Chapter 3

The first thing Lorna became aware of was warmth. It was pleasant, like sun on a summer afternoon, suffusing her to her very fingertips.

It was also wrong . She'd done enough drugs to be sure she'd been shot full of morphine and something probably illegal, if the fuzziness in her head was any indication. Straight painkillers didn't do this to her, and hadn't for years.

The next thing she realized was that she was sitting up, more or less, in a comfortable armchair that was far too big for her. Opening her eyes wasn't an effort she was yet ready to make, but she noted the smells around her: citrus-scented furniture polish, a touch of leather from the armchair, and vague traces of an incense she couldn't identify. None of it added up to anything she remembered.

"I know you are awake, Donovan. Open your eyes."

"Sod off," she said automatically, and even those two words were almost more than she could manage. Jesus, this was so much worse than the morphine...

"Open your eyes, Donovan."

This time there was a note of command even she couldn't ignore. She did it, but her vision swam so much she didn't think there had been any point. It took almost a full minute for it to even come close to focusing, and she didn't like what she saw.

"Well, shit ," she muttered, mostly to herself. Just how the hell did he know her name? Jesus, how long was I under this time?

The doctor arched an eyebrow. His nametag, she noted, read Von Rached. "Profane, aren't you?" he said. There was something incredibly odd about his eyes, though it took her a moment to work out what. They were the palest grey she'd ever seen, and they refracted the low light of his desk lamp like an animal's. "You do know what they say about profanity, don't you?"

"Yeah," she muttered. "It's a crutch for the inarticulate motherfucker." Gran told me that, and Gran never lied…. NO. Not Gran. Not now.

His other eyebrow went up, and she'd swear he almost smiled. Somehow, that wasn't comforting. "Close enough." He stared at her a long while in silence, appraising, and she found herself wondering if the man ever blinked . Even in her drugged state Lorna recognized the air of tightly-coiled energy that surrounded him like some kind of electrical current, and wondered, a little blearily, if she was going to die in here.

"I am afraid I don't know what to do with you, Donovan," he said at last. "As you are now, you're a danger to yourself and everyone around you, but I cannot drug you like this forever. Your body would not be able to handle it."

She didn't respond, and he didn't seem to expect her to. Her eyes traveled to the tidy white bandage at his right temple — she'd done that, hadn't she? Even if she didn't know how? In an odd way, it was comforting to know this disturbing man could be hurt.

"My superiors would probably be happier if I killed you, but I could never do that. You are the only one like me I've ever found."

That statement didn't frighten so much as bewilder her, until her drug-addled brain kicked something relevant into her consciousness: she couldn't hear his thoughts. Shit, he really was a telepath.

Even through the fog, cold horror crept through her veins. Her mind was her own — she might have lost everything else, but her mind was hers , dammit. Hers, and hers alone.

"In all my life I've never found another telepath," he said. "It's why I must keep you alive, even if I do not yet know how to control you."

"You're absolute shite at being reassuring," Lorna mumbled. God, she felt absolutely foul; she hadn't had a reaction to drugs this nasty since she'd been a teenager, and stupid enough to take whatever she could lay her tiny hands on. Everything was rocking slightly, and the glow of the lamp dimmed and brightened at odd intervals. Only the haze remained constant, and even it was awful. What in hell did he give her?

"You would not know the name," he said, standing, and she scowled. Sure, she halfway read minds all the time, but she couldn't help it. Bastard had no such excuse.

He circled the desk and came to stand beside her chair, still looking at her very strangely. There was a curiosity in those pale eyes that was close to unholy. She'd never seen anything like it — it was horrible, yet almost hypnotic. Was this what a rodent felt like when it faced a snake? It almost felt like she was drowning, like something was trying to invade her soul —

" Stop it," Lorna hissed. Her legs refused to function when she tried to get up, though, and she landed shoulder-first on the carpet. A vague approximation of pain jagged through her, and she choked on her half-drawn breath. The world spun into grey, and for one terrible moment she thought she'd pass out.

