Chasing Dare (10 page)

As soon as she felt the drugs kick in, she’d watched Balduen’s reaction closely. When the doctor ordered her to lean over the bed again, she couldn’t help but notice how his body shook, fighting the drugs in his system. Her hope rose as she realized that whatever his beast was, it freaking rocked if it could fight this horrible crap. She’d give anything to shove that needle up the doctor’s ass… sideways.

However, as much as she hoped for some kind of miracle rescue or reprieve, she had spent the rest of the evening resigning herself to the fact that she wasn’t going to be able to get out of this before they tried to impregnate her. She had lain next to Baldy, in the bed, that night and couldn’t sleep. Her mind worked overtime trying to think of something, anything to stop what was going to happen.

Although he had never spoken a word, she knew Baldy didn't sleep that night either. As the sun rose and the time came for breakfast to arrive, Baldy had turned to his side and pulled her to him until her back was pressed tightly to his chest.

“I’m so sorry Dare.” His gritted teeth couldn’t conceal the rage and regret she could hear in his voice. She smiled to herself at how crazy it was to feel happy that he was so angry on her behalf. She squeezed his arms in gratitude.

“I know Baldy. I am too. But, I’m glad you’re here with me. You’ve made it much less horrible for me.” Dare admitted. She was terrified. Terrified that she’d end up pregnant with an alien monster, or that she wouldn’t, and they would kill them before they could escape or be rescued.

“I could think of much better places to be right now, but you’re not in any of those places. So I’m glad I’m here with you. You’re the bravest female I’ve ever met. Don’t let them…” His voice cracked, and he couldn’t finish what he was going to say. How could he ask her not to let them break her, when he felt broken just thinking about how he couldn’t stop any of it from happening to her?

“I know Baldy. Don’t worry, I’m tougher than anyone realizes.” She turned her head to shoot him a quick smile before hugging him tighter to her.

They stayed like that until long after breakfast came, neither of them hungry, they stayed wrapped in each other’s arms until the doctor came in to get Dare.

“Get up, my dear. We have a big day ahead of us!” The doctor’s voice grated on Dare’s nerves. If it weren’t for the drugs, she would have gladly knocked the cheerful right off his troll-like face. The quick squeeze Baldy gave her, told her he was probably thinking along the same lines.

With the drugs running through her system, she couldn’t fight the order to get up. As she started to scoot away from Baldy, she found his hold was still too tight on her, despite the drugs. From the way he was shaking, she knew he was fighting hard, but it wouldn’t be enough for them to escape anyway.

“Baldy, not now! We’re not ready.” She whispered urgently, not wanting the doctor to notice that he was successfully starting to fight the drugs. He gave one last hard squeeze before his hands went immediately slack, as if it had taken every ounce of effort to try to hold her. She quickly got out of the bed and moved to stand with the doctor by the door.

“You’re staying in here today, Valendran. We’ll start on your tests later. Right now, this young lady is much more important.” Dare stared at Baldy while the doctor spoke, and while his face looked carefully blank, she could see that his eyes had become a deep, dark blue before he closed them. The blanket still covering him, concealed the tight clenching of his fists.

Dare quietly followed the doctor down the stairs, the drug allowing her to do nothing but obey him. She would give anything to be able to fight, to grab Baldy and run. To take that refrigerator and smash the smirk off Brak’s face as he lounged casually at the kitchen table as she passed.

She watched her surroundings with avid curiosity when the doctor led her out of the house and down a well-worn dirt path around the back of the old farmhouse.

The path was mostly overgrown, with tall hedges that looked as if they’d been hacked instead of trimmed to keep the branches from covering the path. Turning back towards the house, she could see the bricked up window on the second floor.

The path opened up to a large barn, not more than forty yards from the house and the room they were being held in, she noted, reminding herself to tell Baldy later.

As they walked closer to the barn, the door opened to one of the Relian’s, she had already seen in the house the first day. She was glad the number of their enemies hadn’t changed. So far, they’d counted six, including the doctor and his assistant.   

Dare had barely walked through the door when she heard the heavy-metal  door bang closed behind her, the locking mechanism making an ominous clicking sound as it engaged.

Dare stared in shock at the room she was in. It looked like someone had built an old barn around a state-of-the-art laboratory. There were machines, microscopes and medical equipment all over the room. Several tall, rolling chairs were interspersed among what looked to be different work stations that held the multitude of equipment, most of which she’d never be able to name.

The floor and walls were a field of gleaming white tiles with a floor to ceiling wall partition separating the main room from where the doctor was leading her. In this room, it looked like a standard doctor’s office with the bed, rolling blood pressure monitor, cabinets and a sink. Miscellaneous jars with cotton balls, swabs and other items dotted the counter.

And there was Lucretia, sitting on a short rolling stool in a corner of the room, her eyes flashing hatefully at Dare.
Yeah, it was going to be a ton more fun with her in here;
Dare thought nervously.   

“Why isn’t the room ready for her like I told you?” Jose hissed angrily at Lucretia when he saw she’d not carried out any of his orders. He wasn’t comfortable with the looks she was giving Dare right now either. In fact, she’d been acting much more strangely than normal since Dare, and the Valendran arrived.

He knew all too well how evil the woman could be; he'd even fallen for her false claims against Morat’s brother before he realized his mistake. He would have to talk to the guards about ensuring that she was not left alone with Dare or the Valendran. He would not let the woman’s severe mental issues get in the way of his success.

“I forgot the list in the office and figured it was better to do nothing than to do something wrong.” Lucretia gritted her teeth while spitting out her lie, never taking her eyes from the whore who had been throwing herself at the poor Valendran since they’d been put upstairs.

