Slip of Fate (Werelock Evolution Book 1) (7 page)

“Don’t be such a baby; it’s only a small needle,” Alex scolded, heaping insult to my pain and humiliation.

I tried my best to stifle the flow of tears and not make any noises, knowing he might disable my ability to emote next by engendering facial muscle paralysis. He was the complete and total embodiment of the worst sort of villain imaginable. I only prayed I could stay conscious and keep focused enough to block him from entering my mind.

To my chagrin, he chuckled darkly and dipped his head to the crook of my neck. “Listen, little human girl”—his warm, smooth cheek brushed against my own for the briefest moment as he inhaled—“I’m already so far inside your mind I’ve shut down your reflexes and I’m controlling your heart rate.”

My stomach churned. I tried to swallow past the lump in my throat. He was already inside? And he had been hearing all of my private thoughts?

“Mm-hmm,” he hummed with a clear measure of sick amusement as his nose sniffed and grazed against the shell of my ear. “So you might want to start thinking nicer things about me,” he whispered ominously. “Because I’m the one who’s going to fix the swelling in your fragile head. Resist me like you did my brothers, and I’ll show you the sort of monster I can be. Understand?”

I felt myself going numb with terror. If he hadn’t been controlling my heart rate, it might’ve exploded from sheer panic. My mind spun out of control, searching madly for any plausible escape route, only to go vacant as acceptance of my dire situation settled over me like a wet blanket.

“Good girl. This won’t have to hurt at all if you can behave yourself.”

I closed my eyes and willed myself to shut down and disassociate from what was happening to me as I felt the familiar sensations of tingling down my neck and spine that I’d experienced with Remy and Alcaeus. There was a mild buzzing in my head and slight pressure at the back of my skull.

Kai’s voice sounded kind as he politely informed me that he was the house doctor and that he was administering their very best medicine for my sort of ailment through an intravenous push. He asked me to please let him know if I felt any discomfort during the process.

Discomfort?
Did I feel any discomfort?
I was for all intents and purposes temporarily paralyzed while my brother’s deranged, supernatural murderer was tinkering with my brain and listening in on my personal thoughts!

I was being forced to endure his incongruously divine scent assaulting my olfactory as I felt the overwhelming heat from his naked body hovering menacingly over me. And while the prospect of rape topped my list of worst personal fears, I was almost sure now no manner of physical violation could be worse than the internal one I was already being subjected to.

“Don’t worry,” Alex huffed at my crown, “you aren’t exactly my type. And I’ve invaded far more interesting and titillating minds, so don’t flatter yourself that I’m paying attention to your trivial, inane thoughts.”

“Chrissakes, Alex!” Remy blustered from somewhere to my left. “You’re only going to hurt yourself the more you try to hurt her. Quit being such an ass about this.”

“Fuck off, Remy! No one asked you.”

I bit my lip to stifle a sob as so many emotions welled up in me upon hearing the sound of Remy’s concerned voice following Alex’s spiteful tongue-lashing. How I wished now I hadn’t fought Remy so much before.

As disconcerting as it had been having Remy enter my mind, and as much as I still didn’t fully understand or trust his intentions toward me, his seemed a damn sight more humane than Alex’s were. I knew I’d give anything to go back in time and let it be Remy healing my head from the inside now through whatever dark magic these brothers seemed to have at their employ.

In spite of everything, I was forced to acknowledge that my head was feeling a lot better, and overall, my thoughts were becoming more lucid. I could feel tingles spreading over my rib cage now, more strongly than they had when Remy and Alcaeus had been attending to me, and I assumed Alex had moved on to healing my broken ribs.

A warming sensation suffused my midsection and then extended throughout my entire body. Unconsciously, I recalled the arousing, fluttering sensations that had accompanied that warmth before when Remy’s mouth had been affixed to my neck and Alcaeus’ tongue had been licking at my bruised knees.

I felt Alex’s strong hands twitch and stiffen where they held and palpated my head. Then there was a subtle yet perceptible shift in the activity inside my mind right before my thoughts started flying and scattering wildly like a tossed deck of cards.