Von Rached laughed, and it was a decidedly unpleasant sound. "You felt that," he said, a weird, subtle trace of delight in his voice.

"'Course I felt it," she snarled. She grabbed the edge of the desk, and tried valiantly to haul herself to her feet. "Stay out'v my head."

The floor lurched beneath her, and he caught her arm before she could fall again. He wore gloves, she noted muzzily, heavier than surgical gloves, of some material she couldn't identify. His fingers were almost unnaturally long, and even in her current state she could feel the strength behind them.

This day just keeps getting better and better , she thought wildly, and when everything stopped spinning she found herself back in the chair, Von Rached leaning over her with a hand on either armrest.

"No," he said flatly, all humor gone from those awful eyes. Lorna briefly debated throwing up on him, since she was sure she was going to throw up on something , but her stomach lost its mutiny. "I do not let you live out of altruism, Donovan," he went on. "If I want in your mind, in I will go. Don't fight me and it will not hurt."

Not that you'd care if it did , she thought, and shut her eyes in an attempt to keep the world still.

"You are right," he said. "I would not. If anything I do harms you, you have no one but yourself to blame."

She glared at him, infuriated as well as sick and horrified. If he was going to be like that, she'd think in Irish from now on, and he could go to hell. She might not be able to move without falling over, but she'd be damned if she'd let him walk all over her. He sounded American; odds were good he wouldn't know such an obscure language. (Then again, she was hardly fluent herself, but surely she knew enough to confuse him.)

He arched an eyebrow again, and just like that, his dark amusement was back. "Irish," he mused. "Your sister must be so very worried about you. What must she think, Lorna? Would she know why you ran?"

"You shut up," she said. "You don't get to talk about Mairead, you...you gombeen."

"She knew of the fever," he said. "She must know that you were Cursed, if she has any manner of sense at all. Will she even miss you?"

Lorna sat silent, and did her level best to think of anything else — anything at all. Even hearing Mairead's name in his voice was vaguely sickening, but of course as soon as she tried to think of something else, Baile was all she could think of. How was Gran faring without her? The woman was ninety-five, and flatly refused to move in with Mairead — she'd been born in that cottage, so she said, and she was determined to die there. Lorna had moved into the spare room by way of compromise, but who was there now?

"Tell me, Donovan," Von Rached said, with genuine curiosity in his tone. "You cannot go home. Your family is lost to you — what is it you intend to do, should you by some miracle escape? What do you imagine is worth having, out in a world that would despise you for what you are? What do you want?"

The question struck her like cinder-block. The truth was that she'd done little more than tread water since she landed on American shores, panhandling her way across almost five thousand kilometers, day to day, meal to meal. She existed, because at least existence was better than oblivion.

She met his eyes steadily. "Wanting things is stupid," she said. "You won't get them, so don't waste your time. What I mean to get is freedom."

"Why? What do you think it would avail you?"

"It won't be prison." Still she stared at him, because she knew his sort — if she looked away first, he'd win before they'd even got started.

"That's something of a fatalistic mindset, Donovan," he said. "You are certainly stubborn. We will see what might be done about that." He raised his right hand and touched the bandage on her forehead, which felt unpleasantly damp. She couldn't say she was surprised when he frowned at it.

He rose, and this time she didn't try to get up. No point in landing in a heap again. "I will need to look at that," he said. "However, I must first do something about your hair. Hold still."

"Don't you dare cut my hair!" she said, and because she'd thought it in Irish, she said it in Irish. Dammit , this was too hard to maintain while she was so high. "Scissors," she tried again, in English. "No. No fucking way."

She heard him sigh as he opened a drawer. "I am not going to cut your hair off, Donovan. If you are always this adamant when you are drugged, I definitely cannot keep you in this state."

He grabbed the snarled mess of her hair and pulled it over the chair's high back, giving it a warning tug to tell her to stay put. She did, but not because of that implied threat; she just couldn't bring herself to move.

