As Cold As Ice (4 page)

“
Stop that! Stop
it!”

The white faded away, which was a shame
because that was about when the pain started to throb back to life.
Hot and fast and angrier than any of the guards holding her
down.

Soren was there, holding onto the fist of
the guard who’d been punching her, glaring at him with enough force
and anger of his own that his white teeth were showing.

It also seemed to shock the guard that
Soren, a white coat-wearing lab rat, had enough strength in him to
stop the guy from throwing another punch.

Soren quickly tossed away the man’s hand,
then proved to be not quite the savior that Jessica had thought him
to be when he pulled out a syringe, uncapped it, and leaned down.
“Hold her tight,” Soren said. The bastard didn’t even have the
decency to look her in the eyes when he stuck her.

Jessica spat at him. Soren still hardly
moved, not until he pulled the syringe away. Only then did he wipe
his face.

“
I hate you,” Jessica said.
Well, she tried to say it. What came out of her mouth didn’t
exactly sound like proper words, so it could have been anything.
Mumbled gibberish—the drug Soren injected her with was that
good—then she was sleeping.

*****

When Jessica woke, her mind was shockingly
clear. Clear enough for her to immediately understand why those
other three paranormals had immediately attacked her when they were
shoved into the same cell as her.

If the hatred she'd felt for the guards was
anything at all to go by, then it only made sense for the people
she'd brought in to hate her a thousand times more, regardless of
whether or not they were actually innocent.

She also saw someone by her bed. Her mind
was clear, but her eyes were still a little fuzzy, and at first she
thought it was Charles.

No. Soren. She could make out the red-brown
hair on top of his head. Charles didn't have that, and when her
vision did clear up a little, the sorry expression on his face
became noticeable.

Jessica sighed. She was in a bed, and she
could feel the leather straps holding her down. She wasn't in the
mood for him, even when he pulled out his little pen thing and
clicked it three times, effectively scrambling any and all bugs
that might be listening in on them.

It was the silent kind of scrambler,
however. Soren had already explained to her how it worked. It
wouldn't give off any obvious signals for anyone to chase after. It
would just make sure that whatever she and Soren said was
completely muted.

"Sorry I spat at you," Jessica said.

And why the hell had
something like that left her mouth? She wasn't sorry. She
was
a little
embarrassed, however. It wasn't like she was overly lady-like or
anything, but she'd never actually spit on someone, and she didn't
like that she'd done it.

"Don't worry about it. That just made it all
look better," Soren replied softly.

Jessica frowned. "What?"

Soren looked down into his lap before
turning his bright blue eyes back to her face. "We didn't plan on
that to happen, and it wasn't supposed to, but I convinced Charles
there's a way to use it that would still get you out."

Jessica's brows lifted, and her mouth parted
slightly in shock. "Get me out," she said. It wasn't a
question.

Soren nodded. "Yes. Showing the other
inmates that you were fighting back against the guards will help.
We can arrange for an escape. A fake one. You and a couple of the
other inmates will get out, and when you do, your assignment will
be to follow them to whatever safe houses they go to."

Jessica clenched her fists. "I asked you to
get me out of here. That's not exactly freedom if I'm going to be
hunting them all down again."

Soren's lips thinned. "You didn't ask so
much as you threatened me."

"Like you wouldn't have done the same
thing."

"Not to you, no."

Jessica clamped her mouth shut. So did
Soren, and he stood up. Jessica hadn't realized he'd been sitting
by her knees. "I know it isn't ideal, but it's the best thing I
could think of, and you don't have to do anything once you get out
anyway. Just run away and don't come back."

"I won't have a tracker put in me?"

"You will," Soren said. "I couldn't get
around that. The guys upstairs don't trust you enough to not give
you a tracker. The others will have trackers injected into them,
too, but they won't know about it. Find a way to get it out or
destroy it, then run."

So he
had
been working to get her out. It
just made Jessica feel guilty that she'd threatened to expose him,
and she didn't even really know what he was yet.

Something strong, that was for sure.

"What about the others? If they're let out,
they'll still have their trackers. They'll expose other
people."

Soren shook his head. Once Jessica really
looked at him, she could see the bags under his eyes were worse. He
was also keeping his head angled down. Not by a lot, but just
enough to keep most of his features hidden from any cameras that
were still watching them, even if the listening part was broken by
Soren's scrambler.

He also wasn't moving around too much, not
making any gestures or movements that would make him look
suspicious while tech support was probably trying to find out what
was wrong with their audio.

"This has been in the works for a while.
They were going to do this with or without you. Charles wants to
prove that you're different. He wants you to be a hunter again and
show that paranormals can be volunteers."

"He also wants to get in my pants."

Soren's cheeks brightened. He was actually
blushing, though the line of his mouth became hard and his brows
came down, making him look even older than he was.

He really needed a nap and a shave.

"He won't touch you."

He couldn't guarantee her that. Sexual abuse
was one of the secrets that everyone who worked in the building
knew about. It was also another reason why Jessica and Ethan never
took the papers of paranormals who weren't dangerous to other
people, and if they did, then oops, what do you know? They got
away.

She tried not to think about that. Tried not
to imagine any of those guards who'd been holding her down taking
her clothes off and teaching her a lesson. Would they have done
that?

Probably if given the chance.

Soren had stepped in, stopping what had been
happening before it could turn into more than just angry punches,
but what if he hadn't been there?

Jessica had always hated her powers over
cold and ice, but when she didn't have them, she felt like she was
walking around without underwear on. It was a weird feeling she
didn't think she could get used to.

