Bad Blood (Book 4 of The Warden series) (8 page)

“I know how you had to fight against your fears to seduce Vince.” He pressed his hand against her stomach as she sucked in stuttered breaths to calm her tears. “I know how you fell in love with him, and became whole again. I know how hard it was for you to lose him and I know how you struggled with your guilt when you found another man to love.” He pulled her shirt back down and brought his hand to her face to push away her tears.

“I know you, Cori. Nothing you ever do will change that. So, you go ahead and kick, scream, and bite if you have to. You have never and will never succeed in pushing me away. I’m leaving today at noon. I expect you to be the last face I see before those doors close on me.” He tucked her hair and she nodded.

She reached around him and latched on to him with a vice grip hug. She mumbled into his chest something hardly audible. “I love you too,” he said gripping her right back. “I have some good news if you’re ready to be cheered up.”

She pulled away and smiled. “I am cheered up, dummy,” she said wiping away her tears.

“Oh, well, here’s the cherry on top. I asked Danato about your BBQ idea.” She paused with the same eager hopeful enthusiasm he had shown Danato. “He gave the go ahead.”

She gasped and hugged him again, as she planted kisses all over his face and neck. He laughed wondering if he should be insulted that his soliloquy of love hadn’t provoked as much excitement as Danato’s permission to have a party.

The final kiss that prompted her to straddle him, however, seemed to be a response to his previous declarations. Though he had chosen a secluded area for the picnic, he did a double check to make sure no one was stationed in view above them from the roof. Once he was sure they weren’t to be interrupted or peeped on, he let her have her way with him. With such attentions, Ethan was sure that he would have nothing left for Leona even if she did try to force herself on him.

When their outdoor romp was complete, she walked him back inside for a proper clothed send off. He wrapped his arm around her and kissed her forehead as they walked down the hall to the docs. “You are going to spoil me, Cori. What am I to do with all this energy when you aren’t giving me so much goodbye sex?”

She smiled. “There’s always hello sex, make-up sex, and bored sex.”

He smiled. “Do me a favor.”

“Hmm.”

“Focus on your work the next few days. I know your brain. I know you’ll fret about me and what’s-her-butt if you don’t. There’s nothing I can say to make you not, but try, for me.”

Cori inhaled deeply. “For you, I guess I will bury my hands in dirt.”

The doc manager was already checking the clock when they strolled in. He had already given him his duffel bag. He was just waiting for Ethan—impatiently. They were right on time, but the five minutes before they arrived, he was frantic that his shipment of empty boxes would be late.

He gave Cori a long sensuous kiss that made the doc manager, “ahem,” Ethan mouthed, “
I love you
,” as he backed away. Cori mouthed it back to him. He pointed at her feet and then to his eyes. He still wanted her to be his last sight as the truck closed.

He was practically shoved into the truck by the doc manager, which he chose to ignore since he didn’t want to interrupt his longing goodbye with Cori. It was short lived though. He saw Cori wave and the door shut.

He felt the truck move and he remembered how painful it was the first time he left her at those docs. He knew as well as anyone, it was only for a few days, but when you were with someone nearly every moment of every day, it was surprisingly painful to be away from them for even a short time. It seemed like he was going to have to be the one submerged in work to keep from fretting over her.

12

Cori barely made it in to report for duty. Her first night without Ethan by her side had left her tossing and turning. Consequently, she slept through the alarm. If it weren’t for the houses subtle lighting changes and temperature drop, she may have still been comatose in her bed. She wasn’t sure she was thankful for the goading, considering how tired she was, but she appreciated that the house took notice of her, even if she hadn’t been doing the best job keeping her apartment picked up.

Decked out in black cargo pants—with more pockets than pants should be allowed to have, a white t-shirt, and a fitted matching black jacket she strolled into the prison. She hadn’t intended on joining the black brigade like the guards, but her gun holster left her yanking up her
relaxed fit
jeans. Plus the black was rather slimming.

When she changed her outfit, Ethan had a fit. In fact, any small changes in her hairstyle or personality put him on guard. He had been paranoid ever since the transmorph incident. He was mortified that he had not been able to identify the culprit Cori and he was determined to never mistake her again.