To her considerable surprise, instead of scissors she felt the gentle tug of a brush, far down at the ends of her hair. What the hell is he doing?

"I can do that, you know," she said, trying not to cringe at the fact that this cretin was touching her.

"Sit still ," he said. "This will only take longer if you struggle."

Didn't that sound utterly wrong. Lorna clenched her hands, fighting an inexplicable sense of utter horror. Why was she so unnerved by this? He was just brushing her hair, for God's sake. Telepath or not, surely he couldn't understand the significance of that to her — could he?

An tInneal Mallachtaí , she thought. She wouldn't rise to his bait, however bizarrely sickening this was. She'd heard skin could crawl, but she'd never experienced it herself before.

"And what does that mean?" he asked.

"May the devil eat your mother," she growled. "Are you done yet?"

He laughed, and it took every ounce of effort she had not to completely cringe away. "No," he said. "Please, keep edifying me about Irish cursing while I work."

Asshole , she thought.

"That's not Irish."

"Fuck you."

"I'm certain you can be more creative than that."

Oh, that's it. Lorna staggered drunkenly to her feet, pulling as far away as his grip on her hair would allow. Fury, disgust, and rising nausea were fast pushing her past the point of anything like rationality. She opened her mouth to yell at him, but before she could say a thing, the desk-lamp exploded.

She let out a horribly undignified shriek and tried to duck, but once again Von Rached's grip on her hair kept her from managing it very well. Several picture frames flew off the wall, one hitting her, smashing right across her back. Oh, hell, not again —

All awareness momentarily ceased, and when it returned she found Von Rached had pinned her to the wall, one long, ungloved hand laid across her forehead. Lorna panicked, but she couldn't move, and no flying objects came to her aid this time.

"Interesting," he said, still regarding her with that terrible detachment. "You cannot summon it of your own will, and it only summons itself in times of great distress. Don't move."

Like I have a choice. He was in her head again, she could feel it, yet somehow even that felt less violating than the hair-brushing. Possibly because this hurt, and she was no stranger to pain. "What're you doing ?" she demanded, wishing she could flinch.

"Turning it off," he said, as though it should be obvious. "As best as may be, at any rate."

He was in her head. He was in her head , she could feel it, and with that feeling came terror, terror mixed with molten wrath. Her mind stilled, and then there was only rage.

~

Von Rached watched this tiny woman, intrigued in spite of himself. He'd seen this before, but rarely — rage so complete it crowded out all capacity for rational thought. It had always heralded a lack of self-control that he could, if he played this right, use quite well.

For a moment she was quite motionless, staring at him — the lights were on behind those eyes, but whatever was home, it was not Donovan. This was primal, ancient fury, downright inhuman, and he wondered just what quirk of evolution had led to something that would be such a liability.

And then she moved, or tried to, and he thought he understood.

Had he been a normal man, her sudden, seeking fingers would have found his eyes with little trouble, or at the very least given him some impressive scratches. There was absolutely no finesse in the kick she aimed at his gut, no forethought in the way she sank her blunt nails into his hand, and yet her ire loaned her a measure of strength she might not otherwise have possessed. Unfortunately for her, she appeared to have no real skill to go along with it.

We'll deal with this later, Donovan . He severed the thread of her consciousness, setting her down on the sofa, and summoned two orderlies. Once Donovan had been packed off to her room, Von Rached surveyed the mess that had become his office.

This place seemed full of never-ending kinks, as his superiors were so terribly fond of reminding him. Of course it was, he'd retorted. What they were attempting here was something that, so far as he knew, no one in history had ever tried before, simply because the opportunity had never arisen until now. You couldn't jam this many people with magical abilities into one place and expect to find no problems. It wasn't as though he'd hit anything he couldn't deal with, and he'd make damn sure he never did.

Donovan, though…she was going to be difficult to manage, simply by the very nature of what she was. If he was going to find another such as himself, why did it have to be a foul-mouthed, foul-tempered, stubborn little creature? There was next to no chance she'd cooperate.

