Authors: Charmaine Ross
Cursed (6 page)
“This is your bedroom? But where are you going to sleep?”
A faint smile curved his mouth, “On the couch.”
“You didn’t have to bring me here.”
“I know. I wanted to.”
He let me study him for the longest time. Thoughts flew through my mind, all of which didn’t add up. “Nobody takes anybody into their house. Especially someone like me.”
“Maybe you’re not used to the right people. I don’t mean to harm you. I can see you’ve been through enough, more than most people should ever have to cope with. I can’t stand by and let more things happen to you. I’m not callous like that. Besides, I’m your doctor, and that’s something I don’t take lightly.”
Either he was a basket case for accepting me so readily, or I was so dammed twisted I’d lost the ability to trust anyone; I didn’t know. The most pressing thing was that I didn’t have much of a choice at the moment. I was weak, hurt, and with nowhere else to go. If he thought of me as his patient, it was all well and good because I needed the help of a doctor. I wasn’t in a position to refuse.
I’d just need to be prepared never to let my guard down and know I’d leave as soon as I could. And I had another pressing need to take care of.
“I need to use the ... errr, I need to take care of ...” I stammered, suddenly shy about telling him I had to use the bathroom. I gritted my teeth.
“Let me help you.”
I rose, and the sheet slipped off my back and breasts. I gasped, clutching the sheet and drawing it to my throat. “You saw ...” I shrunk into the bed, horrified.
He swallowed, nodded, and I saw the truth in his eyes. I wasn’t embarrassed by nudity. This was something far more personal. The patchwork of scars crisscrossing my back, legs, arms. Persuasion to use my thought-energy for his personal use, my father called it. At least I didn’t see pity on Julius’s face. I don’t think I could’ve handled that from him.
“You don’t have to tell me anything about them if it unsettles you. I want you to feel safe here, and I’m not going to push you to do or say anything unless you’re comfortable. Do you understand?”
I watched him again, but there was nothing but sincerity on his face. I nodded slowly. He must have been waiting for me to reply in some way, because when I nodded, he relaxed.
“I’ll get you something to wear.” Julius pushed a glowing blue button the size of a fingertip, and a panel slid silently open beside the bed. He took a long robe from the compartment and, helping me into a sitting position, settled it around my shoulders. He made an effort not to touch me, not even a fingertip grazed my skin. He seemed to do everything he could to keep me calm.
He made to support my elbow. I pulled back, tense and on edge. I didn’t know how to react to kind gestures, and my reaction was knee jerk. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ... It’s just that I’m not used to ...” I hugged the sides of the robe closely about myself. What should I tell him, that I was used to being hit more than being touched gently?
“I didn’t mean to startle you. I’ll tell you what I’m going to be doing every step of the way so you know what to expect. I’m going to slide the sheet off your legs and help you stand. Is that okay?”
He waited until I nodded. He gently pulled the sheet from my legs, manipulating the end of the robe to cover me as the sheet moved. As he leaned over me, his scent, warm, male, and spicy, enveloped me.
“Now I’m going to slip your feet to the floor then slide my hand under your knee. Ready?”
I nodded, tensing as he slid his fingers between the back of my knee and the bed. He was gentle. Nonsexual. He touched me only as he needed to, keeping his movements slow and measured.
“Lean into me. Let me take your weight.” He placed my arm around his shoulder and helped me to my feet. I groaned as my body adjusted to take my weight. Dull pain echoed from my feet, up my legs. Deep cuts and dark bruises made my feet swollen and disfigured after a night of walking barefoot through the city streets.
“Do you need to sit?”
I shook my head, my body stiffening. “No. I’m okay. I can walk myself.”
When he looked at me, doubt colored his eyes. “You’re very weak. I’m amazed you have the energy to stand, although I’m guessing sheer determination is the only thing keeping you going at the moment. As much as I am delighted you are conscious, I don’t want to go through the past three days again because of your stubbornness.”
“Three days?” I’d been out for three days. Knocked out, exhausted. The use of my energy had taken much more of a toll than I’d known. It was stronger, but the effects hit hard, too.
“I’m going to pick you up and take you into the bathroom. Just relax.”
