Through The Veil (11 page)

She looked up at him in surprise. “Marcus? What are you
doing in my dream?”

He looked around the room again. “Your dream? This is what
you dream about?”

She gave a bitter laugh. “Not really, no, this is the stuff
of nightmares.” She gestured over to a wall he hadn’t noticed before, a wall
filled with bars. They looked into several small cages holding people.

“I don’t understand. What’s going on?”

She looked at him with curiosity. “We’re dream walking. Or
at least I was. I’m not sure how you managed to tag along. Probably part of
those telepathic skills you’re so proficient at performing. So, you didn’t mean
to end up here?”

“No, I was lying with you on the bed. You’re sick.”

“Ah, that explains why I seem to be stuck here.”

“You don’t seem to be too concerned about it.”

She shrugged. “I’m not, because I’m not really here.
Unfortunately, they are.” Her tear-filled eyes looked back at the cages.

“This is real? Where is this place? What’s going on? Who are
those people?” He gazed in horror at the people locked in the cages.

“They’re my family, but in the ES they’re considered to be
Others and are therefore extremely dangerous to the country.”

The bitter sarcasm in her voice bothered him. She cared for
these people and they were being hurt. His stomach clenched as he began to get
an idea of exactly why nightmares plagued her. Anger rose. Who would do
something this atrocious?

“Is it dangerous for us to be here?” he asked her, concern
for her foremost in his mind.

“No, no one can sense that we’re here except for maybe
Savannah. In fact, she’s probably the one who pulled me here so I would know
what happened.” She gestured to a beautiful redhead with long cork-screw curls,
singing a light, Gaelic-sounding song while rocking back and forth with her
eyes closed.

“What is she doing?”

Lori walked along the row of cages to stand in front of the
one holding a seriously wounded naked man. He bled profusely from several
wounds on his body. His eyes were open, his face scarred with ragged lines down
one side of it, but Marcus feared it may already be too late for him. His eyes
were totally blank and completely devoid of any emotion.

Tears overflowed onto Lori’s cheeks and she moved as if to
reach out to the man. “She’s trying to calm William. Damn, they caught him
again. They’re going to kill him soon if I don’t figure out a way to get them
out of here.”

“Where is ‘here’?”

“This served as my home for the last six years. Isn’t it
cozy? They call it BET-labs. The Biological and Experimental Technology
Laboratory, but that’s just a fancy way of saying torture chamber.” Her eyes
got hard and her jaw clenched. “Let me introduce you to the worst the ES has to
offer. But be warned—these are seriously dangerous specimens here. You already
met Savannah and William.” She gestured to another cage holding another
beautiful redhead also rocking with her eyes closed. “This is
Shar
. She’s Savannah’s sister. Her crime…she turns into a
bird, a hawk.” She gestured toward his wings. “You should be able to appreciate
the injustice of that one. Right now she’s shoring up Savannah, trying to help
with William.”

She walked along the cages to stand before one holding
another man, who appeared to be sleeping. “This is Tim. He can teleport, so
they keep him pretty heavily drugged all the time. They can’t run the risk of
him teleporting out and escaping, although he probably learned his lesson the
last time he tried. After they caught him, he spent four days straight
receiving electroshock therapy after they’d broken several bones in his body.”

She looked over her shoulder at Marcus like she simply told
him a nice little story, but this was a horror story. “Have you ever been
electrocuted after having a broken bone?”

“No.” He couldn’t say anything else in the face of her pain.
His stomach clenched.

“But you’ve had a broken bone, right?”

He nodded.

“Well, then you can appreciate how incredibly painful it is
to have your muscles seize around that bone over and over again with no
warning. Thousands of volts of electricity running throughout your entire body
along with how much the broken bone already hurts.”

She walked back over to where Savannah and William were.
Nothing much had changed there since they’d come in.

They continued to rock as he asked, “What can they do?”

“William is a panther—animal shifter like
Shar
. Savannah’s abilities fall entirely in the mind. She’s
better at telepathy than even you all are and she can also use those abilities
to manipulate minds. Right now, she’s working to convince William that he’s
anywhere but here. Unfortunately, he hasn’t been anywhere but here in eleven
years so it’s getting harder and harder to pull him back from the edge.”

“Jesus, eleven years?” Marcus looked at the poor damaged
man.

Suddenly Savannah stopped rocking and her brilliant blue
eyes flew open. She looked directly at him. “Warrior, you need to help her save
him.”

The sudden shock pushed Marcus out of the dream and back
into his physical body in his home among the trees. Marcus opened his eyes to
find himself still on the bed with Lori curled up in his arms. The heat
continued to emanate from her. His hold on her tightened as he considered what
he’d just witnessed. Damn, had that been real? He’d never known anyone who
could dream walk before.

He brushed the hair off her forehead and thought about what
he’d learned. Was it real or was it just a dream? And if it was real, could he
ignore the plight of those poor people especially knowing Lori had been one of
them for six years?

Regardless, he needed to let the others know. He sent a
mental call out to Malcolm and Bethany.
“Something’s happened. Can you come
to my home right away?”

Bethany responded quickly.
“Aaron and I will be there in
about fifteen minutes.”

