A Perfect Darkness (17 page)

Before she could even ponder all that, she felt herself lift up, not physically but spiritually. A blur of colors surrounded her, spinning her around as she was propelled forward.

Dizzy. What's going on? No control! Eric? Are you there?

No answer.

Don't panic, I'm still with Eric or I wouldn't be here. It's not like the voices where I'm alone and scared. I'm going to Lucas. Hang in there.

The movement stopped so suddenly it made her stomach spin. She was floating in a pitch-dark sea, or so it felt. She kept turning, spinning slightly, and then with a jerk she straightened.

It was hard to breathe. Her chest was tight, further
convincing her that she was somewhere miles beneath the ocean's surface. She heard nothing.
Wait!
A sound. Breathing, quick, shallow breaths.

We're here,
Eric's voice said, though it seemed more like an echo in her mind.

Thank God.
It's…it's a perfect darkness.

This is what I see whenever I come. I don't even know if Lucas is here. That's your part.

I hear breathing. Is that you?

No. I hear it, too.
His voice had risen.

He's here! I can feel him.

She followed the sound of the breathing. The closer she got, the more she felt Lucas. He had been tuning into her most of her life. She should be able to connect to him, too.

Lucas! Are you there?

After a pause, he said,
Amy. What are you doing here? How—

Eric is here. He remote-viewed and brought me with him.

She expected him to be happy to see her, or at least relieved, but he was terse.
You shouldn't be here. Neither of you.

Eric spoke.
Lucas. Can you hear me?

Yeah, man.
He sounded weak, as though he had to push out every word.
Promise me you'll stay out of this. These people are powerful and ruthless. Keep Amy and Petra safe, you hear me?

And you get back here. Your girlfriend is a pain in my ass.

What's she doing?
Lucas asked.
She's not supposed to be doing anything to rescue me. None of you are.

No, it's not that. She's getting under my skin,
Lucas. I'm going to have to kiss her smart-assed mouth, and since she's yours, that would be wrong.

Before Amy could even react to that, Lucas said,
You son of a bitch, you're not trying to get me jealous, are you?

No, I just don't want to live with the guilt of taking your girl. So you need to get the hell out of there. Let me help. What if it's just me, and I leave the girls out of it?

The indignity of that hit Amy, but she held in her objection. If Lucas thought she was helping, he'd never cooperate.

No, man. It was my choice to go to her that night, and I regret that to hell now. She's in more danger than she might have been if I hadn't.

Uh, guys, I'm here. Don't talk about me as though I weren't.

Eric ignored her.
Lucas, stop being so frickin' noble and let me come after you. You know I love this kind of shit. The girls'll stay in the shelter.

The lights came on, startling Amy just as Lucas had been startled out of their dream. Two men walked in, and she was horrified to see Lucas on what looked like a hospital bed. The room was sparse, with mint-green walls and what looked like a door to a small bathroom. She couldn't take her gaze from him, or the white cap on his head that was covered in electrodes and hooked to machines.

“Lucas,” said the taller man, whose back was to her. He tapped Lucas's cheek. “Come out of it. What's going on? Your brain waves are going crazy.”

They were monitoring his brain waves. They'd known something was happening. Did they know
about his visits to her? Oh God, those horrible men. She wanted to scratch their eyes out, to wrap her hands around their throats.

She could see the other man's face, shorter, rounder, with a balding head. He looked concerned as he stared at Lucas. “It's too much. The dosage and frequency, the sensory deprivation, it's breaking him down. He can't take any more.”

Those words gripped her heart. Their last encounter had been so scattered. He said he didn't have control. They were making him crazy! Cyrus had said the side effects of the Booster probably caused her dad to kill himself. That had to be what they were giving Lucas.

The other man said, “I'll decide when he's had too much.”

Rage washed over her, but before she could let loose a howl of anger, a third man said, “One of them is here. I can feel him.”

The lights went out again.

“Block him,” the tall man said.