She jogged up the short set of stairs and through the hall leading to Danato’s office. It would only cut a few seconds off her late arrival, but every second counted. She opened the office door, but before she could enter, and even before Danato and Belus had looked up to see her, they both said, “Gun!”

She grimaced and backpedaled to remove her pistol and place it in the hanging bin by the door. She had been wearing the thing nonstop for a few weeks, so she often forgot it was there. She went inside and closed the door. Belus for a change was sitting in a chair in front of the desk drinking coffee, while Danato was filling out paperwork.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said plopping herself on the arm of the free chair with her feet on the seat.

Danato looked up at the clock. “Five minutes? That’s hardly worth apologizing for.”

Cori looked up at the clock on the wall. It read 8:05. The black on white numbers were all in the correct order, but they certainly weren’t reading right. She was at least forty-five minutes late. If not nearly an hour by her calculations. She was certain the clock was wrong, but she wasn’t going to argue the point just to win disfavor.

“Are we going to go into the time bubble?” She rubbed her hands in anticipation. After some convincing and a little of Belus’s diplomatic skills, Cori had gotten permission to plant a garden in the wizard realm so they could grow food faster. With no animal competition, and the time difference, she could plant a seed or seedling and be back to pick fresh vegetables in less than three days.

“No. Sit on that chair right,” Danato scolded.

“No?” She glanced at Belus for some support as she slipped into the chair. He gave her a barely noticeable headshake and sipped his hot coffee gingerly. It was his way of saying “
wait
.” It was also his way of saying, “
don’t open your mouth, and say something you’ll regret
.” Either way she held her tongue for Danato to continue.

“
We
are not going. You are,” Danato said.

“Me, by myself?” Cori had been into the wizard world a few times since her original stint with Ethan, but only for a few minutes at a time to track entrance locations. She knew she could handle the world, but it didn’t mean the prospect of being there for several hours didn’t scare her just a little. Or a lot.

“With your gun of course. I mean that was the point of getting them wasn’t it. So I don’t have to babysit you all the time.”

“Babysit? I resent that.”

“You know the risks of this don’t you?” Danato peeked over the rim of his glasses. “If a wizard gets the drop on you that gun isn’t going to do you any good.”

Cori glanced at Belus again searching for the reason for such animosity. Danato had always been a stern man when it came to safety, but he usually wasn’t so forceful with her. Belus lifted his cup to his mouth. As he did, he brought his other hand under his chin and tapped it.
Chin up.

If she expected Danato to approve of this pursuit of hers, he needed her to have the discipline and responsibility to complete it. She took in a breath and brought her chin up physically in preparation of doing it internally. “I’ll be very vigilant. Do you have any preference as to the location of the garden?”

“I assumed you had a spot in mind,” Danato said.

Cori bit her cheek so she didn’t smile. “Yes, sir, I have an ideal location picked out. Moist, fertile, and rich with sun.”

“Well, have at it, you’re the botanist. I wouldn’t presume to know your job.”

She couldn’t help, but grin. “Thank you, sir.” She knew Danato was trying to maintain his stern face for the sake of professional separation, but she could see the pleasure he derived from making her happy.

“Get on with it then.” He waved her off. She jumped up prepared to undertake her day. “You’ll need to if you’re going to get the paperwork done for it by the end of the day.” She stopped short of the door and groaned.

“No, paperwork,” she turned back, “paperwork for vegetables?”

“Paperwork for everything,” he practically chanted the words.

Cori threw her head back and resisted the urge to stomp her feet like a child. “Yes, sir.” She saw a new pleasure on Danato’s face. The pleasure all superiors held for their underlings as they undertook the duties they had once endured and hated just the same.

Before the door shut behind her on her way out, two voices simultaneously hollered, “Gun!” She growled and grabbed the gun that she would have otherwise forgotten.

13

Once situated with her supplies, it only took Cori an hour to plant her seeds in excess of forty plants. She wasn’t sure how well the plants would do, but even if half of them came up, they were still saving months of time waiting for them to grow in the greenhouse. Not to mention she had far more space in real ground.

After a quick overview of the surrounding trees for wizards, she looked out on to the clear crisp fresh water lake. She remembered her first time here with Ethan. She remembered how harsh it seemed to be stuck there, and yet the moment she was taken away from it, she would have killed for more time.