“I’m coming. Has she taken a turn for the worse?”
Malcolm
sounded worried.

“No, there’s no change with Lori. She’s still pretty out
of it and her fever hasn’t broken yet, but there’s been another type of
development.”

“Okay, I’m less than a minute away.”

Marcus untangled himself from Lori’s embrace. She whimpered.

After six years without anyone in his life like this, this
tiny show of need for him felt amazing. He’d missed that connection with
someone else. He leaned down and kissed her cheek. “
Shh
,
I’ll be right downstairs. I need to talk to Malcolm and Bethany about
something, but I’ll be back as soon as they’re gone.” She settled and he
quietly left the room.

He arrived at the main level of the house at the same time
as Malcolm. Malcolm eyed him critically as he came into the house. “Have you
gotten any sleep?”

Marcus nodded. “That’s actually why you’re here. Do you know
anything about dream walking?”

“I’ve read some about it when we all developed telepathy,
but I’ve never known anyone to actually do it. Why?”

“I’m pretty sure I did it this afternoon with Lori.”

“Seriously?”

He nodded. “I’ll explain more once Bethany and Aaron are
here. I don’t want to go through it twice.”

“Good enough. In the meantime, how about I go check our
patient?”

Like Marcus suspected, there’d been no change in Lori’s
physical state. She still ran a high fever as her body worked to heal itself.
She wasn’t in a coma, just a deep sleep. Malcolm was worried, but didn’t know
of anything else he could do to help her.

When Bethany and Aaron arrived, they headed back downstairs.
After they were all settled, Marcus explained what happened. “I know Lori
claims to not have strong telepathic talents, but she’s obviously connected
telepathically with a group of people in the ES that she calls the Others.”

Bethany immediately looked alarmed so he raised his hand to
calm her down. “Don’t overreact yet. Listen to what happened first. This
afternoon, I lay down with Lori and fell asleep. She’s been having awful
nightmares and talks in her sleep and just generally isn’t getting any rest
because she gets so worked up and frightened. When I lay with her, it settles
her some. But this afternoon, I dozed off, too. While asleep, I went with her
on a dream walk. She seemed surprised that I was there, too.”

“You do seem to have a strong telepathic bond with her,”
Bethany noted.

He nodded, although he still didn’t understand why they were
so connected. “We were at a medical facility, some sort of lab, where these
Others are being held prisoner, in fucking cages like animals. She considers
them her family and says she remained a prisoner there for six years. There
were four people in the room being held prisoner. They all have special
skills—animal shifters, telepathy, teleportation, and mental manipulation. It
sounds like they’re all there for experimentation purposes. Lori called it
torture and from what I could see, I’d agree. There’s a panther shifter who’s
practically dead.

“I don’t think Lori initiated the dream walk. That seemed to
come from a female named Savannah. Lori said she’s their mental guru. This
Savannah knew I was there and instructed me that I need to help Lori to save
the panther shifter.”

“She knew you were there?” Alarm stiffened Bethany’s
features as she exchanged a concerned look with Aaron. “I don’t like this,
Marcus. Lori is obviously scared for a reason. I don’t want to do anything that
might endanger our people, our lifestyle.”

“I don’t think she would do anything to harm us.” Marcus
shook his head. “She just wants to rescue her friends from their torture. After
seeing the conditions there, I can’t blame her for that and want to help.”

Bethany stood and began to pace. “I don’t like that she’s
pulling you into this. It’s not fair of her to ask this of you. That sounds
like the perfect way for you to end up in your own cage.” Bethany sank into her
chair and rested her head in her hands as she thought. “But on the other hand,
can we live with leaving them there? It sounds inhumane and I would hope we’re
better than that.”

And this is why she made such a good leader. Bethany was a
good mix of intelligent leadership balanced with empathy and compassion.

“I know the risks and I’m not exactly volunteering to go off
on a rescue mission tonight, but you needed to know what I discovered,” Marcus
told them.

“Of course.” Bethany nodded.

“Did you find out how Lori fit into these Others?” Aaron
asked. “Do you know what her special ability is?”

“No, unfortunately, I woke up before I got a chance to find
out.”

“Medically speaking,” Malcolm added, “this would help
explain Lori’s physical complications. If she’s spent the last six years in
some sort of captivity, it would be logical to assume she wasn’t in the best
shape physically when she got shot. Her body may just need the extra rest right
now to recuperate from the wound and the ordeal her body has been through
overall.”

Marcus nodded. “They appear to be tortured regularly. She’s
terrified of the place, but she also loves her friends and feels loyal to them.
I can’t imagine how hard it would be if one of you were locked up in a place
like that.”

Bethany chewed her lip while she thought. “Marcus, I’m not
sure I’m comfortable with you doing this dream walking again until I know more
about these people. I don’t want the ES to know about life here, yet. Aaron,
what are your thoughts security-wise?”

Aaron frowned. “I agree. At this point, we just don’t know
enough about either Lori or the ES. They could be setting you up for some sort
of trap.”

Marcus scowled. “Well, it’s not like I did it on purpose the
first time. How do you propose I keep it from happening again?”