She spun away into the mash of colors. Her chest constricted again. With a gasp she opened her eyes. Eric's eyes were already open. Their hands were still linked, and she pulled away with a jerk. Her body was soaked with sweat.

Petra couldn't have been any closer if she'd been sitting between them. “What happened?”

He ran his hands over his face and into his damp hair, his shoulders hunched over in exhaustion. “Lucas won't cooperate. He's trying to protect us. I hate that guy sometimes.”

Amy had to take a deep breath to muster the energy to talk. “They're monitoring his brain waves. Keeping
him in the dark. Sensory deprivation.” She heard the fear in her voice. “Whatever they're giving him is breaking down his sanity.”

Petra said, “Could it be the same stuff Cyrus said our parents got?”

“That's what I'm worried about. Cyrus didn't know.”

In a grim voice, Eric said, “They knew we were there. Someone else, not the two spooks.
Someone knew I was there.
” He slammed his hand down on the carpet. “And he kicked our asses out.”

Petra shot to her feet. “It keeps getting worse and worse, and there's nothing I can do. I feel so helpless. There's nothing we can do to save him, is there?”

Amy felt the same vibration of fear as Petra's. “I'm not giving up. We can't give up.” She looked at Eric. “What were you doing, telling Lucas that stuff about kissing me?”

“Well, you are a pain in the ass, but no, I don't want to kiss you. I was trying to get him riled up.”

But she had seen those images of her through his eyes. He was super-sex-charged. That he was looking at her, watching her sleep, made her all the more nervous around him. Too nervous, even, to call him on it.

He tried to get up but slumped back onto the floor and curled up on his side. He could barely keep his eyes open. “Have to sleep.”

Petra said, “He's tired after one trip. Two will wipe him out.”

Amy wasn't even sure that he heard. They left the room and closed the door behind them.

“I'm so scared,” Petra said, wandering into Lucas's
room. She looked at one of the paintings, the mysterious man she now knew was Lucas.

“You love him, don't you?” Amy asked. “More than like a brother.”

Petra paused, deciding whether to tell the truth. “He lived with us since he was a boy. But I never saw him as a brother.” She looked at the paintings again. “All my life people told me I was beautiful. I've had men tell me they loved me, dozens of them.”

“Must be nice,” Amy said, feeling the bite of jealousy. A glance in the mirror told her why: no makeup, baggy clothes, psycho hair.

Petra laughed without humor. “Not really. They loved my looks, not me. Lucas saw beyond my facade. I loved him, innocent love.” She looked at Amy for a second and then away. “When I hit puberty, I felt that love shift to something else. I kind of assumed that Lucas was mine, that we'd be together romantically. I never got up the nerve to tell him that my feelings went deeper. But a few times, when I tried to broach the subject, he hugged me back and said something to the effect that I was like a sister and he loved me very much. I didn't react very well to his innocent proclamation of love, and he hasn't said anything since. I just couldn't tell him the truth.

“I guess I kept hoping someday he'd see me in a different light. Sometimes I get testy with him, and poor Lucas, he has no idea what's going on. He probably thought it was PMS, though he was never crass enough to say it. I let him believe that because the truth is so much more sensitive.”

She wiped away the moisture in her eyes. “I was always jealous when he talked about you. He didn't
talk a lot until he got the sketch of you being attacked. I could see how much you meant to him. I was competing with someone he didn't even know.”

It seemed crazy that someone like Petra was jealous of her. “I'm sorry,” she said, but she wasn't really. It just seemed like the thing to say.

“And now I'll never get to tell him why I acted the way I did.”

“We're not giving up.” As tired as she was, she heard the conviction in her words. “Do you hear me? We are not giving up on Lucas. We will save him because we love him.”

Petra turned to her. “You love him, too.”

“I do.” The words just slipped out. She was sure now, or at least her heart was. “I know, it sounds crazy. A man I've only known in my dreams.”

Petra's face lit with hope. “Do you believe we'll save him?”