With another hour at least before she was removed, she decided to make the best of it. She stripped down to her bare essentials and dove into the water for a swim. There was nothing as refreshing as a swim in natural un-chlorinated water.

When the time was up, she wrung out her hair and slipped back into her clothes, lest she be drawn back into the real world half-naked. It didn’t take long for the swirling images of a canvas in the rain to signal her ascent from the bubble.

The guard who pulled her out was already prepared with her designated tuning fork, which released the cotton from her ears. She thanked him, and he returned to the pseudo watchtower that overlooked the bubble. The plethora of buttons, lights, and switches inside the small enclosure provided readouts of anything and everything bubble related. It was the one area of the prison, save the infirmary, that was staffed 24/7.

She pulled her wet hair back into a loose bun in preparation for the most boring day ever.

She heard a grunt and thump. She turned toward the guard station and saw the guard hunched over his workstation.

The double doors to the room clapped shut. Even before her eyes reached the door, she could feel static electricity drawing the hairs on the back of her neck up. Efrat in all his casual glory stood by the entrance with his hand on the light switch. She couldn’t remember what the rules were for conductivity, but she was pretty sure a man with that much power could surge enough electricity into a light switch to electrocute a man working an electrical panel twenty feet away.

He looked the same as he had nearly a year ago when she faced off with him. His jeans and t-shirt layered with a blue flannel, reminded her of how out of place he seemed in the prison. He should have been sitting on a couch watching football and drinking beer, not trespassing through the prison plotting his escape. His blond hair was still just a little long, making it flare away from his face. His face was handsome, but more so because of his brilliant blues; the same brilliant blues that were now staring at her.

His eyes widened mirroring her surprise. He must not have expected to find her there. The time bubble was not often visited by anyone. The self-sustaining prison was a bit off the beaten path for sightseeing.

Efrat’s surprise dissipated and his eyes became predatory. She knew she had only one chance of surviving this. Her gun was inches from her hand, but her opponent’s weapons were his hands. She needed to go back into the time bubble. It was a risk, but her chances in there were calculating higher than out here, at the moment.

Just as his hands rose, she reached for her gun simultaneously leaping back against the bubble. The backward swan dive met the bubble just as the bolt of electricity hit her. She felt the recoil of her gun, but the sharp pain of Efrat’s electrification didn’t stop. She felt heat resonating from her gold rings burning her fingers where the metal touched. Her back arched painfully, anatomically wrong. She thought it might break, but as fast as the pain hit her, it left. The world around her swirled into a watercolor painting.

Then oblivion.

14

Cori woke in her bedroom. The room was chilled. The lights were on. Her alarm was quietly humming somewhere below the bed, where she had knocked it to when it had assaulted her sleep. She checked her body and hands for charring, blood, or missing digits.

Nothing.

The skin beneath her rings was blanched, as it should be. Her lower back was a little achy from her days spent lifting dirt in the greenhouse, but not so painful that she might suspect she had just performed an act from the exorcist.

It was a dream.

Unfortunately, the dream must have been premonitory because she was indeed late for duty. Like in her dream, she didn’t bother with a shower. She dressed and grabbed a token breakfast of a granola bar and headed into the prison.

This was a fine start to her week. Her husband was no doubt shacking up with her fem-wolf archenemy; Efrat, her murderer, was now trying to kill her in her dreams; and Danato was likely going to gripe her out for being late. Granted being late was the least of her worries, but when the background stress was so high, everything seemed like a kick in the head.

Cori bounded into Danato’s office just as…

“Gun!”

She retreated from the doorway and placed her firearm in the bin with a minor muffled scream. She couldn’t believe she had forgotten again. She stepped into the office and shut the door. She hadn’t slammed the door, but the glass shuttered a little anyway.

Just as in her dream, Danato was doing paperwork, while Belus sipped on his coffee in the chair in front of the desk. “Sorry I’m…” She looked up at the clock; it read 8:05. She was now certain it was forty-five minutes off. “…a little late.” Danato glanced up at the clock and grunted his concession before returning to his paperwork. “This is so weird.” She sat on the arm of the chair, with her feet on the seat.

