Truth or Dare (10 page)

Impossible. Just two days before she had come here to add some final touches. She had picked up nothing out of the ordinary that day.

What is going on here
?

Calm down and think. You've been to enough murder scenes to know what they feel like, and this room isn't giving off those kinds of vibes. The walls aren't screaming the way they do when blood has been spilled in a room.

The energy was quite faint but extremely murky. That was not typical of most of the psychic sensations she encountered. Her sixth sense responded keenly to traces of the stronger passions, and those tended to be primitive and raw in nature. Rage, fear, panic, hatred, lust and obsessive need were elemental energies. The taints they left behind were usually sharp and clear.

This was . . . something else, something very frightening.

The psychic web seemed to be emanating from an area around the footstool. She examined the space closely. Everything looked exactly as it had the last time she had been in that room. There was no sign of recent violence or destruction.

No, that wasn't quite true.

Light glinted on a shard of glass near the footstool. She reached down and picked it up. The color of the glass was familiar.

She glanced at the small table beside the chair. The bud vase was gone; smashed.

There was something else that was not right about the space, but she could not immediately identify it.

She turned slowly on her heel, examining every inch of the library. When she came to the table in the children's corner she stopped.

She had arranged a handful of colorful, everyday objects on the low table. Jeff had supplied a small dinosaur for the informal collection and Theo had given her a tiny model motorcycle. She had added one of her new chili-pepper red mugs because it picked up the color of the bookcase shelves.

The red mug was gone.

14

T
hat night she dreamed of Xanadu.

 

She rose from the narrow bed and put on the hospital-issue robe. The garment hung loosely around her. It had fit when she was admitted to Candle Lake Manor, but she had lost a lot of weight during the past few months. The drugs that Dr. McAlister tried to force down her in hopes of inducing her cooperation in therapy had effectively smothered her appetite.

She had eventually learned how to dispose of some of the pills without anyone realizing that she was not swallowing them, but she could not evade all of the meds. And even on those rare days when her mind was relatively clear, she had no appetite. The enormous willpower required to contain the alternating tides of rage, fear and desperation that regularly
swept over her left her so exhausted that the task of eating seemed overwhelming.

That had to change, she thought. She had to start consuming the calories she needed to rebuild her strength. She would never escape if she did not eat right.

She went to the small, barred window. Her room was on the third floor of the asylum, providing her with a view over the high fence that surrounded the Manor. From there she could see the lake.

Cold moonlight gleamed on the surface of the evil waters. Sometimes the only possible escape that she could envisage involved swimming out to the middle of the lake and letting herself sink into the depths.

But she had avoided McAlister's poison that morning, and tonight her mind was clearer than it had been in some time. She did not want to think about sinking forever into the depths of the lake.

She needed an objective; she had to start planning her escape. She had to give herself some hope. It was a certainty that no one else around this place would provide it.

She turned away from the window and went to the door, trying the knob the way she always did, in the hope that someone had forgotten to lock it.

The door opened. One of the orderlies had been careless again. It wasn't the first time. The staff at Candle Lake was not composed of what anyone would term dedicated medical professionals.

Dr. Harper, the head of this very expensive, very private loony bin, wasn't paid to cure his patients. He got the big bucks from his clients because he was willing to house their crazy relatives out of sight and out of mind.

Moving from the cell-like room, she drifted along the hall. It was as if she were a ghost separated from reality by a thin veil. Everything felt
slightly unreal. She reminded herself that she still had the residue of some of McAlister's drugs in her system.

The lights had been turned down in the corridors as they always were at night, but they were never switched off. The halls of Xanadu were lit with an eerie fluorescent glow.

She had to learn her way around this place. She wanted to create a map in her head so that when the time came, she would be able to move quickly and confidently.

She passed a series of closed and locked doors and paused when she reached the corner. She had a blurry memory of turning left when the orderlies escorted her to Dr. McAlister's office, so tonight she would turn right.

This was uncharted territory.

She floated through a series of hallways, turned another corner and found herself confronting a pair of swinging doors that blocked the entrance to another corridor of locked rooms. She read the black-and-white sign on the wall: H Ward.

She moved through the swinging doors. This ward looked much the same as the one in which she was housed but there was a different psychic feel to this space.

She sensed the faint, disturbing currents shifting around her but did not recognize them. These sensations were unlike the other strong emotions that saturated the hospital.

Instinct warned her that if she got tangled up in these sticky strands she would be trapped forever.

The spiderwebs of energy seemed to emanate from behind the door of one of the rooms. She went cautiously forward. The invisible strands grew darker, denser, more intense.

She halted, unable to take another step closer to the door of the room.

Fear shot through her. She had gone too far.

The invisible stuff enveloped her, sticking to all of her senses: sight, touch, hearing, taste, even her sense of smell. But it clung most tenaciously to her sixth sense, the one that made her different.

A cloudy darkness closed in around her. She realized that she was about to faint.

She had to get out of there.

She managed to take a step back. The dizziness made it difficult to keep her balance. She grabbed the rail on the wall.

Wispy threads tugged at her, refusing to release her.

Panic gave her strength. Using the rail for leverage, she hauled herself back another step. Some of the threads fell away. She retreated again and this time was able to pull free.

She whirled and fled back to the limited safety of her room.

She had been through a lot at Candle Lake Manor, but whatever it was that seethed behind that door in H Ward scared her more than anything else she had yet experienced.

A last, trailing wisp of silky darkness touched the nape of her neck. She could feel the faint tremors in the gossamer threads that warned of the approach of the spider. . . .