I was too shocked to utter a sound as he swept me into his arms as though I weighed nothing. Julius settled me back onto my feet. I swayed, but his arm around my waist kept me from falling. “I’ll bathe you.”
I shook my head. “No, I ... I’ll do it myself. Please, I ... I need to.” I pulled the robe tight about me. I needed space to process what had happened to me, where I was now, and
why
he seemed so hell-bent on helping me. Why was he being so ... gentle? Caring? For what purpose? I couldn’t wrap my mind around it.
There had to be a reason, and although it wasn’t obvious at the moment, I knew there would be one. I would find it. It would only be a matter of time.
“This is against my better judgment, but all right. I’ll be in the next room should you have any difficulties.” The door closed softly behind him.
I started to tremble. Tension I didn’t know I held on to poured from me, making me weak. My legs felt as though they weren’t going to hold my weight. I grabbed the side of the sink with both hands, dragging in deep lungfuls of air, waiting for the lightheadedness to pass.
I tipped my head back, blinking my vision into focus when I saw a face staring back. My heart launched into my throat. My first thought was that there was someone in here. I turned, and something pulled me back to look at the face. When my mouth fell open, so did hers.
There wasn’t someone else in the room. I was looking into a mirror. It was my reflection, but
that
wasn’t
me
. It ... wasn’t ... couldn’t be ... me.
I put my hand to my face, my hand shaking. Barely breathing.
I wasn’t me staring back. My cheeks sunk beneath prominent cheekbones and hollowed out eyes. My skin was so thin, I could see the tiny webbed capillaries over my face. Limp hair was plastered over my head so thick with dirt and God-knew-what, it was no more than a scraggly mess.
I opened the robe, slowly pulling apart the material, my attention riveted to the grotesque apparition in the mirror. My skin stretched over jutting bones, each joint looking as though it would poke through my parchment skin. My breast bones stuck out in sharp ripples on my upper chest. I had no breasts to speak of. Skin ripped over jagged ribs, and my arms were frail twigs that looked like they could snap in two. My hips protruded around a sunken stomach that could have touched my spine. My legs were nothing more than stick-thin appendages.
I looked like a walking skeleton. One of the living dead. No wonder Julius had been so surprised when he woke me. He had woken the dead. It was a miracle I had survived.
I heard a strangled sound, realizing I was the one that was making it. My eyes filled with hot tears. I wiped my face clear with a jerky hand. I was not me anymore. I was gone, replaced with something else entirely.
I needed to wash it all away. The dried sweat, the gritty grime from my body, wash away everything I’d been through. All I’d seen. What I was. I wished I could wash away everything I’d done. All of the evils I’d committed. But nothing would wash that away. Nothing as simple as water would make me ever forget.
I let the robe drop to the floor and wobbled into the shower. When I stepped into the cubicle, a nozzle extended out of the wall in front of me and showered me with soft drops of warm water. A panel wide enough to fit my fingertip appeared beneath the nozzle, the light shimmering from blue to red. That must be for the water temperature, but it had been perfect as soon as it started so I didn’t attempt to change it. I shut my eyes, enjoying the feeling of bliss. I found some peace behind closed lids and warm soap. The fragrance of vanilla filled my senses. I washed off the capsule they’d taken me from, the unholy sleep they’d put me in, the memory of Seth and the lingering menace of his threat. The question of how he’d found me in that back alley. The frightening reality of what that might mean.
I rinsed my hair through again and again, ridding myself of the dirt of the basement where they had first taken me years ago. Washed off the hands of the men who had beaten me and made me try to do things I didn’t want to do, things I never wanted to face again.
I leaned on the shower wall and let the water run over my body, panting with effort. My forehead was pressed against the cool tiles, absorbing the heat of my skin. My limbs trembled. I braced myself against the wall and closed my eyes.
But when I did that, I felt. I tried to keep my emotions locked in that safe place inside of me, but I couldn’t muster the energy to knock them back down when they rose. A deep sob tore upward, crashing through me. It broke from my mouth. Another followed, and then the tide defeated me.