“Sit right.” Danato pointed to her feet. It wasn’t foretelling to predict that Danato would have an issue with her feet being on the furniture, but it was uncanny that the events were happening very similar to her dream. She repositioned and started to put her feet up on the desk. “Don’t even think about it,” Danato said without looking up.

“Sorry, just had to throw a wrench in my déjà vu. It was starting to overwhelm. So, are we going into the time bubble today?”

“No,” Danato said. He even paused as if he expected her to object, but since she was already predicting his response she saved her rebuttal. “You will go by yourself. You’re armed now. I think you can handle it.”

Cori grinned seeing the hard look he was giving her to defend his choice before she had even objected to it. “I understand completely. I think your right. I even have the perfect spot picked out. Shouldn’t take me more than a couple hours, and then I can start filling out the paperwork.”

The two men exchanged looks of surprise and suspicion. “Who are you, and what have you done with Cori?” Danato asked. He was only partially joking considering her past.

“I’m me. I was just prepared for this. I had a dream about it last night.”

“Dream?” Both men asked as they shot looks at each other before turning their concerned looks on her.

“What?” she asked and looked between them for who would best explain the excitement.

“Cori,” Danato stood up tossing his glasses on to his pile of papers. “We don’t get to keep our dreams. We have protections from that. If you remember dreaming, something is wrong.”

Cori shrugged forgetting how the use of the wrong word could get her into so much trouble. “I don’t know. Maybe…I just…I don’t know.” She knew that at the house she was protected from her nightmares. She knew in the wizard world she wasn’t and she had awful nightmares, but it never occurred to her that she shouldn’t be having
any
dreams.

Danato came around the desk and grabbed her hand. “Tell me what happened.” She didn’t like the attention she was getting for one little dream. She looked to Belus. He nodded toward Danato.
Tell him.

“It was nothing. I woke up. I came here. You told me to go to the bubble by myself. I did. I planted the plants. I swam.” Danato’s eyes narrowed at that part, but he didn’t interrupt. “I got out of the bubble and Efrat was there. He shocked me, and boom. I woke up in bed.”

Danato’s comforting hand slipped away. He meandered back to his chair, but didn’t sit down. He stood there pondering the situation. “This might explain your sighting of Efrat before.”

“Maybe the transmorphs left her open,” Belus said still sipping on his coffee calmly. Danato could have been climbing the walls and Belus would still be sitting in that chair.

“Yes,” Danato agreed.

“Open to what?” She asked.

“Dream feeders,” Belus said. “They inject you with bad thoughts, fears, and traumatic memories. Nightmares, like the ones you had while you’re in the wizard world. Anything that will get your amygdala into overdrive. They feed off the energy.”

“What happens to me, besides having nightmares?”

“Eventually, the creatures will be able to inject you with psychic stimulation while you’re awake. Long-term exposure to that will result in paranoid and delusional behavior. That of course spawns all sorts of trouble depending on how paranoid, and how delusional.”

Cori let her mouth hang open, but the defaming word could not be put back in now that it was out. “It’s just a
dream
,” she pitched. She could see Danato pondering, turning the entire situation over and over again. Soon, he would be so concerned for her safety that he would lock her in the house to keep her safe.

“A test!” She blurted out and turned to Belus who was still sane. For once, she could see the benefit of having one man around that was not overprotective of her. “There’s always a test. A cat scan of my brain. Say my A,B,C’s backward. There must be some way to determine that I’m not going schizoid on you.”

“Actually,” Belus turned to Danato. “A PET scan should show if the amygdala is active.”

Cori nodded vigorously. “Yes, let’s do that!” She wasn’t even entirely sure what a PET scan did, but she was desperate to avail Danato’s fears as well as her own. Bottom line, she was sick of having anything taking her over. Dream feeders, transmorphs, fear demons, they all sucked something from you, life, happiness, sanity. If she could do anything to hedge off an attack, short of lobotomy she was going to do it.

