himself.

  They’d tried to make him into a soldier, she thought. When the time came for it, she might need him to be able to fight.

  She risked squeezing his shoulder, a definite no-no on the list of rules regarding the Wyrmwood patients, but what were they going to do? Fire her? Beneath her fingers, Jed’s muscles bunched and tensed, although he remained stone-faced. Hands in his lap. Something about it broke her heart in a way she wasn’t expecting.

  “Are you sure I can’t call down to the kitchen for you?”

  Jed shook his head without answering. She backed up a few steps. Samantha pressed her fingertip to the door lock and stepped through it. At the sight of the two armed guards, neither of whom she recognized, she quickly shook her head and stepped back into the room, locking the door behind her. Hands flat on it. Facing Jed.

  Her heart raced, but she didn’t let it show. Instantly she’d begun the mental countdown. The list in her head of every escape route she’d planned since starting here. That had been her father’s training—always be ready with a way out.

  “I didn’t write down your vitals,” she said brightly, with a clap of her hands. She moved toward him with a pasted-on smile. “I’m going to have to check you again.”

  Jed narrowed his eyes. “You never...”

  “They’re coming,” she said in a low voice. Not caring so much now if whoever was watching overheard her.

  They were beyond that now.

  She didn’t hear any muffled voices outside the door. Nothing like a warning. She wouldn’t have—the doors here were thick, lined with metal. Soundproof.

  Jed stood. “You should go. I don’t want you to see this.”

  Surprised, Samantha shot him a look. She wanted to reassure him again, to tell him that she had this covered, that they weren’t going to kill him right there. She drew in a long breath, then let it out. They had guns. This was it. It was happening.

  When the door opened, she stepped in front of Jed, addressing the guards in a loud, hard voice. “What’s going on? I didn’t get any updates about this.”

  “Step aside, ma’am. We’re here to take the patient for some routine testing.”

  “You’ll have to show me your paperwork.” She put her hands on her hips, playing up the irate nurse. “You should know this patient is not to be removed from this room without the appropriate precautions. This is highly irregular.”

  The shorter guard stepped forward. They were both armed, but their weapons were not in hand. She was going to assume they both had hidden weapons in addition to the ones she’d already noticed, but for now she had to worry about the guns she could see.

  “Just send him forward,” the shorter guard said. “We have directions to take him.”

  Let them take him, Vadim had said. Then follow.

  The plan didn’t feel right.

  “I’m not going with you,” Jed said matter-of-factly, as though he was commenting on the weather.

  The guard on the left smiled. “Sure, kid.”

  The other one wasn’t as nice. “Shut up. You, get out of the way.”

  He jerked his chin at Samantha. She settled him with a steady, imperious look. Wyrmwood had a lot of rules, but taking shit from a pair of goons was not one of them.

  “C’mon, kid,” said the nicer guard as he stepped forward. “I don’t want to have to get harsh.”

  Before he could get any closer, he let out a loud, long cough and stumbled. He tried to take another step but looked as though he was struggling against a glass wall. The other guard let out a startled noise, a muttered curse.

  “I’m not going with you,” Jed repeated. “But keep on coming. Let’s see what happens.”

  That’s when everything started going wrong. The guards moved, one toward Jed and the other toward Samantha. She slipped a hairpin from the heavy bun at the base of her neck, pulling the edges open. With the pin between her fingers, she stepped forward. Ducking low before either of the guards could say a word, she swept the taller guard’s leg, not expecting to send him down, just push him off balance. It worked. The taller guard took a hopping step away from her. Without stopping, Samantha moved again, jamming the hairpin into the meat of his calf and pulling it free to stab upward into the hand reaching to grab her.

  The shorter guard shouted and grabbed her hair. Without the pin to hold the bun in place, he got a handful, but the thick length of it slipped free as she twisted. Then she was up, ramming her head into his chin and sending him back against the wall.

  She acted without thinking ahead more than a move or two. Anticipating what would come next, but ready to adjust if she was wrong. Punch, kick, jab for the eyes.

  The taller one caught her by the throat, hauling her upright. Neither of them had pulled their weapons—a fact she noticed even with the wind being strangled out of her. They might be there to take Jed away, but they had not been ordered to kill him. Not here, at least. As the red spots began dancing in the edges of her vision, though, she had time to think that they’d have no trouble killing her.

  Not that she was going to let them, of course.

  She let her body go limp, not fighting, and the sudden weight pushed the guard off balance. In the next second she was up again. His gun was in her hand.