 

She awoke with the scream still locked in her throat.

“Zoe.”
Ethan leaned over her, anchoring her to the bed by her wrists, one bare leg trapping hers. “Wake up. You're okay. Wake up.”

The comforting reality of her bedroom, together with the reassuring heat and strength of Ethan's body gradually replaced
the fragments of the nightmare. A shudder of relief went through her.

“Sorry about that.” Her voice was oddly hoarse in her own ears. “Didn't mean to wake you.”

“I was awake.”

She looked up at him, fresh anxiety replacing the fear left behind by her dream. “Another bout of insomnia?”

“I was doing some thinking,” he said.

Yeah, right. He was lying, she knew. He had been unable to sleep. Again.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yes.” She tried to breathe deeply. “I haven't had any of the really bad dreams for a while. I was beginning to think that I was free of them. Should have known better.”

Ethan sat up against the pillows, wrapped one arm around her and hauled her tightly against him. He stroked her shoulder and arm gently, soothing her the way he would have soothed any startled creature.

“Look on the bright side,” he said. “The fact that you're going for longer periods of time between nightmares is probably a good sign.”

“Probably.” She tried to force herself to relax against him but her heart was still beating too fast and the sticky strands of the dark dream clung to her. “Give me a minute. I'll be fine.”

“I know. You can deal with it. You always do.” He continued to move his big hand up and down her arm, holding her snugly against him. “Bad one this time?”

“Yes.”

“Want to talk about it?”

A fresh wave of panic shot through her. Tell him about this dream? Try to explain exactly why it frightened her so badly? No. Not a good idea. Definitely not.

She had told Ethan about many of the frightening things she had encountered at Candle Lake Manor; about how the corrupt head of the sanatorium, Dr. Ian Harper, had conspired with her in-laws to drug her and commit her against her will.

She had told him about Venetia McAlister, the doctor who operated a lucrative side business consulting at crime scenes. McAlister had been obsessed with the possibility that Zoe really was psychic and had tried to force her to report her paranormal responses at grisly crime scenes where murder and worse had been done.

She had told Ethan about the ordeal of the escape from Xanadu.

She had told him more of her secrets than she had told anyone else, including Arcadia, but she dared not confide her deepest, bleakest fear, the one she had discovered that night when she wandered the halls of Candle Lake Manor and blundered into a psychic spiderweb.

“The dream was about something that happened one night when I managed to get out of my room and have a look around,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “My head was not completely clear of the drugs, but I could finally string a couple of coherent thoughts together. One of the orderlies accidentally left the door of my room unlocked.”

“What happened?” Ethan asked quietly.

“I . . . walked around the halls for a while, trying to get a feel for the layout of the building.”

“Mapping an escape route?”

“Yes.”

He moved his hand rhythmically along her arm, offering silent comfort. “Okay, I can see why that memory would have provoked an anxiety dream.”

“That night the place seemed to be a maze. Probably because my brain was still half mush. I was afraid that I would never be able to find my way when the time came.”

“But you and Arcadia did find your way out.”

“Yes.”

“And now you're free.” He kissed the top of her head. “Just keep reminding yourself of that fact.”

“Okay.”

“I know.” His mouth curved in humorless understanding. “Some things are easier said than done, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

His leg moved under the covers, brushing her thigh. She flinched. His hand stilled on her arm. “This must have been a really bad one. You're so tense you feel like you might snap in my hands.”

She closed her eyes briefly, unable to tell him what a poor choice of words “you might snap” actually was under the circumstances.

“Want to do the warm milk thing?” he asked. “That seems to work for you.”

“It works.” She grimaced. “But I really don't like warm milk.”

“In that case, perhaps we should try some exotic massage techniques.” He closed his hand around the curve of her hip and squeezed suggestively.

She knew that he was teasing her a little, trying to lighten the
mood with hints of playful sex. She knew he was right. She desperately needed the distraction of his lovemaking right now, this very minute. She could not recall ever needing anything so much in her entire life.

“You actually know some exotic massage techniques?” she asked, trying for the same lighthearted, suggestive tone.

“As it happens, I have made an in-depth study of the subject, so to speak.” His hand moved under the edge of her thigh-length nightgown. “Would you care for a hands-on demonstration?”

She turned a little in his arms and found one of his bare feet with her toes. “Depends what you intend to put your hands on.”

“I thought I'd start here.”

He slid his palm between her thighs and moved his thumb very deliberately across the sensitive place he found there.

The searing rush of her own response startled her. Maybe it was the adrenaline left behind by the dream. Whatever the reason, she was suddenly wet.

“I take it that particular technique works for you?” Ethan asked against her mouth.

She drew a deep breath, shivering with the intensity of her need. “Yes. Yes, it definitely works for me. Got any others you'd like to demonstrate?”

“There's this one.”

He eased his way down her body, hands gliding warmly along her waist and hips. She realized that he was already fully aroused.

He raised her knees and did something quite incredible with his tongue.

“Ethan.”

Without taking his lips away from her aching, swollen core, he probed her with his fingers, finding the special place just inside the entrance.

Her body reacted as if he had pulled a trigger.

She locked her fists in his hair as her climax rolled through her. She convulsed so tightly and with such force that she could not catch her breath. The sweeping rush of sexual satisfaction swamped all else, including the tendrils of the nightmare.

He was inside her before the small contractions had stopped, filling and stretching her over-sensitized body until she wondered that she did not shatter.