Page 22 of Aberrant Monsters
Shadows coalesced on the other side of my cell as Telarion materialized. He was spectral at first but quickly gained form. My shoulders slumped in relief at the sight of him.
“What happened?” he asked. “You were lost to me, and I was…gone.” His eyes flashed with disconcertion. “Then I heard you calling me, and I was back.”
“The Order has us. Elina must have called them. The contract doesn’t protect against this…against you.”
He shot across the cell and stopped inches from me. “You are mine to protect, tiny human. They cannot have you.”
His words raised butterflies in my belly. “As much as I appreciate the sentiment, they have us locked in a glass cell and they have a drug that can make you go away.”
His eyes narrowed to slits. “You want this drug?” His tone was lethally soft. “You want me gone, after all, so why the fear? Why the terror?”
His words left me confused because I didn’t know. I didn’t understand why losing him affected me so much. “This is your fault. You’re doing this. Making me need you.”
“Am I?”
I turned my face away, but he grabbed my chin with a gentleness that made my stomach hurt and turned my face up to his. “You make no sense. If I am gone, then you are free. Is that not what you want?”
My throat was tight and my words a whisper. “Not like this.”
He released me abruptly, almost angrily.
The darkness outside the cell lightened to reveal three figures: a woman in a tailored skirt and two men in black slacks and white shirts that strained across their chests and hugged their biceps like a second skin. Despite the males’ powerful builds, my attention went to the slender, frail-looking woman.
My gut told me she held the power here, and her next words confirmed my assessment.
“Good evening, August Vera. My name is Genevieve Pandora and I’m a Chamberlain of the Order. I knew your mother personally and I’d like to help you with your…” Her gaze flicked to Telarion. “Predicament.”
Anger was a welcome change from panic and confusion. It propelled me across the cell to the wall, chin up, lips curled in a sneer of contempt. “By drugging me and locking me up?”
“A precaution.” She smiled thinly. “You have a powerful entity bound to you and we must secure it until we reach an agreement.”
Okay, so maybe they didn’t plan on killing me. “What kind of agreement?”
“All in good time, my dear. First we must determine whether a dealcanbe made.” Her smile dropped as one of the men stepped forward. I noticed the small box in his hand for the first time. A remote control?
He stopped a couple of feet from my cell, but his attention wasn’t on me, it was on Telarion.
“Who are you?” he asked.
Telarion sneered at him. “The monster that will eat your heart.”
The man smiled, and the next moment my body was in the grip of fiery pain that lit up every synapse and shook me like a rag doll. I couldn’t cry out, couldn’t breathe as Telarion’s roar of rage bounced off the glass.
The pain shut off as suddenly as it had begun, leaving me gasping for air, tears streaming down my face.
It took a moment for my mouth to work and words to spill out. “Mothereffingdickwad.” I sucked in air, choosing my next words to obtain the information I needed. “What was that? What did you do?”
“They call it Mystoshock,” the man said. “A human body can withstand a few rounds, but too many and you’ll be left with permanent damage. Go further than that and the result is death.” He smiled coldly and turned his attention back to Telarion. “Every time you fail to answer my question, I will hurt her. Do you understand?”
Telarion’s chest rumbled. He fell into a crouch, body swelling and heaving. “You might have these walls up now, witch, but they won’t hold me forever.”
“Who are you?” the man asked again.
Telarion shook his head. “An aberration.”
Once again pain filled my body like humungous fire ants eating away at my nerves. I arched, hands contorting to claws, every curse word I knew filtering through my mind in a multi-colored stream of consciousness.
Telarion bellowed and threw himself at the glass over and over.