  He was on the ground. Then his partner. She’d shot both of them in the legs. The other guard had a hand reaching for his weapon, which she grabbed. Her ears rang from the sound of the shots, but she took the time to aim once more, this time at the camera. When the red light went out, she turned to Jed, who’d stood without moving the entire time.

  “I’m a little insulted,” he said. “You’d think they’d have hired way more competent guards.”

  Chapter 15

  The woman staring back at him, a gun in each hand, had barely broken a sweat. Her blond hair had come loose from the tight bun she always wore. Her shoulders and chest heaved with her breathing, but her expression was calm. She was still Samantha, but somehow she had become a stranger.

  “More will be coming, and they will be more prepared,” she told him. “We should get out of here. Now. We don’t have much time.”

  Jed didn’t move. “The first attempt on my life came when I was twelve. One of the orderlies had managed to bring in a shiv. He cut me with
it before I was able to break all of his fingers. Then his neck. I did it without touching him. There’ve been two ‘rescue’ attempts since then. I say rescue sarcastically, because I’m guessing wherever they wanted to take me would’ve been worse even than Wyrmwood.”

  “They weren’t here to rescue you. They were going to take you someplace and kill you.”

  “I don’t know that,” he said bluntly, eyeing her.

  “You have no reason to trust me,” she agreed, which was exactly the right answer to ensure that he did trust her.

  Jed looked around the room, then down at the guards, writhing in pain and screaming out curses nobody else could hear. She’d shot the camera while barely aiming. She was good.

  “Who sent you?” Jed asked.

  Samantha shook her head, that glorious fall of golden hair cascading over her shoulders and down her back. “Nobody. It doesn’t matter now. Just know that I’m here to get you out of here, and we have to do it now.”

  He didn’t have to be able to read minds to sense a lie, but she was right. There wouldn’t be much time. He’d wondered if there really was someone watching the video feed at all times, and now he was about to find out.

  “Don’t you want to kill them first?” He pointed at the guards.

  Samantha looked surprised. “I’m not usually one to kill for the sake of it. They’re neutralized. Isn’t that enough?”

  The shorter guard started to cry softly. To plead. The other guard muttered a string of threats that Jed ignored.

  “You have a soft heart,” he said to Samantha.

  She laughed, the sound giddy and abrupt and out of place here and now, but welcome for all of that. “That’s not what my last boyfriend said. C’mon, before someone else shows up.”

  He could take care of whoever else might show up. After watching her dispatch the two guards, he figured Samantha could, too. That didn’t mean he was going with her.

  “You can’t make me go,” Jed pointed out, already moving toward her. “They’ll kill you for all of this, but they’re not going to do anything to me they hadn’t already planned to do.”

  “Why would you want to stay for that?” Samantha asked sharply. She pressed the door lock and opened the door, looking out. Apparently satisfied with what she saw, she looked back at him.

  “Because maybe it’s my time,” Jed said. “Time for this to all end.”

  She shook her head and grabbed the front of his shirt. “Bullshit. I didn’t risk my life so you could stay back like a lab rat, one they’re aiming to kill. Let’s go.”

  He followed, if only because she’d yanked him so hard that he would’ve stumbled if he hadn’t moved. Samantha moved to the door, pressing her fingers into the lock. The door didn’t open.

  She muttered a curse and shot a glance over her shoulder at the cameras. “They know.”

  Jed moved over the red line, tensing for a few seconds automatically, although he knew nothing would happen to him. Behind him, the guards groaned and writhed, letting out soft shrieks when he sent a wave of agony to keep them from getting up. “Move away.”

  “But the metal—”

  “It doesn’t matter.” He took a faint joy in surprising her, but didn’t waste time explaining. It needed only a small push, an easy twist of the lock’s interior tumblers, and the door was buzzing open.

  There were more guards out there, faces obscured by masks. Armored vests. Giant guns. Samantha shouted, but her hands went up. Jed, grateful she hadn’t tried to fight them, held out a hand with his fingers spread. The three guards in the front went to their knees, backs arching and booted feet drumming at the tile floor.

  It hurt.

  He didn’t stop. Once it had begun, he wasn’t sure he could stop. Too many years of suppressing himself. Too much anger, coming out now.

  He curled his fingers into fists. Pushed outward. Feeling each of the guards, the ones on the floor and the ones behind them, still standing. Feeling Samantha.

  Then he felt nothing much at all.

  Samantha didn’t know what happened. First there were a half dozen guards in the hallway, all of them in riot gear and armed. In minutes they were on the ground, writhing and screaming. There was blood, lacy spatters on the tile. Her head ached, and instead of the smell of lavender, her nostrils burned with a bitter stink she couldn’t identify.

