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“If it helps uncover what I might be, then sure, go ahead.” Sam hesitated. “Was there any match to what’s supposedly on my birth certificate?”
“Oh, yes. There are traces of shifter and changer, as I mentioned earlier. We’ve also pinpointed the partial code of the were-people. But there’s something else, something I’ve never seen before.”
If she had come from Hopeworth, that wasn’t altogether surprising. “I want to know the minute you come up with anything.”
“Of course.”
Sam hung up and yawned. What she needed was an early night. She shoved the folders to one side and got ready for bed.
Sleep came. So, too, did the dreams.
She was in a large, white room. Lights glared above her, their brightness as warm as the sun and almost as blinding. Sweat trickled down her face and her back. She was standing alone in that room, but she was being watched. Down at the far end was another room. Men in white stared at her from behind the safety of shatterproof glass.
Joshua was with them, his small form dwarfed by the doctors. Silent but not afraid. Josh was never truly afraid.
“Feel the heat. Draw it in,” the man with the dead gray eyes commanded.
Just hearing him speak made her shudder. Not because of the threat in his tone—though she knew from experience that threat all too often became reality—but because of what lay underneath his voice and his words. Evil soaked his very essence. Just being near him sickened her.
She looked at the fire, but she saw only flames, dancing brightly. She couldn’t do what he wanted. He was asking the wrong person.
“I can’t.”
The lights grew brighter, burning her skin as fiercely as the flames. She couldn’t back away, couldn’t move. They’d chained her down this time.
“Become one with the fire. Feel its power. Use its p
ower,” Gray Eyes said.
The urge to scream ran through her, but it wouldn’t matter to them if she did. It never mattered. Her gaze met Joshua’s.
You have to do something, or they’ll kill you, his voice whispered into her mind, calm despite the anger she could almost taste.
Fire is not my element.
No. They are fools who do not look beyond the obvious. But you have other abilities. Use those instead.
They’ll know. They’ll see the difference.
They know nothing about us, despite all their tests. Trust me, Samantha.
She briefly closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then she stared at the fire burning fiercely in the pit three feet away. The flames shivered, as if dancing away from an unseen wind. Sweat tracked down her face, stinging her eyes. She ignored it, concentrating, drawing power up from the depths of her soul. From the ground itself.
The fiery mass rose from the pit and hovered in midair for several seconds. She glanced at the control room and saw Joshua step back, well out of harm’s way.
She smiled—a cold smile. A hateful smile. Aimed not at him, but at the men with him. The men who wouldn’t let them be, wouldn’t let them go.
The burning mass leapt across the arena and smashed through the control box’s glass. White coats scattered like confetti. Then the lights went out and the screaming began.
Laughter filled the air, mingling with the screams. Her laughter; Joshua’s laughter. Both of them old beyond their years and full of hate. The fire leapt from the men to the computers, and she realized he was feeding it, making it destroy the sensor readouts. Once again they would have no record of what had happened here today. Nothing more than the words of those who survived.
Josh, I’m chipped. They’ll kill me.
The flames died suddenly, sucked back into the void that had fed them. I know. It is not our time to escape yet. But when it is, they will taste the fires more fully.
The malevolence in his voice made her shiver…and she woke, a chill encasing her body. She ran a hand through her sweaty hair and stared at the ceiling for several seconds. Were the dreams memories trying to break free? Or simply the imaginings of a fertile mind?
There was no way to be certain. But if this dream were to be believed, then she had not only killed, but she’d enjoyed it. Nor was it the first or the last time it had happened.