“Bring her in.” Victor’s black eyes gleamed as he said it. I had always wondered about his eyes. They were so dark that the pupil bled seamlessly into the iris so that it appeared there was no color at all. Just huge black eyes that held too little emotion. Too much madness.
It was a madness that only I seemed to see. The other scientists didn’t notice. Or if they did, they didn’t show their abhorrence. I couldn’t help the shiver that slithered through my body every time he turned those eyes to me.
The other scientists didn’t seem to have the same insane streak in their gazes. When they looked at me, their eyes were just blank. They had protected themselves. They didn’t see me anymore, the person. They saw the experiment. The lump of meat. The science.
A guard came into the room, dragging a thin woman through with a rough tug. Her blonde hair hung limply over her face, and she kept her face downcast. Her clothes were tattered, dirty, and stained with blood. The way her shoulders sloped and her stance cringed told me they’d already broken her. Poor, bloody woman.
She lifted her head, confused eyes locked on me and instantly cleared. “Katia!”
Nausea ripped through my body. I struggled against my bindings, but they didn’t budge. “Let her go. Now. She’s innocent.”
“Of course I can let her go. Now, if you want it, but it will be up to you if I do. All you have to do is do as I ask. Show the many talents I know are locked in that pretty little body, and she will be set free.”
I wanted to rip free of the bindings, claw Victor’s eyes out of his face, tear his heart out of his body, if he even had one.
“No, Katia. You can’t.” Tears slid down Heather’s face, streaking through the dirt. By the look of her, she’d already been through so much. She couldn’t take more.
“I can’t let them do what they’ll do to you, Heather. You don’t know what they’re fully capable of.”
A collective tension rode the air as the scientists in the room expected to see what they’d tried to make me do for the last year.
“They can do whatever they want to me, but you can’t give in. Not now. You’ve come too far, fought too long to give in now.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” I said.
Heather stood straight, tossing her head back, tilting her chin up. This was the defiant Heather I knew and loved. The Heather that was going to give herself up for me, the Heather that knew what they would do and didn’t cave in. “I know what I’m saying. And I know what you need to do.”
“I don’t deserve this,” I whispered.
She shook her head. “No. You deserve so much more. You’re destined for so much more. Don’t give in. There will come a time when you can defeat him. You will be the only person who can. He’s evil. He’ll take over the world. You’re the only person who might be able to stop him. Me? I’m nothing. But you ... you’re strong.”
“No, Heather. I’m not strong. I can end this for you!”
“Don’t you dare give in! Don’t you make this a waste. I won’t forgive you if you do.”
Victor made an impatient sound. He motioned to the guard who slammed Heather into a chair and bound her to it. All the time I kept her gaze locked with mine. Tried to give her the strength she would need, all the while knowing it would never be enough. Tried to stop the tide of tears that streamed down my cheeks. I didn’t want them to do this to my precious friend. She was wrong about me. So wrong.
Victor leaned against the wall, arms crossed, “You can stop this, Katia.” He sounded bored. The desire to use my thought-energy and lash it out at all of them was beyond temptation, but I knew that meant the end of what I had fought for so long and also the end of Heather’s life. They had no intention of letting her go. The only thing I was sure of was, if I used my thought-energy, her death would come sooner. I could save her the pain of what was to come.
“I can’t do what you want me to. Stop hurting Heather. Please, I can’t do what you want me to do.” I sobbed.
“Don’t you dare,” Heather hissed between clenched teeth.
“You just need to concentrate. Try harder, Katia. Begin,” Victor said.
I crumpled to the floor of the shower. Water beat over my head as anguish ripped over me, through me, from me, tearing me apart, until my heart bled just like my body had.
I vaguely heard a muffled curse. The water stopped, and a warm, dry towel was draped over me. I was lifted in strong arms, held against a chest, taken from the shower to stand on the floor. Gentle arms wound around me, an arm around my waist, another at my nape, holding me against a warm, solid wall.
“No. Don’t touch me. Don’t do this. Please ... stop.”
His hands stilled on my shoulders, body tense. “... why?”
“Because I don’t deserve this.”
I tried to pull away, but he kept me pressed against him, whispering into my ear, rubbing my back with long, soothing strokes. I gave up struggling, falling against his body. He took my weight easily.