He picked up the shattered remains of his lamp, musing. Logically it would have been safest to put her in isolation, but Von Rached knew already that would be a bad idea. He didn't want to have to break her, but if he had no leverage over her he'd have no choice. She needs to form attachments, make friends, he thought. Give me something to threaten that isn't her. Unless he was very much mistaken, she wasn't likely to cooperate on her own, and direct threats to her would likely get him nowhere. The fact that she could feel it when he delved into her mind was going to make his job very complicated. Complicated, but intriguing.

He shook his head, locking his office before he returned to his own quarters. The inmates had been penned for the night; it was quiet in the bland hallways, the lighting muted, and the rest of the staff had gone to their apartments. The quiet was soothing.

His apartment was only one wing away from the main hospital. The others were housed as far from the inmates as they could get, but Von Rached wanted to be near enough to deal with any emergencies. And he'd made quite sure everybody knew not to disturb him unless there was one.

It was very unlike the rest of the Institute. The walls were a soft cream instead of stark white, the floor covered in heavy pale carpet. Simple mahogany furniture, a few pictures here and there, and a wall-sized bookcase filled with journals. In some ways he was very old-fashioned; he preferred to keep his notes on his patients in hard copy rather than on a computer. There were quite a few binders, too, containing their personal records. He didn't want those accessible to anyone but himself; his work was his own, and he did not share.

He took down a blank notebook, and wrote Lorna Donovan on the square of pasteboard on the cover. Once he'd fixed himself a drink he sat at his desk, and momentarily paused.

Subject Donovan presents the telepathy/telekinesis combination. At present she can control neither facet of her ability, and unless I find a permanent solution, she might well kill herself and everyone around her. And I must control it, not her: the last thing I need is for her to learn how to create wholesale destruction at will. She wrecked much of the cafeteria without even trying.

I will work with her tomorrow, and see what might be done. I am unwilling to tell her that I have surprising difficulty in reading her mind, and just now I am hesitant to force the issue for fear of doing irreparable damage. She is a singularly stubborn creature; were she to find out about my difficulty, I have no doubt she would exploit it to the best of her ability. I must see what may be accomplished with the aid of drugs, though most definitely not the combination I used today.

She is easily the most intriguing specimen I have ever found, and I wish she was likely to prove at all cooperative. Unfortunately, at present I believe I will have no choice but to break her eventually.

I have assigned her the same room as Katje DaVries, who I hope will prove a mellowing influence. I must work with her soon as well, and continue observing Ratiri Duncan. Thus far he seems the best candidate for experiment 617, but I must make certain he is as stable as he seems. I do not want a repeat of my previous results, and I do hate having to kill an otherwise promising subject.

~

Lorna woke every bit as disoriented as last time. She no longer felt sick, but she hardly felt human.

It took her a moment to realize she hadn't gone blind. It was just very dark in here, wherever 'here' was; she was lying on what felt like a rather uncomfortable bed, under a few thin blankets. For one terrible moment she thought she was back in prison in Dublin, but when memory caught up with her, she wished she was still there. At least in prison, I knew the rules.

She blinked a few times, hard, and when her vision cleared she discovered there was a little light — moonlight, very faint, filtering in through the room's lone, high window. It fell on a bunk opposite hers, which contained a vague lump that was probably a person. A tangle of shadow-darkened blonde curls on the pillow told her it was likely Katje.

She tried to speak, but at first her voice was nowhere to be found. Her throat was desert-dry, and she had to cough a few times before she could form anything like words. "Are you awake?" she said quietly.

"Ja. I mean, yes." Katje rolled over to face her. "You were gone a long time. What happen?"

Lorna was a while in answering. She really didn't want to relate most of what went on in that office to a total stranger. "I found out the doctor's a right gobshite," she said at last. "What happened in the cafeteria after I'd gone?"

"More people disappear. They send us all to our rooms early."

