Touched by Lightning Read online

  Sixteen crawled forward, eyes lowered. Gyda cringed and the Beast raged.

  Chapter One

  Two years later

  She snapped to awareness, alert to something happening nearby. Gyda’s crusted-over eyes opened in fear and acceptance, that weird blankness she’d come to associate with things she couldn’t handle fading away. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been with her new master, but she’d learned early on that he liked to see how far he could go before she screamed, her body pushed to the limits of human endurance. She’d long ago stopped using her voice for anything because all that used to come out of it had been prayers no one answered. But her new owner wanted to hear it and did what he could to force sound from her. He wasn’t gifted with mental powers the way her old owner had been, but he made up for his lack of psychic powers with brute strength, pounding on her body until she screamed for mercy. A sound he liked. A lot.

  She stared at nothing, her mind foggy. She didn’t remember much of her old owner, just that she’d had one, that he’d kept her before giving her away and he wore a W on his cufflinks. Everything else, like his face and voice, were gone, her memories of the most important things gone. It was as though between one moment and the next, she’d lost something of herself. But it wasn’t completely empty. No, there was a huge pit of filth that replayed what had been done to her body over and over again, like a broken record. He’d done…very bad things to her. Things he took a lot of pleasure in, things that made her Beast rabid with hatred, but no matter how much she concentrated on him, she couldn’t bring his face into focus.

  Her head began to hurt from trying so hard and she turned her attention to the bars of her cage for a moment. Her eyes did a strange zoom in and out, as though trying to decide what to focus on before she was able to see the other side, the outside where she was only taken when she had to entertain. It was a shabby room, nothing at all like… She couldn’t quite remember, but this room was new and strange to her. The bruises on her face ached when she frowned. This wasn’t a home. Although home was an alien concept. She couldn’t even remember what the room she used to be in looked like, but this cage was the same as before. She was positive of that.

  She squinted at the window across the room from her, just a hint of night sky showing a flickering sign that read otel. Gyda ran the word through her mind. Motel? She was at a motel? She looked at the room again, taking in the cheap furniture, the boxy television and a leather-bound book on the nightstand next to the bed her new owner had used her on. She lifted to her knees to peer at the title of the book, something flip-flopping in her chest when her eyes made out the words Holy Bible on the cover. A face floated in her memory, kind eyes, a loving aura, before it vanished with the crack of the hotel room door slamming open.

  “This is a raid!”

  Gyda flinched, huddling down into herself, that weird sense of disconnection threatening again. She hated when she blanked out, even as she welcomed it. It was like watching life through another set of eyes, going through the motions of living while not experiencing any of it.

  Then the lights overhead flickered on, blinding her. She was instantly swamped with strong emotions as people entered the room wearing black. She dropped her gaze, the Beast going on the defensive, trying not to challenge them. Better not to anger them before they even got her out of the cage. She crouched low, her hair hanging over her face, her forehead nearly pressed to the bars that made her kennel.

  “Holy fuck,” someone whispered. “Send Estelle in. Now.”

  More emotions battered at her mind, nearly crushing Gyda at her core. She made a sound in the back of her throat, an animalistic whine of pain that made the emotions swell to agonizing proportions before it stopped.

  Just like that, as though someone had turned off a radio blaring too loudly, the emotions died.

  She blinked, the sudden dearth of emotion startling. Uncertain and more frightened than ever, she lifted her head and looked right into a pair of compassionate brown eyes. A woman knelt on the other side of the bars, her dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, her face lined with pain and caring. She was pretty and young and didn’t look as though she belonged in this sad little room. Gyda flicked a glance at the large bodies surrounding the woman, wondering if this was it. This woman must be her replacement. But the big men who filled the room weren’t looking at the woman. They were staring at Gyda, varying degrees of horror, pity and shame on their faces.

  It was the first time she’d seen anything other than leering lust on anyone’s face in so long, it took her a while to realize she was seeing it with her eyes, not feeling it. In fact, she didn’t feel anything except the aches and pains she’d sustained since her new owner took ownership of her. Gyda looked away from the men, back to the woman who gripped the bars of the cage. Tears glittered in the woman’s eyes, spilling down her clean face.

