Page 67 of Dark Lover

Sam ignored the tone of his voice. She stepped past him quickly, excited now to find the evil in the vault. Once inside, she paused. Maclean remained in the doorway. She realized she didn’t feel a thing. Softly, she cursed. “I’m not sensing it. Can you help me out here, Maclean?”

He stepped into the vault reluctantly. As he did so, his blunt fingers went to the collar of his polo shirt, adjusting it as if he were warm. It crossed her mind that he often acted as if his shirt collars were constricting.

He nodded behind her. “It’s over there.”

Sam turned. As she did, she felt a finger of black malice touch her and she shivered. Suddenly she knew it had been waiting for her, before making its presence known. But she still didn’t know what “it” was.

Maclean walked over to a dark painting of a family gathered at a small table in a cottage. He lifted it from its hook.

Sam hurried over. An inscription was engraved on the cement wall behind the painting, consisting of hieroglyphics that glowed, as if burning embers. “What is that?”

Ian didn’t answer her. Sam realized he had paled. “Ian?”

“I’ve seen this before,” he said grimly.

Laughter sounded.

As one, Sam and Ian whirled. Hemmer stood in the doorway, grinning at them. He simply shut the vault door in their faces. The locks clicked.

Ian inhaled sharply.

Sam glanced at him and saw that he was very white now. She didn’t get it. Ian could leap—or so he said. He could not be locked inside a vault.

“Ian? Hemmer’s obviously toying with us.”

He ripped his collar open, breathing hard.

It took Sam a split second to realize he was having some kind of attack. “Do you have asthma?” she asked.

He didn’t answer, choking. He was turning red now.

“Ian!” She put her arm around him, alarmed. “Is it asthma?”

“No…I can’t breathe!” He went down to his knees. Sweat streaked his brow and temples. He gasped for air.

He was either claustrophobic or having a panic attack. She knelt with him, keeping her arm around him. “Ian, there’s plenty of air in here. And we’re not locked in. You can leap.”

He looked at her. His eyes were wide with panic.

Sam was stunned. He was truly afraid…

And then he simply vanished into thin air.

But she heard his screams.

ON HIS BACK, he stared up at the ceiling of his library, moaning uncontrollably. Tears streamed. There was so much pain. He couldn’t bear it. He had to remind himself that he wasn’t a child now or a prisoner. He had to consciously recall that the pain would pass. It felt like he was broken in a thousand bits and pieces. It felt like he was dying. He’d leapt before, when there hadn’t been a choice. Or when a desperate and reckless urgency had outweighed his fear of the leap. But just then, he wanted to die. Not for the first time, he prayed he would finally find release.

“Sir!” Gerard knelt beside him.

He felt a finger of relief. Even as he moaned and shuddered, racked by the torment of broken bones and shattered limbs, he was vaguely aware of Gerard’s presence, of a cooling compress, of pills being pushed into his mouth.

He closed his eyes tightly. The leap through space and time was horrific. Traveling at that velocity turned a man inside out. It felt as if his every limb was being ripped from each socket, as if the skin was being torn from his body, as if his muscles were shredding, the bones cracking apart and then splintering into a million pieces. His organs felt like balloons, overfilled and then bursting.

He’d begged the gods for mercy.

No one had been able to hear him, of course. He’d begged them for mercy long ago, too, but silently, so his tormentors wouldn’t hear him.

The gods had ignored those pleas, too. Because they’d wanted him alive. To this day, he couldn’t comprehend why.