Born of Silence (Immortal Guardians) (8 page)

“What’s happening to me?” she cried out.

“Oh, you’re beautiful,” Ekhart said, clasping his hands in joy.

“What. Is. Happening. To. Me?” she growled, surprised at the gravelly sound of her voice and how it traveled around the lab, echoing off the walls.

Ekhart ignored her, turning toward Dr. Shorman. The two shook hands, congratulating each other on a job well done.
“She’s actually conscious,” Ekhart said with a grin.

“Yes,” the doctor replied
.
“We have worked very hard to get her to this point.”

A growl escaped Danielle, and she shoved with all her might. The binds around her wrists gave and the scientists began to scramble
in terror. Kicking out
, her ankle binds gave as well, and she slid off the table staring at the retreating nurses. Ekhart had been the f
irst to make it out of the room.
Dr. Shorman
was
close behind. They were now looking at her, wide-eyed and slack-jawed through the safety of an onlooking office.

Her eyes darted around,
searching
for a means of escape, when
movement
caught her eye. Danielle rushed forward,
noticing then that she was
looking at the mirror that hung over the sink. Her eyes widened at
her reflection
.

Her normal red hair was replaced with a much darker red, almost maroon color. Thick chunks of black strands broke up the dark red, and the two colors intermingled as her hair curled around her breasts.

Her skin was ashen—
with barely
a trace of warmth—and in the light, her skin seemed to shimmer whenever she moved. Her eyes weren’t the light blue she’d bee
n born with. They were now dark
,
the irises matching her hair. Even her lips were dark. Two thin wings that were the same color as her
changed
skin peeked over her shoulders,
standing
tall
er
than
the top of her head. They were hinged, like fingers, and as though she willed them to—which she did
not
—they flexed. She reached around, grabbing one, smoothing her fingertips over the thin skin. But as her fingers wrapped the wing, she caught sight of rounded claws where her fingernails would be. These were much thicker than normal nails, and she eyed them speculatively.

She watched the mirror again and slowly turned around. Peering over her shoulder, she saw that the wings were actually protruding from her back, and her muscles’ movements
we
re what caused them to flex. She tried it and saw the wings slowly, gradually extend. She relaxed her muscles, and they folded behind her back once more.

Jesus Christ! This ha
s
to be a dream
.

A soft snick sounded, and her keen ears picked up on it immediately. Whirling around, she saw a guard come into the room, a dart gun trained on her.

“Hands behind your head,” he yelled as he took a tentative step toward her, and then another.
He was shaking, the end of his gun betraying how scared he was.

Danielle said nothing, just tracked his slow movements. She felt more like a predator than she’d ever thought was possible.

“I said hands behind your head,” he repeated.

Well, she’d had about enough of this crap. Dream or not, she was
done
. Danielle rushed forward just as the guard pulled the trigger. Impossibly, she dodged out of the way and the dart
thunked
into the wall behind her.
S
he reached out, wrenched his gun out of his hands, threw it against the wall and was on him in an instant. Even before he could scream for help, she wrapped her clawed hands around his head and twisted.

With a surprising ease, the guard’s neck snapped and he fell slack.
She let him drop to the ground.

In her distraction others had come into the lab. She felt the coldness of a barrel as it shoved against her temple. Raising her hands in surrender, she turned just as Ekhart came in
, surrounded by eight guards, each with
a
gun
pointed at
her
head
. He was beaming.

“Oh yes,” he said. “I think we’re ready for a
nother
road trip.”

Coldness stung her skin as a large metallic choker wrapped around her neck. The guard holding it snapped it into place and something pierced the back of her neck.

“What the hell are
you doing?” she hissed
.

Ekhart
smiled, pulling a remote out of his suit pocket and wav
ing
it in front of her. “You, my pet, now belong to me.” He pressed a button on the remote.

A
jolt r
a
n through her neck. She tried to move forward, to
yank
the remote from his fat hands, but she found that she could no longer move.

Ekhart’s grin w
idened as he slid an earpiece over
his ear. “Now, wave
to me
.”

Her hand immediately shot upward as she waved it at him.

“You may stop.”

Her hand fell to her side as she became immediately aware of what was happening. Her movements were no longer her own, and the man before her controlled everything she did.
She was now his puppet, and he, her puppeteer.
If that hadn’t been bad enough, Ekhart then showed her exactly what he wanted her for.

Garrick paced his cell, his
thoughts making his captivity all the worse. Dani hadn’t returned after they extracted her from her cell, and she’d been gone for far too long. In that time, he hadn’t been able to get her
—or their interaction—out
of his mind. He would have given anything to hear her moan as she writhed against the glass. And yet, not hearing her had his mind scrambling to make up sounds of his own, pretending he could hear throaty breaths and hisses as she arched in pleasure.
He wanted to watch her touch herself; to see her hand slide down past her bare breast
s
and flat stomach, and watch her fingers
delve
into the curls at the junction of her legs. He had no doubt what color her hair would be there, but the desire to see it had his cock aching. Yes, she would pleasure herself while he palmed his own erection and pumped, imagining her body on top of his, taking him into her as she rode him long and slow, or maybe hard and fast
…

Gods, he needed to get her out of his mind.