  Gyda didn’t know what to do, but she didn’t move from her huddled position. For the first time since her old owner took her, she felt naked. In the beginning she’d always felt naked, bared when her old owner looked at her, when he let others look at her. She remembered that much. He’d enjoyed how embarrassed she’d felt without clothes, enjoyed it so much she wasn’t given a blanket or sheet to sleep with. After a while she grew immune to it. Now though, with the woman looking so sad and crushed, with the men looking as though they might throw up, she was aware of how filthy she was.

  She glanced away from the woman, automatically dropping her gaze. Her fingernails were black from the dirt caked beneath them. The creases of her hands were also dark. And those hands didn’t even look like hers. The last time she remembered being aware of her body, of the way she looked, she’d had a little more flesh to her bones. Now though, they looked like skeleton hands, her knuckles huge bumps on her fingers. She lowered her gaze to her naked flesh, the ribs noticeable, the numerous scars littering her body, a visible reminder of her animal-like existence, and felt shame.

  Something deep inside her howled, a mournful sound that echoed through her mind.

  “Don’t,” the woman whispered, reaching through the bars toward Gyda, but not touching her. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

  Hope filled her, but even as it gleamed bright like a beacon, she felt herself fading away beneath a tide of fury.

  Sixteen snapped to awareness, testing the air around her without letting them know she’d taken over.

  “You shouldn’t,” one of the men said. When Sixteen looked up, his face was tight as though carved from stone. “She’s dangerous.”

  The woman’s eyes sparked and her lips firmed but she turned to glance over her shoulder at the man. “She’s a young woman who’s been hurt, Leo.”

  “I can’t feel her,” the man named Leo snapped. “She’s vacant.”

  She wasn’t and Gyda fought to return to the surface, wanted to tell them she wasn’t, but she couldn’t. Because he was right and he was wrong. She was vacant in her emotions, but she wasn’t empty inside. Sixteen pushed her weaker self back down, protecting her as she’d done throughout the years. Now wasn’t the time for them to become an emotional mess. They had to assess and plot an attack. Something the Beast was raring to attempt with Sixteen’s approval. While she protected Gyda’s mind, the Beast protected her body as much as she could. It was a good partnership when Gyda didn’t fight them.

  The woman turned back to her, her knuckles white where she gripped the bars. “I’m Estelle Jendrix with Second Sector, Alpha Tactical Unit. This is my husband, Leo Jendrix. We’re with the Order of Themis and we’re here to save you.”

  Another one of Gyda’s memories surfaced, the emotions muted, the colors dim. In it, she hoped and prayed someone like this woman would find her, save her from the life she’d led. Sixteen batted the memory away as the Beast howled because it was too late.

  Far too late. Sixteen let the control slip, allowing the Beast to storm forward.

  The man, Leo, must have realized what she was about to do because he
pulled the woman away from the bars as soon as the Beast lunged at her. Their eyes met for a split second before something punctured her mental shield. The pain was instantaneous and brutal. Something wet and thick flowed from her nose. There were shouts, mostly from Estelle, the sounds muffled as though they came from above water. The Beast tried to thank the man with her eyes, but wasn’t sure she managed before the blackness of oblivion swallowed her whole.

  * * * * *

  “She’s unstable.”

  She listened to the quiet conversation happening just beyond the door where she was supposed to be sleeping. Estelle and Leo were speaking softly so they wouldn’t disturb her. Sixteen kept up her mental shields so Leo wouldn’t realize she was wide awake, an avid eavesdropper to the conversation. After that night when he tore through her mental shields to knock her out before she hurt Estelle, he’d tried to break through them again, this time to give her succor, but her mind had learned its lesson and hardened the walls around it. She made sure her thoughts were buried behind what seemed like thousands of layers of spikes and steel plates and barbed wire reinforced with carbon fiber and tungsten. Her shields were too solid for any of them to break.