  Jed had done this without so much as a single mutter or gasp. Now he staggered, a hand going to his temple. A thin runner of crimson trickled from the inside corner of his left eye.

  She didn’t wait. She took him by the elbow and herded him toward the stairs, certain the elevator would be shut down. The alarms in Wyrmwood seemed to be as hushed as everything else in the hospital, no sound, but eye-piercing blue-white lights that lined the corridor had begun to throb and flash. The door to the stairwell was locked, of course, her fingerprints doing nothing to open the lock. Jed did that with a weary sigh and shake of his head.

  “Are you okay?” She slung his arm over her shoulders, supporting his weight.

  “What are we going to do?” His voice was slurred, but he wasn’t sagging against her. He was still moving. “They’re going to be everywhere.”

  “This isn’t how it was meant to go.” They rounded the landing and kept going.

  Incredibly, he chuckled. “So in other words, you have no idea.”

  They got to the bottom of the stairs, and the door there proved to be no more trouble than anything else. There weren’t any guards waiting for them, although the lights were still flashing. Nathan had risen from behind his security station, his eyes wide. His hand went to the gun at his belt.

  “Samantha!” His gaze went to Jed, eyes going even wider. “Oh, shit.”

  “I don’t want to hurt him,” Jed said.

  Samantha didn’t want Nathan to get hurt. When he sat back down, she pushed Jed past him, to the front doors. To the parking lot beyond. Then to her car, which she’d parked as usual to the far end of the lot. She slid behind the wheel; Jed was passenger. Her keys were in her purse, which was back on the desk.

  It didn’t matter. She looked over at Jed and he took care of that, too. The car’s engine churned, turning over. Something about it didn’t sound right, but when she put it in gear and stepped on the gas, the vehicle shot forward. She drove, fast as she dared, certain that at any moment a fleet of SUVs were going to show up on her tail.

  Beside her, Jed’s head drooped. Concerned, Samantha poked him. “Put your seat belt on.”

  He gave her a strange look. “Huh?”

  She gestured. “Your seat belt...”

  Too late she realized it was entirely possible he had no idea what a seat belt was or how to use one. An eye on the road, she reached, but there was no way she was going to be able to grab the belt. She had to pull over and put it on him, and risk being caught. Or she could keep going and risk killing him if she got into an accident.

  “They can’t see us.” His voice slurred. He drooped forward even more.

  Alarmed, Samantha braked slowly to keep from sending him through the windshield. “Jed. Are you okay?”

  “They can’t. See. Us. Blocking. Feel.” With that, he fell forward, hard enough to smack his head on the dashboard with a thud so loud it hurt her head.

  Chapter 16

  Jed couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually slept so hard that when he woke he didn’t know where he was. Maybe never in his life. He woke now, disoriented. Dim light, so much darker than the almost constant pale glow he was used to. Pain ripped through his head and he rolled onto this side, thinking he might get sick. He fought the nausea off and sat up.

  “Hey.” He felt her before he saw her face in the soft glow of a candle she lit. Samantha smiled at him. “How do you feel?”

  “Bad.” He let his face fall int
o his hands. “Where are we?”

  She cleared her throat. “It’s a safe house.”

  “How safe?” He gave her a sideways look.

  “As safe as...it can be. Are you hungry? I have some soup. It’s not very hot. But it will settle your stomach.” She leaned forward into the circle of golden light. “Jed, I’m going to touch your forehead. Okay?”

  She’d asked permission first. He moved his hands away from his face to look at her. “Why?”

  “I want to be sure you don’t have a fever. You’ve been sleeping for the past day and a half, and you were burning up. May I?”

  “Why are you asking me?” he said in a flat voice.

  In the candlelight, Samantha’s blue eyes looked very dark. “Because I think you deserve the right to decide who puts their hands on you.”

  “You’re not really a nurse, are you.” He’d suspected as much for some time—she’d never “felt” the way the other nurses had.

  “No.”

  He didn’t seem feverish, but that wasn’t why he hadn’t yet given her permission to touch him. He was more afraid of what he might do now that they were away from the hospital, with nobody to stop him from kissing her. His head ached and buzzed in the aftermath of all the pushing he’d done. His self-discipline would be nonexistent.

  “What are you?”

  Samantha looked surprised. “I’m...just a person.”

  She was more than that, but he could tell she wasn’t being facetious. “Are you a soldier? Who do you work for?”

  “I work for an organization called the Crew that specializes in investigating and proving or disproving the existence of paranormal or other umm...” She coughed lightly. “Oddities.”