There was a quiver of fear in her voice, and it took an errant thought for Lorna to realize it wasn't brought on by the cafeteria — it was brought on by Lorna herself. Katje was bloody terrified of her.

"Hey, don't be scared'v me, now. Sure God I'm shot full'v so many drugs it's all I can do to blink. Besides, I don't think Von Arsehole would've put me in here if he thought I could still hurt you."

Katje relaxed, if only marginally. "How did you do that? In the cafeteria?"

"Honestly? I haven't got a bloody clue. I don't think any'v us knows how these curses work."

"That? Not encouragement."

Nothing in this place is , Lorna thought. Sleep was already dragging her relentlessly down again — true sleep, not her earlier drugged stupor. If Katje said anything more, she didn't hear it.

The nightmares found her immediately. They always did, no matter where she was, but in here they were exponentially worse. Surrounded by so many people who were already afraid turned her dreams into an absolute playground of horrors.

She caught flashes of someone else's capture, the beatings and needles, a terrible churning mix of confusion, fear, and pain. Another young man who almost burned his girlfriend alive when he woke up with his curse, his memory of the stench of her charred flesh almost overpowering. A woman who had blown out the fuses in her entire apartment building, and who electrocuted the neighbor that ran in to see why she was screaming.

On and on, in and out of too many people's personal hells, until her freewheeling mind latched onto the one person who wasn't drowning in their own horror.

This was a good dream. It held a warmth and a light that was inexpressibly comforting. She was on a green field in what could easily have been Ireland, under a pale morning sky scattered with popcorn clouds. It was a little chilly, the grass beneath bare feet not her own soaked with dew. There was a heavy book in her hand — a very brown hand, and that of a small child. Whoever was dreaming this had an amazing memory; she could feel the texture of the canvas cover under her fingers. This was a memory, a sweet childhood recollection rendered all the more beautiful by nostalgia. She had no context for it, but she didn't need one.

Something of her own appeared on the horizon: her grandmother's cottage. Her grandmother had been an ancient woman by the time Lorna met her, and she stubbornly clung to the equally ancient cottage she'd lived in all her life. Rough stone walls, a low, sloping roof, and an herb garden that was now mostly tended by her herd of great-grandchildren. She'd had electricity put in because her eldest granddaughter badgered her so, but refused to heat the place with anything but her old iron woodstove. The floor was bare wood made silky-smooth by decades of hard scrubbing, the walls whitewashed rather than painted. It was a true home, and it was only the second Lorna had ever known.

Oh Gran , she thought. There was no pain in this dream, though — peace she hadn't known since before she left Ireland settled on her like a soft blanket of fine Merino wool.

Whoever's sleeping mind she shared found it curious, unaware that it was not the product of his or her own subconscious. She rode along unnoticed when they opened the door, exploring. She herself had always had very vivid dreams, and many details of the place now appeared. She'd been an adult when she first beheld the place, but she saw it now through this child's eyes.

Other things melded in, pieces of a different home; a brick fireplace replaced the woodstove, and the walls shifted to white plaster. It was darker now, the sky outside the window heavy with clouds, but a sense of coziness suffused everything around her. A fire crackled brightly on the grate, dancing red and orange over heavy oak furniture. Somewhere a woman was singing quietly in a language she didn't know, and she let herself be buoyed by it, her own fear and anger melted away by the cadence of the alien song.

~

Lorna woke in the morning remarkably clear-headed. It was still very early, the sky beyond the grated window just barely light, and in spite of her surroundings she felt immeasurably better than she had yesterday.

Katje was still sound asleep, and Lorna was careful not to wake her when she got up. Someone had changed her clothes before putting her in here last night — she now wore a long, pale grey T-shirt and pants like hospital scrubs. They were too big for her, pooling around her bare feet, which were instantly chilled by the tile floor.

To her surprise, the little room had an adjacent bathroom. She would have expected this place to have communal showers like a regular prison, but she was glad to find it otherwise. I guess there's at least one benefit. Prison showers are dangerous places, after all.