  She didn’t know when they’d formed. Only that she’d awakened after one very bad “session” with the master and her shields were just…there, and as soon as she became aware of them, she continued to build on them, to make them stronger until not even the other empaths the Order of Themis had sent her way could break through. Sometimes the shield threatened to buckle when she tried to recall something from her earliest captivity when Gyda had been all alone. Sixteen’s mind would shut down and she’d pass out—giving way to Gyda.

  Sixteen didn’t know if there was a way she could ever thank the couple enough for coming to her rescue. Never. They’d taken her out of that hotel room, brought her to their own home for God’s sake and cared for her. Fingerprints and orphan records had helped them figure out who she really was while top psychologists and psychiatrists tried to get her to communicate with them. Fat lot of good they’d done. Instead, she’d come to cautiously rely on the two people discussing her in the other room. Leo had provided all the protection Estelle needed from Sixteen and the Beast while Estelle gave her all the maternal caring she was able to. As much as Gyda wanted to talk to them, to give them the thanks that was were in her heart, Sixteen wouldn’t allow it.

  She was a complete mute. Sixteen didn’t trust them and neither did the Beast. Despite Estelle’s gentle nurturing, it remained convinced her rescuers were going to hurt her. Every night she lay in the soft bed they’d assigned to her and waited for the strangers to appear, the paying customers to use her body. Every day she waited for them to pin her to the ground and torture her, for them to withhold food from her, or to forbid her to clean herself. And every day she’d been surprised.

  Yet the Beast snapped and snarled when they got close. He tried to hide it, but Sixteen could sense Leo’s unease when they were anywhere near Estelle. It wasn’t an emphatic ability. It was primal instinct that told her he was just waiting for her to explode and rain hell on the innocent and protected Estelle’s head.

  It wasn’t that Estelle wasn’t strong. She was a Void, able to negate the powers of others merely by being near them. She wouldn’t have made it as a member of the Alpha Tactical Unit if she’d been weak, but even Sixteen could see why Leo worried for her. Because the skilled Void was innocent and clean compared to them. It was in the way she glowed with compassion and love, as though she’d never been tainted by darkness. Even though Estelle was older, Sixteen and even the elusive Beast felt ancient by comparison. And their body and mind showed it.

  “I don’t care. She deserves to have someone stick up for her, Leo.”

  Sixteen stared dry-eyed at the ceiling above her head. She hoped it wasn’t pity that made Estelle her champion, but it didn’t matter. Leo was right. They were unstable. While Gyda was docile and meek, Sixteen was unstable and the Beast was volatile. They weren’t right. They were too far gone. Sixteen knew the only recourse was to end their pitiful lives—put them to rest. If it weren’t for the Beast she would have already done it. Oh, she had tried since being rescued, but the Beast had taken over, pushing her back and when she’d awakened, it was to find herself huddled in her closet.

  They were dangerous. But none of them wanted to repay Estelle’s kindness by hurting her.

  The husband-and-wife team continued talking, their voices flowing together, forming a united front despite the differences of opinion. Leo would never hurt Estelle the way Gyda’s owners had hurt them. He only wanted what was best for his wife. And if it meant they had to be exterminated or locked away he’d do it. Sixteen agreed a hundred percent. They probably should be locked away. But again, the Beast ruled in all things physical and she didn’t want to be caged again.

  The doctors, the ones who’d evaluated her when she was first rescued said something about dissociative disorder. She hadn’t understood what it meant until she overheard Estelle explain to Leo that Gyda had multiple personalities. Sixteen snorted. Without her and the Beast, Gyda would have been crushed by her memories. If that made them crazy, so be it.

  Sixteen waited until they went to sleep and waited some more before she slipped out of the soft, cushy bed they enjoyed so much. She gathered the few things they’d laid claim to. A few pairs of jeans, some shirts, a jacket Estelle had bought for them and a backpack for it all. She kept her ears tuned to the sounds of the house, detecting nothing more sinister than the ticking of a clock as she slinked into the kitchen for the box cutter she’d seen in Estelle’s junk drawer.