Soren sighed. "I won't let anyone touch you.
You're part of the program now. The other inmates really think
you're one of them. You're too useful for anyone to try that with
you, and if I hear anyone so much as joking around about it, then
I'll let them have it."

"You'll give them a stern talking to, will
you?"

"I'll kill them."

Jessica tensed. Soren looked away from her a
little too quickly. Once again, she had to wonder what he was. What
sort of power or gift was he hiding that made him strong and
capable enough to make a threat like that? He'd certainly been
strong enough to hold back the fist of that guard, and he hadn't
looked too happy then.

Jessica's throat closed, and as much as
she'd been angry with Soren, she didn't want him to leave her side
all of a sudden. Maybe it was the intensity in which he'd said it,
but Jessica felt kind of safe with him now that she knew how
serious he was about protecting her.

"Thank you, but, don't get in too much
trouble on my behalf either," she said, then added, "you're not
much use to me if you get put away."

God, that sounded bad. And kind of
heartless.

Soren lifted a clipboard she hadn’t noticed
he’d had. He clicked his pen three times, effectively ending the
scrambler’s block on the audio on the room, then started to write
with it like it was just a regular pen, speaking to her as if
everything was normal on his end.

“
Another day of rest and
some more painkillers, and you should be well enough for your
evaluation…”

Chapter Four

After another two days of being stuck in the
clinic, strapped down, with almost nothing to do but watch the
weather on the television and any rerun of some old program deemed
suitable for her to view, Jessica started to wonder how long she'd
been there.

She'd thought she had a good grasp of the
time that had gone by when she was in her cell in the basement of
the building, but at that point, she wasn't so sure.

At least being in the clinic, she knew for a
fact whenever the sun went down and came up because she could see
it through the window. She no longer had to rely on when she got
tired and guessed how long she'd slept for.

Not for the first time, she wondered where
Ethan was. If he'd been caught, someone would've said something to
her, right? Someone would have thrown it in her face that her
brother had been picked up somewhere along the highway, making his
way to Canada, and brought in for aiding and abetting a known
paranormal.

However, the fact that no one came to her
and spoke to her about him, asked her where he was, if she knew of
any hiding places, didn't make her feel so great, either. If they
weren't trying to get information out of her, then did that mean
they already had an idea of where he was?

So confusing. She'd seen the way handlers
used scare tactics like this to try and wheedle the information out
of paranormals, working patiently to get them to confess if anyone
else in the family could transform into a monster, breathe
underwater, or make people do things with their minds.

Sometimes it worked, other times it didn't,
but no one was left alone so easily.

Jessica tried to tune into what was on the
TV, considering it was her only form of entertainment. She'd kill
for a book right about then, instead of watching this propaganda
garbage.

It was a poorly written
sitcom about a group of paranormal friends who struggled to live
and work in a world outside of the protection of Head Office. It
was basically like watching the show
Two
Broke Girls
, only with a thousand times
more fake laughs.

It wasn't exactly a long-running series.
There were only about five episodes, many of which involved the
three friends struggling to hide their monstrous powers from the
good people around them while they worked low-end jobs with even
lower pay.

At the third episode, the shocking twist was
that the male of the group, a man in his early twenties who had
gills behind his ears, turned himself in to Head Office and was
awarded a nice, better-paying job working for search and rescue in
the ocean. Those scenes, which would probably have been the only
good thing about the show, were never shown for budget reasons, but
the two women—one of whom made things blow up if she was angry, and
another who couldn't speak too loudly because her voice caused pain
if it was pitched too high—felt all betrayed about it. They
considered running away for the next episode and a half, until the
last half of the final episode where they both turned themselves
in, walking freely up to the hunters they'd called to retrieve
them—who smiled warmly and dressed nothing at all like real
hunters—and finding happiness with the promise of a good life that
Head Office gave to them.

Aside from the weather, it was the only
thing on. Continuously, morning, noon, and night. After three days
of it, Jessica had everyone's lines memorized. And she wanted to
spoon her eyes out and stick her head in a bucket of water to erase
the memory of this terribly written television show. She tried to
turn it off to spare herself the mental torture of feeling her IQ
drop, but then everything in the room was too damned silent and
weird, and that was even worse than watching propaganda TV.

Which was what made it such a relief when
the white door to her room opened and Soren walked in.

Aside from her nurse, who hadn't smiled
nearly as bright as the actors in the sitcom she was forced to
watch again and again, he was the only real, live person she'd seen
in days, and she sighed at the sight of him.

"Oh, thank God." He was
Prince
Frickin’
Charming in that moment,
coming to rescue her from the terrible, awful, cringe inducing
drama on her screen.

Soren abruptly stopped, and he looked behind
himself as if expecting to see something there before turning and
looking back at her. "What? Me?"

"Yes, you. Please, tell me you have some
good news."

"I do," Soren said, stepping closer. He'd
shaved. His jaw and chin were smooth, and the bags under his eyes
weren't quite as dark.

He might have even been smiling a little
when he reached down and unlatched the leather straps that held
her.

"You have an appointment with Mark Layton.
You know who he is, right?"

He unbuckled the straps around her chest and
waist before he moved to the ones that were around her wrists, just
above her shackles.

Jessica nodded. She was pretty sure he
wasn't scrambling anything that might be listening in on them, so
she decided not to say anything sarcastic or disrespectful about
the man. Not yet, anyway. "I've met him a couple of times. This
goes all the way up to him?"

Mark Layton was the man in charge of The
Head Office for Paranormal Containment and Study. The man was a
billionaire before he was thirty, and some said he had more power
than the president.