Out of Mind

Chapter 35

She was not dead.

Splayed facedown on a hard surface, her body ached, and pain burned in her head. Willow did not want to open her eyes. As long as she kept them shut, she wouldn’t know where she was, and she didn’t want to know.

Above all, she didn’t want to think about where she had been.

Images scuttled through her brain, not one of them clear, not one of them staying long enough for her to study. Shapes moving in darkness. Coming closer. Fading away. Angry voices, shrieking. And questions. There had been questions, questions, but she recalled only words, here and there. “Tell us why. Tell us how.” Even those words began to fade away as if her mind was a computer drive in the pull of a powerful magnet.

Cautiously, she turned on her side, but only to curl into a tight ball.

She slitted her eyes.

Hot darkness all around, not a breath of fresh air. Clammy, almost damp, the surface beneath her was slick. She did not dare to look up.

“The wrong one! She is useless.” A pointed face, wolflike, but with scales rather than fur, had poked close to hers. Its body loomed behind, bent almost double to get down to her level.

It gave out an echoing holler and its body rocked and wobbled. Willow had felt gluey drops spatter her face.

“Not useless,” another one said. “She will serve an important purpose for us.”

The impression faded.

“Ben,” she said, longing to see his face, to feel him. Letting her eyes close again, she thought about his voice and all he had told her about communicating with each other. They had done that. She had opened her mind, and they had heard each other without talking.

“Ben,” she thought, drawing as much calm about her as she could. “Find me.”

How hopeless.

Gradually, she became aware of noises. Everywhere, noises. Voices a long way away—and dogs barking.

“Ben!”

“It’s okay. Don’t move. I’m here.”

She lay still, barely breathing for fear she wouldn’t hear him again.

He came without sound, or rush of wind or any outward sign of the power and speed of his arrival—until he stroked her arm and she peeked to see him kneeling beside her. She felt his pent-up fear and rage, his struggle to let relief at finding her master his need for vengeance.

“Don’t move,” he said again, gently touching her, his big hands circling her face and head. “What happened to you? Where have you been?”

“What time is it?” Willow asked.

He kissed her face and rested a cheek against hers, touched his lips to her neck. “Four in the morning. You’ve been gone for hours. You were coming toward me by the pool. I only took my eyes off you for a second, but then you were gone. We combed the whole place. Now they’re tearing the city apart. Nat’s in charge. Can you hear the dogs? They’re all over this district. He has every agency out there.”

She coughed and he rubbed her back.

“I’ve got to stop disappearing from that garden,” she said in a weak attempt at a joke. “I was taken into the earth—deep beneath it. There was a place, far away, filled with creatures. They were mostly different from each other. Ugly to me. They wanted me to tell them something. I don’t remember what. They threatened to kill me.”

Ben took a ragged breath, then said, “Can you move your fingers and toes?”

Dutifully, she wiggled both. “Yes.” She uncurled her body. “I think everything moves. I know this horrible thing won’t end. We’ve got to make everyone understand they aren’t safe anymore. Those beasts, they’re going to fight for New Orleans, but that won’t be enough. They’ll want the world.”

He bowed his head. “Yes.”

“Where am I?”

He grew still. “You don’t know? You’re in the cabana at the Brandts’.”

“I was sent back here?” she said in wonder, turning her head. She could make out the shapes of furniture and a pale reflection on white walls. “I don’t want to be a coward, but I’m so frightened.”

“Anyone would be, but I should have been able to keep you safe,” he muttered. “I’ll never forgive myself for this.”

“Ben, it wasn’t your fault. But why didn’t they kill me? Why did they bring me back?”

He eased her to sit up and lean against him. “Because they want you alive and here,” he told her. “They’ve got plans for you, love, but you aren’t alone anymore. What did you mean about being taken deep under the earth?”

She told him about the bright blue light that blinded and stunned her, about being pushed into the pool at the Brandt house and the raptor creature she had seen again. “I don’t think it went with me. I didn’t see it again.” There was the bizarre mask that helped her breathe underwater without the help of air tanks; the powerful pull that dragged her through a hole in the bottom of the pool. She had expected the gush of water all around her to continue, but it dried up when she got there.

“The eggs,” she said, startled by a sharp vision. “They had piles of eggs, and they ate what was inside, the shells, as well, and any little bones that fell.”

“The eggs again,” he said.

“I saw some Embran—I think that one looked like a human all the time.”

“God, I hope not,” Ben said under his breath. “Mutating is bad enough. But all we need is to have no way to separate some of them from us.”

“Wait.” She clutched his arms. “The Embran are dying and they say it’s our fault.” Her headache pummeled her temples again. “They want our world, Ben. They kept saying the answer to getting back their immortality is here. They told me they will take our world, and we’ll serve them—and suffer.”

She held her head in her hands.

“How many of them are there?” he asked quietly.

“I don’t know. A lot, I think.” She sat forward and broke into a sweat. “We’ve got to get to Chris and Fabio! I was coming to tell you about them last night. Help me out of here.”

“Not so fast,” Ben said. “Take it easy.”

Willow scrambled to her feet, and he promptly lifted her into his arms.

“Where are we going?” he said.

“They’re in the conservatory, in bottles like I saw in my mind when I was in the courtyard trying to reach them. Or they were in the conservatory. Are the police in the house? Who’s there? We have to go now.”

“Okay. Nat needs to know what’s going on. I was with him when you called me. He’ll think something nasty happened to me, too.”

“Just come with me,” she told him. “Remember I told you about a blue light on the wall just before Chloe died and how I thought she looked as if she couldn’t see when she fell over the banisters?”

“The light on the wall could have been the laser that was used on you. After you left Chloe she could have been blinded by it.” He finished her thought. “You said you couldn’t move at first—after the laser hit you. It could be that Chloe didn’t scream because she couldn’t.”

Her feet touched the ground again, inside the kitchen of the Brandt house. Ben had pulled another of his