What in the hell had those bastards done to her?

The small flap in his door rose as someone slid a tray of food through it. Just as quickly, it was closed and locked tight. Garrick picked up the tray, inspecting the hard wheat roll that sat next to a bowl of stew. It was probably a few days old, but not so long that it had started to mold, so he dunked it in the stew and took a big bite. Sitting down on his bed, he leaned his back against the rock. This marked the fourth meal since Dani was taken, and Garrick had no clue if they were feeding their captives two or three times
a
day. It had also been four meals since Garrick was taken to the doctor, which likely meant that Dani was with him.

What if something happened to her? What if she never returned?

That train of thought was halted as h
er door opened
. T
wo guards carried her in and dumped her onto the floor, not even bothering to set her on her bed
before they left
. One look at her had him dropping his plate and running to the glass.

Holy gods, she was in even worse shape than he’d imagined.

Garrick stood stalk still. He couldn’t see enough. He needed a better look than what the regular light allowed. Willing a globe to light, he forced it through the glass until it hovered over her. Blood streaked her body, though her clothes seemed more or less the way they had before. Only her skin was marred
—at least as far as he could see
. He held the globe, suspending it in the air above her as he watched the rise and fall of her chest and stomach to make sure she still lived.

She did live.

Dani wasn’t asleep or unconscious
,
as he’d assumed. Her breathing came in short gasps, shaking her entire body from their force. And it wasn’t just her breath that caused it
:
she was crying.

Garrick charged the metal door, pounding it over and over until one of the guards came. Burly opened the small window, giving Garrick a warm look of curious appreciation. Apparently the good doctor
had
told him something. “What in the fuck did you do to her?” he asked.

Burly’s eyes flicked over to the glass where he could likely see the outline of Dani’s body. “I don’t give information for free.”

Garrick stared at him, his eyes narrowing in disgust. The bastard actually wanted him to pay for information? “Fuck you.”

A wide smile spread across
the guard
’s face. “That’s the spirit.”

“Not gonna happen,” Garrick sneered.

“Well then, I guess that
that
,” he said, looking pointedly at Dani, “is none of your business.” He slid the window shut and walked away from Garrick’s door.

“No,” Garrick yelled, pounding the metal again. “
Tell me
.”

No one replied. Both Burly and the one other guard in sight ignored him as though he made no sound at all. Garrick waited a few more minutes before giving up on that venture and approached the glass again. He watched Dani as he willed another globe to light since the other had dissipated in his distraction. Although he couldn’t hear her, he could see that she was still sobbing. Her body shook and her face was wet with tears. And then his eyes caught sight of her bloodied wrist as she tore at her flesh with
her fingernails. On and on she
ripped into her skin, causing her own blood to spill. Garrick thumped his fists on the glass, trying to catch her attention. But she refused to open her eyes, refused to look at him.

Gods, he wish
ed
he could find
out what the hell was going on
!

He watched her for hours. Her sobs finally started to ebb and then, thankfully, she fell asleep. If she wouldn’t let him heal her, then at least she’d sleep and let her body try to recover somewhat on its own. Humans didn’t heal as quickly as immortals, so she needed all the help she could get.

Finally, she woke
,
her body curving and stretching. She looked content for a moment, until her outstretched limbs caused her pain. She recoiled, freezing in place until whatever pain she’d felt disappeared
…
or at the very least, lessened.

Remaining where he’d been the entire time, he could only smile when she turned and saw him for the first time. She raised a hand slowly in a wave and that was all the encouragement that he needed.

“
You OK?
” was hastily written on the glass, illuminating for Dani to read.

She read the words and looked down at the ground in front of her immediately. She gave an almost invisible shake of her head that Garrick would have missed had he not been watching her so intently.

“
Can I help?
”

She read it and shook her head again.

He didn’t do anything for a few minutes. Dani was closed off from him, closed off from the world, and he needed to find a way to open her up again. That would be the only way he could find out what happened. He needed her closer to the window. Closer, so he could see her wounds better and assess her situation.

How could he draw her near? Garrick brightened as an idea struck him, and he quickly drew
a symbol
on the pane. She looked at him questioningly until he drew a big “X” in the center square. She smiled hesitantly and gave what Garrick thought looked like a snort. She
gingerly
scooted over toward the window, sitting Indian-style as she faced both him and the tic-tac-toe game between them. Placing her finger to the glass, she pointed at a square. Garrick used that brief second to look at her ravaged wrist, which thankfully wasn’t bleeding any longer. There was an angry
-
looking scab though.

Not wanting her to realize what he was looking at, he hastily wrote an “O” in the square she’d selected. Back and forth it went. Garrick had to re-write some of the
X’s and O’s, and even the grid
as the illumination faded, but eventually the game had been won. He took it.

Re-drawing the board, it was Dani’s turn to choose. As he’d done in the first game, she selected the middle square. Next came Garrick’s, and then hers, and so on. Dani took that game. After a while, both were wrapped up in playing the game as quickly as they could before the board disappeared. Garri
ck had won thirteen games. Dani,
fifteen.