The shower itself was little more than a cubicle, containing soap and shampoo, but no conditioner. Great. Brushing her wet hair without it was going to take eons. At least there was a brush, as well as toothpaste and two toothbrushes.

The hot water felt glorious, sluicing away the accumulated grit and sweat of the last two days. When she dried off, she actually felt human again. A pair of heavy white bathrobes hung on two hooks beside the shower, and she put one on over her scrubs before attempting to wring out her hair.

Katje was awake by the time she returned to the room, blinking and rubbing blearily at her eyes. It wasn't fair — even first thing in the morning the woman was gorgeous. There were no bags under her eyes, and her tousled hair looked artful, unlike the rat's-nest that Lorna's inevitably was.

"Should still be some hot water," Lorna said, as she picked at her hair with the brush. Her stomach growled, reminding her that she hadn't been able to eat much before the cafeteria descended into hell. "How're they going to feed us?"

"Probably bring food to the rooms. I am thinking they will not want us many in one place for a while."

Dammit. And yet, maybe that was a good thing. Maybe she'd have enough room to think, if she could manage a solid day without being shot full of something that turned her brain to mush.

Sure enough, breakfast arrived while Katje was in the shower — oatmeal, orange juice, and a little plastic fruit cup. Lorna had it polished off in five minutes, and wished like hell she could have some tea. She was a halfway morning person: she liked getting up early, but only if she was fortified by a lot of caffeine.

"I am going to get fat on this diet," Katje groused, when she emerged from the bathroom, attended by a cloud of steam. "And I need conditioner."

Lorna held up the wet, still highly snarled mass of her own hair. "You and me both. I wonder who we have to choke to get some."

"Good luck," Katje snorted. "I cannot even get hand lotion."

A stray thought told Lorna she wasn't griping out of vanity. Katje maintained her appearance as a matter of professional pride — it was part of her business regimen as a prostitute. The idea of wanting to be a prostitute was so alien Lorna couldn't begin to understand it, and she wondered if there was any polite way to ask.

She never got the chance. After a perfunctory knock, an orderly opened the door. "Come on, Donovan. Doctor wants to see you."

"What, already ? It's arse o'clock in the morning," she protested. She wasn't even close to ready to face him again.

"Just be glad it's not earlier. Come on."

She scowled, but went, wondering uneasily what drug he'd try on her now. Once upon a time she'd had no objection to drugs, but she'd got clean several years ago, and she didn't want to be forced back into being a total junkie.

The sun had risen high enough to wash the sterile hallways pale gold. Katje, it seemed, was right; no other patients were about, and only a few orderlies. Now that she was fed and rested, she was better able to take in her surroundings. This place was as featureless as a real prison; most hospitals she'd seen at least attempted some kind of décor. Here there weren't even any pictures on the walls, and the lights were all harsh fluorescents. One of them buzzed erratically, and for some reason it irritated her chipped tooth.

She was led to an exam room and there abandoned, which was somehow worse than it would have been if the orderly had stayed. It looked like exam rooms everywhere, with a papered table and blank white Formica cabinets. Since she had nothing better to do, she rifled through them, and found nothing out of the ordinary. Boxes of rolled gauze, plastic-packaged needles, tongue depressors, and a host of implements she recognized, even if she couldn't name them. It reassured her a little; whatever tests he intended to perform would probably be fairly standard. No dissection, at least not today.

"Most people consider it rude to snoop, you know."

Lorna jumped, and dropped a canister of tongue depressors with a crash. "You people left me alone in here," she said. "What the hell else was I supposed to do?"

Von Rached crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe. "Sit still," he said dryly. "Though it seems you are constitutionally incapable of doing so."

She thought a rude word, and fortunately remembered to do so in Irish. Sit still. Lorna sat still for precious few people, and he was not one of them.

