Okay, moot point there, and she needed to cut that shit right out. God knew she had enough to worry about in the "actually happening" category.
Breathing deep, she inhaled John's scent and concentrated on the strong, steady beat of his heart under her ear. It wasn't long before sleep took her hard, the combination of exhaustion, postfeeding loginess, and the need to peace out of life for a while carrying her into a deep, dreamless state in the back of the SUV.
She woke up to the sensation of being lifted and her eyes opened.
John was carrying her through some kind of parking area that, given the cavelike walls and ceiling, had to be underground. A massive steel door was opened by Vishous, who seemed to be in a surprising mood to help, and on the far side... was a nightmare.
The long, anonymous hall had pale tile on the floor, concrete-block walls, and a low ceiling that had fluorescent box lights in it.
The past slid into place, the filter of prior experience replacing what was actually occurring with a remembered nightmare. In John's arms, her body went from weak to manic and she started to fight the hold on her, battling to get free. The commotion was instantaneous, people rushing toward her, a loud sound like a siren blaring--
As it dimly occurred to her that her jaw hurt, she realized she was yelling.
And then suddenly all she saw was John's face.
He'd somehow managed to turn her around in his arms and they were nose-to-nose, eye-to-eye, his hands digging into her sides and her hips. With the sight of that institutional corridor replaced with his blue stare, the grab of the past was broken and she was caught by him.
He didn't say a thing. Just stayed still and let her look at him.
It was exactly what she needed. She locked onto his eyes and used them to turn her brain off.
When he nodded, she nodded back to him and he started moving forward again. From time to time, his stare flicked away from hers to check where they were going, but it always returned.
It always came back.
There were voices, a number of them, and a lot of doors opening and shutting, and then a whole lot of pale green tile: She was in an examination room, with a multilight chandelier above her and all kinds of medical supplies in glass-front cabinets everywhere she looked.
As John put her on the table, she lost control of her reins again. Her lungs refused to do their job, as if the air were poisoned, and her eyes bounced around, hitting all kinds of panic triggers like equipment, and instruments, and the table... the table.
"Okay, we're losing her again." Doc Jane's tone was relentlessly level. "John, get in there."
John's face came back in close and Xhex held on to his eyes.
"Xhex?" Doc Jane's voice came from over on the left. "I'm going to give you a sedative--"
"No drugs!" The answer leaped out of her mouth. "I'd rather be terrified... than helpless...."
Her breath was painfully short, and each impotent draw of her rib cage convinced her as nothing else could that life was about suffering more than it was about joy. There had been too many of these moments, too many times the pain and fear took over, too many dark shadows that didn't just lurk, but sucked out all the illumination from the night in which she existed.
"Let me go... let me go away...." When John's eyes went wide, she realized that she'd found one of his knives, unsheathed it, and was trying to put it in his palm. "Please let me go... I don't want to be here anymore... put me out forever, please...."
Lot of frozen bodies around her and the lack of movement refocused her a little. Rhage and Mary were in the corner. Rehv was there. Vishous and Zsadist. No one was speaking or budging an inch.
John took the dagger from her hand and the removal was what made her cry. Because he wasn't going to use it. Not on her. Not now... not ever.
And she lacked the strength to do it herself.
All at once, a tremendous emotion boiled in her gut, and as it expanded and pressure grew inside her body, she looked around frantically as shelves started to rattle and the computer over in the corner began to bounce on the desk.
John was on it, though. And he was on it fast. He started to sign with the same kind of urgency she was feeling, and a moment later, everyone left.
Except for him.
Trying desperately not to explode, she looked down at her hands. They were shaking so badly, they were like the wings of a fly... and it was when she was staring at them that she hit bottom.
The scream pealed out of her and the sound was utterly foreign, all high-pitched and horrified.
John stood his ground. Even when she screamed again.
He wasn't going anywhere. He wasn't rattled. He was just... there.
Grabbing the sheet that circled her, she tightened it around her body, very aware she was breaking down, that the fissure had been tapped by that trip down the hall and now she had splintered. In fact, she felt as though there were two of her in the room, the mad one on the table screaming her head off and crying bloody tears... and a calm, sane one in the far corner, watching herself and John.
Would the two parts of her cleave together again? Or would she be ever thus, wrenched asunder?
Her mind chose the observer persona over the hysterical one and she retreated into that soundless place where she witnessed herself sob to the point of asphyxiation. The streaks of blood that ran down her paper white cheeks didn't disgust her and nor did the crazy, wide eyes or epileptic thrashing of her arms and legs.
She felt sorry for the female who had been driven to such straits. Who had kept herself apart from all emotions.
The female had been born under a curse. The female had done evil and had evil done unto her. The female had hardened herself, her mind and her emotions becoming steel.
The female had been wrong about that locking down, that self- containment.
It was not a case of strength, as she had always told herself.
It was strictly survival... and she simply couldn't keep it up any longer.
Chapter Twenty-six
"You had... sex. With Eliahu Rathboone."
Gregg set Holly back from him and stared into her face, thinking she'd lost her damn mind--well, lost what little of a one she had. And that made two of them, because he had clearly imagined what he'd just "seen" outside.
Except her eyes were utterly clear and without guile. "He came to me. I'd fallen asleep--"
Another round of banging on the door cut her off, and then Stan's voice came through. "Hello? Which room am I--"
"Later, Stan," Gregg clipped out. As the grumbling faded, footsteps in the hall went down to Holly's room and a door was slammed.
"Come here." He tugged Holly over to the bed. "Sit down and tell me... what the hell you think happened."
He focused on her puffy lips as she spoke. "Well, I'd just gotten out of the shower. I was exhausted and I lay down on the bed to rest my eyes before I got into my nightgown. I must have fallen asleep... because the next thing I knew I had this dream--"
Oh, for God's sake. "Holly, just because you had a nightmare doesn't mean you--"
"I'm not finished," she snapped. "And it wasn't a nightmare."
"I thought you were freaking out."
"The scary stuff came afterward." She arched a brow. "Are you going to let me talk?"
"Fine." But only on the hope that he could get her mouth to do something else later. Damn, her lips looked good... "Go 'head."
Head. Yup. That's what he was thinking.
"I started to have this dream that this man came into my room. He was very tall and muscular... one of the biggest men I've ever seen. He was dressed in black and he stood over my bed. He smelled amazing... and he just stared at me. I..." Her hand wrapped around her neck and slowly slid down between her br**sts. "I took off my towel and pulled him on top of me. It was... indescribable...."
Which was good news. Because he suddenly didn't want to hear anything about what happened next.
"He took me." More with that hand-on-the-neck thing. "As I've never been had before. He was so--"
"--hung like a fire hose and did you twelve different ways to Sunday. Congratulations. Your subconscious should be directing p**n . What does this have to do with Eliahu Rathboone."
Holly glared at him... and then yanked her lapel to the side. "Because when I woke up, I had this." She jabbed at what certainly appeared to be a hickey on her neck. "And I'd actually had sex."
Gregg frowned hard. "You... How do you know?"
"How do you think I know."