I gasped and protested as my thoughts began racing faster than I could keep track. It was as if I’d lost all control over them as I felt Alex begin flipping through my memories at whirlwind speed.

“No,”
I cried out. “Stop! Please don’t!”

He paid me no heed, though, as he rifled through the events of the past several hours, at first focusing in on my interactions with Remy and Alcaeus with rapt interest and then moving on to my private moments of personal hell at the hands of Felix.

He was going so fast it was overwhelming for both my brain and my psyche, as the memories were linked to an intricate myriad of emotional responses that flared to the surface and stung me like little live wires as he trampled through my memory bank. I burned with shame all over again at the recollection of Felix’s hands on me, and I cried in desperation and fear as Alex paused upon my memories in the van.

I was sobbing and begging for him to stop long before he honed in on my memories of Raul. I heard Remy and Alcaeus pleading with him on my behalf as well. But he only snapped at them to back off and warned me to stop wailing and behave. So I bit my tongue and tried to will myself to lose consciousness just to gain some measure of reprieve.

Though I wasn’t privy to his thoughts or reactions to my memories other than the occasional grunt or snarl as he rummaged through them, I felt like the profoundest of idiots as he sifted through the recent memories of how I’d come to search for Raul in São Paulo. Remembering all the inquiries I’d made during the past seven months, all the dead-end emails and calls I’d placed to every old contact number and email address I’d ever had for Raul and then all the ones I’d gotten through the private investigative services I’d paid for.

It wasn’t as if I cared what he thought of me, but seeing him pinpoint and tie together with ease the obvious red flags in all of my seemingly breakthrough interactions with Raul’s alleged landlady and her daughter—it made me realize how my imminent demise could’ve been avoided had I not been so desperate, and perhaps, had I possessed a shred of common sense. If only I’d given up and not nagged my mother’s estate attorney until he’d agreed to put me in touch with a P.I. connection he had in Brazil.

No sooner had I thought it that I realized what a blunder I’d made. But it was too late. Whether he’d overheard it or simply sensed my panicked reaction, he latched onto the memory I’d unconsciously conjured up of the attorney who’d been appointed executor of my mother’s last will and testament and began callously, methodically pulling thread after thread of memories surrounding my mother’s passing before I could utter a protest.

It wasn’t right.

It wasn’t fair!

It wasn’t as if it mattered that he now knew I had no family left to miss me, as I was sure knowing that someone back in the States might come searching for me wouldn’t have dissuaded him from killing me anyhow. But it was the worst sort of invasion, as these were among some of my most private, most painful memories and life moments he was flipping through as if he were surfing cable stations.

Anger surged through me like a rocket. These were the treasured, final memories of my mother as she lost her all-too-brief, four-month battle with cancer while I tried in vain to get in touch with Raul, juggle bills, and navigate insurance bureaucracies all on my own. These were horrific, desolate moments, and yet some of the most poignantly beautiful ones I possessed.

And they were mine.

This asshole in my head had no right to access them. I no longer cared what he could do to me or how much it would hurt; I harnessed all of my hatred and outrage and pushed back with a vengeance.

Pain knifed through my head in all directions as before, only this time I welcomed it, as it was accompanied by surprised, choice curse words and irritated orders from Alex for me to desist.

Fuck him!

I fought harder and somehow managed to slow down his intrusive search through my memory cache. It came with the price of insurmountable pain, though, as his anger spiked and he refused to back off and stop poking through recollections of my mother’s funeral service that I was determined to defend.

Kai began pleading with me to stop fighting Alex. Then he exchanged rapid words with Alex in Portuguese as he removed the long needle from my left arm at last. Remy and Alcaeus were soon arguing with Alex in Portuguese as well.

Though I went from crying and groaning in agony to screaming bloody murder, I was rewarded when I felt my muscles begin trembling and shaking to life again, fighting against whatever voodoo restraint he’d used to disable them as I imagined clobbering Alex with all of my might.

And just as the excruciating sensation of my brain catching fire from within started to blaze, something snapped and my right hand flew up from its imaginary restraint to land an open-palmed, resoundingly loud thwack against Alex’s ear.