The nasty bitch had even conned the poor alien into cuddling her while they laid in bed together. It should have been her! She was the only one here who was special in any way, who deserved to have the gorgeous hunk upstairs. Not this common piece of trash.

It was Jose’s harsh barking that brought her out of her mental ramblings. “Get the examination table prepared now! You can figure out how to do something that basic can you not?”

Jose was losing his patience with the woman much more quickly than he had expected when she had first applied for the job. Back then, he had been fooled by what he thought was her older woman, sweet charm.  He had figured out too late that there was no charm in the woman, only hate and laziness. And a severe mental illness that she intentionally ignored, preferring to revel in her hate and delusions than to allow medications to help her. He figured she probably couldn’t deal with the horrible person she truly was and preferred to live in her own delusions.

He had even offered to get her the medications she needed, but she had angrily refused, saying she was brilliant, beautiful and perfect the way she was. He had yet to see anything resembling brilliance, and her ugliness came from the outside as much as the inside.

He should have known something was wrong when her ID had come back as fake, but considering what they were doing, he couldn’t afford to be picky about who he chose to assist him.

“Of course I can!” Lucretia bit out, storming around the room and grabbing a sheet and other items and throwing them on the examination table. Dare watched as a sheet slipped off the table and fell to the floor.

“Get out! Get out now! I’ll do it myself!” Far too angry and impatient to wait for her incompetence, Jose grabbed the items from her hands and pushed her towards the outer lab area.

“Go clean the house. You can do that without a list, can’t you?” Jose didn’t see the look of pure loathing that Lucretia gave him before storming out of the room, but Dare saw it.

How interesting… other than the fact that the two of them were below four-foot  ten in height, the doctor and his assistant were completely opposite in every other way. She’d wondered how two different people like that could get along well enough to do something like this together. It had to take a certain kind of personality to do what they were going to do, to another human being. 

Now she knew; they didn’t get along at all. In fact, it looked as if they could barely stand to be around each other. Dare filed that information away until she saw Balduen again. Maybe they could figure out a way to use the animosity between the two of them to help them plan their escape.

“I’ll leave the room while you change into the gown, ties in the front not the back. I need a full gynecological examination. Go ahead and climb up on the table when you’re done. You can cover up with the other sheet I left.” The doctor gestured to the folded gown on the now sheet covered examination table, that she noticed he had added stirrups to while she’d been looking around the room for potential weapons.

Her mind begged her body to go to the cabinets and look through the drawers, but instead she moved to the table as the doctor left the room. She could hear him rummaging through drawers as she slowly removed her clothes, folding each piece before setting them on the head of the bed.

She donned the gown as quickly as the drugs would allow her to move and climbed up on the table as instructed, pulling the sheet up around herself like a shield.

Scanning the room, she noticed that this one was thankfully camera-free. She noticed at least a dozen in the outer room though. The strange respect for her privacy was really puzzling. Even in the bathroom upstairs, the shower was a zone of privacy from the cameras that dotted the walls everywhere else in the place.

He was tapping now on something in the other room; like a keyboard, she thought nervously. She tried to meditate, to put her mind in another place and convince herself this was nothing more than another uncomfortable exam like the one’s Maggie gave her back at their compound.

But, there was no convincing herself of that when the doctor came back into the room with a huge tray full of instruments, needles and containers.

*****

Lucretia stormed her way down the path to the house, smacking angrily at the hacked limbs that scratched at her hips as she walked. How dare that man, speak to her like that! Especially in front of that whore!

She would make that bastard pay for treating her like she was less than her; she thought as she slammed the back door to the house behind her.

“Doctor got you riled again; I see.” Brak smirked knowingly from the kitchen table where he was leisurely splayed out in a chair, a laptop opened in front of him. Brak hated anything human and enjoyed watching them fight with each other. The doctor and his crazy assistant gave him hours of entertainment.

Lucretia was sicker and disturbed than the other humans he was normally forced to deal with. He could almost respect her ruthless nature. Instead, he was thinking of how he could use the crazy fool to get to Dare. He had a score to settle with that bitch, and he’d settle it whether Grai or anyone else liked it or not. This far out in the middle of nowhere, he could tell Grai anything and there would be no one left to say otherwise.  

“He has no idea, who he’s messing with!” Lucretia didn’t even notice the spittle flying from her mouth as she screamed at Brak before storming into the cubby hole they called her office.

Turning on her computer, she smacked angrily at the keys, managing to pull up the cameras in the room upstairs and stared intently at the beautiful man stalking the room like a caged panther. She almost drooled at the way his muscles bunched and rolled as he took a break from his pacing and did push-ups and other exercises.

In the other room, Brak casually turned on the laptop in front of him and turned the cameras in the other room to watch the crazy woman. He couldn’t keep the grin off of his face as he watched her stroking her monitor with one hand and yanking hard on her short, dark hair with the other.

He watched her spy on the Valendran for a few more minutes before turning his attention to the cameras in the outer lab area, wishing Grai and the doctor had allowed cameras in the exam room area. He wanted to watch that bitch suffer and was frustrated that he couldn’t see or hear anything.

Flipping back to the crazy one still staring at the Valendran, he began to formulate a plan to help both of them get what they wanted. Well, he’ll get what he wanted anyway, he thought with a wicked grin.

*****

Balduen was so enraged and stressed he felt like he was crawling out of his own skin in disgust. Dare was gone. He didn’t know where she was, when she would be back, or even if she would be back.

He couldn’t allow himself to think about what they may be doing to her, or if she was in pain or hurting… he clenched his fists so hard he heard several knuckles pop from the pressure. By the One, he had to think of something!

He pretended to stretch on the wall right next to the bricked window and slowly moved his hand to the corner. He pushed against the brick and mortar, looking for any give in the materials that would allow him to break them out.