  It wasn’t the best weapon, but it would do for now. Unless the Beast overwhelmed both her and Gyda, they were only weak on the physical plane, her mental shields solid and she sure as hell wasn’t going to let anyone get the best of them again.

  She glanced in the direction of Leo and Estelle’s bedroom. Sixteen could feel Gyda trying to take control again, her need to leave warring with gratitude. But they couldn’t stay here, not with the threat of incarceration hanging over their heads. In the end, she decided not to venture in that direction. Instead, she took the box cutter and carved the words “thank you” into the butcher block Estelle kept on the island. Gyda fell quiet after the words were finished. It was all they had and she hoped Estelle and Leo would understand.

  With her duty done, Sixteen slipped out of the house and into the early autumn morning. She didn’t look back once as she stepped into their future.

  Chapter Two

  “Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both.”

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Present Day Kansas City

  Gyda frowned at herself in the mirror, searching for the Beast who inhabited her body. Tora, the name the Beast had given itself after long deliberation, was nowhere to be seen. Normally Gyda would have rejoiced to have quiet in her mind, but when she’d awakened in this hotel room on the seedy side of Kansas City with no memory of how she’d gotten there, well, she wasn’t exactly pleased.

  So much for holding down that job at Deb’s Diner, she mused with a grimace. At twenty-four, she felt the need to build a life somewhere, to own something, to be someone, but it wasn’t going to happen because of them. She always could count on either Tora or Sixteen to fuck up a good thing.

  She sighed and shoved away from the grimy bathroom mirror and surveyed the tiny room Sixteen had apparently rented for them. It never ceased to amaze her how well her other personalities managed to navigate the world and work together toward a common goal, even if that goal was killing. Since leaving Estelle and Leo’s home seven years ago, she’d found herself in this exact position time and time again, waking up in a new place with no memory of getting there. From one end of the country to the other, never staying in any place longer than Sixteen deemed necessary. She remembered being in all those places, remembered the sense of urgency that drove Sixteen to keep them moving. Her only sign of an impending move was wh
en the Beast prowled in her mind, agitated and ready to pounce, but it’d taken her a while before she realized what her other selves were up to.

  When she realized she actually had other sides to her, two other people living inside her mind, they’d begun to share things with her. Memories, thoughts. Hell, they even talked to her when they got the urge or thought she was being an ass. But when things got hot, they took over. Flat-out pushed her to the back of her own mind and went about doing what they wanted.

  Flopping down on the bed that felt as hard as a rock, she stared up at the water-stained ceiling. While she didn’t like what Sixteen and Tora were up to, it wasn’t as though she could fight it. Her feral sides had taken it upon themselves to seek out the men who’d abused her all those years ago and Sixteen was hell-bent on making that happen with the eager aid of Tora. Gyda squeezed her eyes closed, not that it did any good. Despite being shoved out of consciousness by Sixteen, she knew what they’d done to those men. Tora projected snippets to her like a slide show, but in graphic detail.

  And she took great satisfaction in knowing the men had suffered before they died. That first time Gyda had awakened covered in blood after her other sides had delivered swift, painful justice, she’d panicked. She’d checked herself over for wounds because deep inside, she still feared that freedom was a mirage, that she’d wake up and find that she’d been living in her cage all this time. That first time though, she’d discovered no new wounds and later learned that a small-time criminal had died of blood loss hours before. The news crews had flashed a picture of the man and Gyda instantly recognized him as a man who’d been party to one of her rapes. Horror had flashed for a split second, quickly followed by perverse pleasure.

  Her stomach roiled at her secret shame. She should’ve never left the protection Leo and Estelle offered, except she knew what would’ve happened if she’d stayed. Eventually they would’ve had to turn her over to the Order of Themis shrinks and Sixteen had been convinced that those mind freaks would’ve locked them up. The thought of being caged again, of not having some control over her life, set her limbs to trembling.