It was a short-lived but tremendous victory, as my hand was drawn back down and the imaginary restraints fastened around me tighter than before. The look of dazed astonishment on Alex’s face, though, had been priceless, and well worth the devastating, shattering torture in my head that followed.

From the sound of Remy’s swearing and Alcaeus’ raucous laughter in the background, I got the impression it’d been a while since anyone had dared to box their little brother in the ear.

“Yes,
sedate her,” Alex ordered. “Now.”

“This is going to hit you fast,” Kai told me as another needle pierced my arm.

And it did. I shut my eyes as the room began to spin.

There was more arguing between the brothers in Portuguese that escalated into shouting, and then finally I knew inner peace as I sensed Alex slip from my mind and release his imprisoning hold over me.

As every muscle in my body felt flooded with languor from whatever drug Kai had just given me, it served to accentuate just how tightly I’d unconsciously been holding and flexing those muscles while trying to break free, as now I was forced to release and relax every single large and tiny one I’d been contracting. Soon all of those exhausted, released muscles began trembling, though, and I was twitching and shaking like a leaf.

I was also suddenly cold. Very cold. I noted the absence of his heat and realized Alex was no longer hovering over me.

I heard him bark something in Portuguese and Kai respond in an apologetic tone and then issue what sounded like more directives to others in the room.

Warm blankets were soon piled atop and tucked all around me where I lay trembling like some addict on the marble floor. It felt good, but I didn’t understand why they were bothering to make me comfortable.

Now that Alex had gleaned whatever petty information he needed from my mind, I was sure he’d be killing me in short order. I prayed this wasn’t going to be one of those horror flick situations where they made me better just so they could slowly torture me to death.

I inadvertently whimpered when my left arm was pulled from beneath its warm cover and yet another needle pierced my vein without warning.

“Sorry,” Kai said. “This will help the shaking.”

Warm knuckles ghosted down the side of my face a moment later in a thoroughly bewildering gesture of comfort.

Even with my eyes closed, I knew it was Alex touching me. I could feel his distinct heat lingering above me again, and I could smell him. My shaking subsided.

I was surprised further when I felt sure, graceful fingers begin smoothing my wild, errant hair from my face and wiping the residual dampness from my cheeks. I sniffled and a shudder ran through me as he continued to rake gentle fingers through the hair at my scalp in a caress that to my sickening irritation felt absurdly delightful.

How dare he?
Tears pooled behind my closed eyelids despite my resolve to withhold them.

With the scant muscle control I still had, I attempted to turn my head away, hoping he’d take it as the rejection it was and stop touching me. I just wanted to roll to my side, curl myself into a ball, and disappear.

But steady hands encased either side of my face, thwarting my imaginary escape. His thumbs brushed over the fresh tears that had fallen.

“I’m so sorry.”

I thought I was hallucinating when his warm breath fanned my face and I heard his deep, smooth voice utter those three softly spoken words with what sounded like complete sincerity. I struggled to blink my eyes open. My vision was bleary and the room persisted in swaying somewhat, but I could make out his face hovering a mere six inches above my own. His brown eyes were so dark they were black as they stared down at me.

“I am sorry …” he apologized stiffly, “for the recent loss of your mother, Milena.”

For a split second I teetered on the verge of maniacal laughter. He’d offered no apology for chasing me down and terrorizing me in his beast form, or for supernaturally restraining me and inflicting an excruciating, traumatizing mind-rape. But he’d just stoically offered his formal condolences for the passing of my mother three months ago of all things?

Not a word of apology had he uttered for the recent murder of my brother at his own hands. Nor an inkling of remorse had he expressed for the fact that he was resolved to offing me next. It had to be the worst, most grossly inadequate, inappropriate, ill-timed apology in the entire history of the world of all shitty apologies ever.

“Fuck you.
I hope you die painfully and all alone when your time comes.” My voice sounded eerily calm and even, my words clear as they fell from my lips. I hadn’t meant to say them aloud; it’d just happened. And I didn’t care that it had. I was as good as dead anyway.