She looked at the paintings. “I have to.” The man who painted them was sensitive, sexy, and he loved her. Had always loved her. She took a deep, halting breath. “I'm going to get the car, before someone reports it abandoned. I'll walk a ways and call a cab.”

Petra said, “You need a disguise.”

“I can wear sunglasses and a hat.”

“Then you'll look even more suspicious. Come with me.”

Petra led her into her bedroom and to the dresser. The top drawer held hair and skin products. She grabbed a couple of tubes and turned to her. “I've been wanting to do this since I first saw you.” She squirted some liquid into her hand, rubbed her palms together, then grabbed locks of Amy's hair and scrunched them.
Amy watched in awe in the mirror as her straight, frizzy hair became defined with waves and darker with the wetness of the gel. Petra backed up and assessed her work. “There. Now…” She reached in and grabbed more products, and before long Amy wore makeup, red lipstick and rouge.

“They'll never recognize me now,” she said. “I don't even recognize me.”

“You're a pretty girl. I don't know why you hide it.”

Petra, now she was pretty. While she was just…well, Amy. But looking in the mirror, she did look pretty amazing. She caught herself smiling.

Petra went to the small closet and pulled out a hot red dress. “Here, put this on. If they've been watching you at all, they know you wear drab, boring clothes that hide your figure. This will throw them off.”

“I'm not trying to impress anyone,” Amy said in her defense, slipping into the dress. She looked at her reflection. “Wow.” Amy Shane, sex goddess, in three easy steps.

“Yeah, wow. Now you don't look like a woman trying to be invisible, which would attract their attention.” She pulled out a pair of red high heels.

“No way. I don't do heels. Besides, your feet are bigger than mine. I'll have to go with the sneakers.”

Petra winced. “I suppose they'll have to do. All right, let's go.”

“What do you mean,
let's
?”

“I'm going, too. I'll leave a note for Eric.”

They headed down the tunnel to the garage. It would be the last time they could take a chance driving Lucas's car. In the garage, they looked out the windows for suspicious cars.

Petra said, “I'm sure they're watching the gallery. One of the times I snuck into Lucas's house to change the artwork I saw a car parked across the way.”

Though Amy wanted to drive, to feel what he felt when he was behind the wheel, she got in on the passenger side. “Could they find out about the shelter?”

Petra got into the driver's side. “It wasn't public record, and it's not permitted, but the house was owned by people who worked in the government. It's always possible, I guess, but I try not to think about it.”

They backed out and headed away from the gallery. Amy stared at her surroundings. There was a world out there, a normal world where people went about their business and worried about things like bills and the argument they'd had with their lovers. A woman walked her dog, tugging at its leash. A toddler girl picked a flower and stuck it in her mouth. It all looked so normal that it seemed pretend.

She pulled her attention back to the interior of the car. The Edge sang about being numb, and she could relate. Numb was safe. It kept the fear at bay, if only for a while.

“You said you could feel Eric remote viewing you,” she said. “What does it feel like?”

“It's kind of a shiver that starts at the back of my neck. Like that feeling you get when you say, ‘Someone just stepped on my grave.' Then it tickles down my spine. It's not a bad feeling, just…weird. And annoying, like having my big brother checking up on me.”

“I hate to bring this up, but…if someone else were remote viewing you, could you tell that, too?”

She shot Amy a startled look.

“Well, if Eric can do it, others can, too. Someone in Lucas's room knew we were there.”

“I can sense, but I can't remote view, so maybe that person can't either.”

Amy watched their surroundings as they drove. Every bland car caught her eye now, and she waited for it to turn around and follow. “Cyrus said that the Offspring have powers they might not even know about. You could, too. I didn't know seeing glows was a psychic ability, and probably the voices, too.”

“Voices,” she said. “You hear voices?”

“Put that way, it sounds crazy.” And damn, she hadn't meant to mention it. “Between wake and sleep I hear bits of conversations and stuff. Maybe it's not an ability at all.” She could have convinced herself of that if she didn't feel so damn scared when she heard them.