He didn't do anything as plebian as roll his eyes, though she suspected he wanted to. "Sit," he said, and gestured to the exam table. "Cooperate and you'll get out of here sooner."

Her first instinct was to argue with him, and she wondered what was wrong with her. Yes, she could be pretty belligerent by nature, but it would get her nowhere now. It was probably just because he made her so very uncomfortable.

But she went, and even managed to keep her mouth shut while he fixed a blood-pressure cuff on her left arm. It was probably going to be through the roof thanks to him, and she hated that he'd have such concrete evidence of how much he unnerved her.

Sure enough, when he noted the numbers he gave her a look of very faint amusement, and she fought the urge to kick him. It seemed he was aware of that, too.

"I'm going to draw some blood, Donovan. Please refrain from blowing out all the lighting fixtures."

Lorna almost wished she could. Apparently she wasn't upset enough, because nothing happened even when he inserted the needle. He paused to inspect her arm and she sighed, knowing what was coming next.

"Track-marks," he observed. "No wonder you reacted so oddly to the drug I gave you."

"What's your point?" she demanded. If he expected her to be ashamed, he was destined to be disappointed. Yes, her youth had been wildly misspent, but she'd grown up...eventually, and she wasn't going to apologize to him or anyone else. You did what you did, Gran had told her, but what matters is, you're not doing it now . Anyone gives out at you over it, you've got a fist and you know how to use it.

"Are you always this combative?" His pale eyes regarded her with an intensity she didn't like at all. His air of energy was too intense as well; it made his very presence exhausting.

"Only when I'm around someone I don't like. And will you quit fucking looking at me like that?" God, it wasn't just the energy — he was too damn close to her, invading her space to a degree that would have got most people punched. Strangely, she suspected that wasn't calculated, and wondered why she should think so.

He straightened. "Like what?" he asked, as he tapped a cotton ball on her harm

"Like I'm some kind'v bug. I'm a human being, not a thing."

Von Rached set aside his blood sample, and when he turned back to her his intensity was even worse. "Interesting," he said. "You grow more belligerent when you are nervous."

"'Course I'm nervous, you twat," she retorted. Finally, she gave up and scooted further away. "I'm in the same room as you . Why d'you do it? Why d'you go out'v your way to be so blasted creepy? What's the point ?"

He tilted his head, regarding her inquisitively. "And what makes you believe it is intentional?"

"What else'd it be?" she demanded. "Nobody's that creepy without years'v fuckin' practice, but why?"

There was a definite edge of hysteria in her voice now, and sure enough, there went one of the light bulbs. Lorna ducked and swore, but before she could crawl under the exam table, Von Rached grabbed her by the wrists and hauled her upright again.

"I wondered what it would take to drive you to that," he said, and once again he sounded unsettlingly delighted.

"Get off!" she cried, and now she did kick him, though her bare feet rendered the action useless. "I mean it!"

"Of course you do," he said, entirely too calmly for the present situation. "Now unless you want to kill us both, I suggest you hold still."

And there he was, in her head again. He was in her head, and then there was rage and heat and Lorna was no more.

~

Now this was intriguing. Von Rached had expected anger, but he hadn't expected this...blankness...again so soon. He set her down on the exam table, wondering how such a small woman could be so heavy, and eyed her for a moment. Curious, he ventured into her mind.

He searches for some wellspring that might produce the mindless wrath she'd demonstrated on their first meeting, and now again — the primal, inhuman fury that takes away rational thought and leaves nothing but feral instinct.

But no. No, it's not quite feral, is it? It lurks there, deep in the depths of her mind, formless and limitless and without, so far as he can tell, any real source. It is part of the bedrock of whatever passes for her soul, but there is an edge of malice to it. Her brother calls it 'the thing that lives behind her eyes', and it is this which she fights against, why she struggles on behalf of those she loves. Deep inside, she fears herself, fears what she could become without those loved ones, her living morality chains.

What is she? What is she, this tiny ball of wrath and fear?

He isn't sure, but oh, he looks forward to finding out.