15

Luckily, the PET scan was painless and so far, no one had suggested lobotomy as the next course of action, but they were still waiting for the doctor to reveal his results of the scan. They went out to the small foyer before the nurse’s station that was laughably called a waiting room. There were only four chairs. None of which looked sturdy enough for Danato’s large frame. Instead of sitting, he paced back and forth between the entrance and the nurse’s round desk station. His ominous presence was making the two young women behind the counter nervous. They tried to look busy by shuffling their papers repetitiously, but Danato paid them no heed.

Belus sat across from her in a chair, looking positively bored. If it hadn’t been for their most recent conversation on the topic, she would have assumed he simply cared nothing for the danger her brain might be in. As it was, it was still the first conclusion she went to.

When Danato was on the far leg of his pace, Cori switched chairs to sit beside him. She pulled her feet onto the chair and hugged her knees to her chest. He looked over at her inquisitively. “Do you think I’m under the influence of a dream feeder?” she asked resting her head on her knees.

Belus noted the whisper in her voice and glanced at Danato. When he was sure he was out of ears reach, he spoke. “I think that it is possible. Being inside the prison for six weeks of your abduction would have made you susceptible, but transmorphs are not prone to being effected by dream feeders, so I doubt that would be the cause.”

“So, how would I have been exposed to it?”

“You wouldn’t.”

Cori pulled her head up to watch Danato U-turn at the door. When he was gone, she turned her attention back to Belus. “You don’t think this could be a dream feeder, do you?”

“No.”

“Why is he even considering it then?”

“Danato has his own reasons for being concerned. I don’t share his conclusions.”

“Do you care to expand on that?” She asked.

Belus looked her over as if he were debating that very question, but he continued as if she hadn’t asked it. “If you were protected from your dreams as you should have been,” Belus lowered his voice even further, “then there is no way this is a dream feeder.”

“Is there some reason to think that I would not have been protected from my dreams?”

Belus opened his mouth to respond, but the nurse interrupted announcing that the doctor was ready for them. Danato nearly bowled her over heading to the computer lab. Belus slipped out of his chair, but Cori grabbed his arm before he could go. “What is he so concerned about?”

Belus glanced back at the nurse who didn’t know if she should wait for them or catch up with Danato. He gave her a nod and she shuffled off to find Danato. He turned back to Cori.

“The house protects you from all supernatural influences while you sleep. You know that dream feeders produce a psychic energy that is designed to invade your mind in an unconscious state. What you don’t know is that humans produce a minor psychic energy while they are in REM sleep.”

“Humans are psychic in their sleep.”

“Not exactly, although, some yes. The point is, the house absorbs unconscious psychic energy.”

“The house absorbs psychic dream energy, but why can’t I remember my dreams.”

He paused like he didn’t want to say more. “It eats your dreams.” She must have been holding a horrified expression because he went so far as to touch her hand that was still grasping his arm. “It is essentially the equivalent of what Cleos does when he removes your memories, unobtrusive and harmless, but the difference is, the house can’t access your mind, only the psychic energy being dispelled during sleep.”

“Why?”

“Sustenance, energy is energy. Look I don’t have time to explain, but rest assured I feel very confident that the house has always and will always protect you.”

“But Danato isn’t confident?”

“He’s not thinking clearly. He tends to do that when you are the concerned party.”

“Okay, what does it mean if the house was protecting me?”

“That it wasn’t a dream.” Cori’s eyes flickered over his and her mouth opened to spill a hundred more questions at him. “I don’t know,” he said putting his hand over her mouth. “Danato and I will figure it out. Trust us.”

Cori wondered if he knew how hard that was for her. “Okay,” she muttered through his fingers before he removed them. He headed to the infamous, off limits computer lab.

She followed him to the dark room. Multiple computer monitors showed images of her brain activity. The blobs of color depicting her emotions and desires looked like kindergarten coloring projects and “Doctor Dickhead” was as proud of them as any mother, of said kindergartener, would be.

Danato ate up his spoon fed technical jargon. She was lost back in the office when the word amygdala came up so she had no chance of understanding him. She resented that this guy was so smart that he had been elevated above the normal standards of socialization. He probably didn’t even know how much of a condescending ass he was. Unfortunately, she wouldn’t get the opportunity to educate him on the topic since she was a revolving door patient and needed him on her good side. She would just have to grin and bear it. Or in her case sneer and bear it.