Chaunders licked his foul lips. His eyes were darting. Williams warned him: no physical contact with the girl. It wouldn’t take much to spark her gifts. But what could he do? She literally had a knife to his throat.
“You want to tell me, Chaunders.” Meg narrowed her eyes in the dark. Her knuckles remained touching the frog’s belly-like flap of fat where the man’s neck should be.
“No, there’s nothing to tell.” The disgusting doctor’s darting eyes became fixed on Meg’s. The bathroom light reflected off them, causing them to glow mesmerizingly white.
“Yes, there is. So many things are pressing heavily on your shoulders and you’re anxious to let them go.”
“No,” he said vaguely.
“Sure, you don’t mind talking. Your mind is so cluttered. Let’s talk some things out.”
He hesitated as though listening to something whispered faintly to his ear. “I do have so many things on my mind,” he said in a trance-like voice.
“How relieved I would feel to be able to let them go. That’s right,” Meg coaxed, keeping her voice smooth and steady. She was working by sheer instincts now, but there was something she could feel…it was like a handle she could tug on to pry open his mind.
“You’ve been kept in a medically induced coma.” He stared unblinking at Meg as he spoke words Meg knew in her heart to be true.
“Why?”
“Testing. He wanted to keep you alive so your blood could—”
So focused was Meg on the concentration it took her fuzzy brain to force her will on Chaunders’ mind, that she didn’t hear the hurried footsteps coming from down the hallway.
“My blood could do what?”
“Cure him.”
Just then, the door burst open and in marched two thick-shouldered soldiers—one short and stocky, the other tall and lean. They looked to have dressed hurriedly by the bed-head hair they were both sporting.
Meg jumped on the bed and yanked the doctor to a sitting position, blocking her body with his ample smelly one. She changed her knife’s position to jab the man in the fleshy tissue adjacent to the spine.
From over Chaunders’ shoulder she hissed at the interlopers. “Get out!”
The two soldiers exchanged a look of resigned worry. Chaunders was holding his throat, keeping the blood from oozing between his fingers as well as he could.
“I said,” Meg enunciated perfectly, “get out!” Desperation eked into her voice as she realized she just lost her chance to find out what the hell was really going on. And she was left weakened with her efforts to push her will on the gross guy at the receiving end of her knife.
“Dr. Chaunders, sir,” Short and Stocky spoke up. “We got a distress signal from this room.”
Meg jabbed the knife deeper into Chaunders’ gelatinous back fat. By the way he yelped, she was sure she’d broken skin.
“Get out or the smelly guy gets it.” Meg cocked her head toward Chaunders.
“We can’t let you do this, Miss Williams. We have direct orders from Dr. Williams to keep you safe and to do so by any means necessary.”
“I don’t care what Dr. Williams wants.”
Tall and Lean spoke up. “We’re to keep you at the chateau with or without force.”
“With. I choose with force.” Meg felt a small burst of strength rushing into her with the adrenaline. She leaped off the bed, wanting to get away from the foul smell blossoming off the doctor. Every movement he made exacted a fresh waft of rancid body odor. She had been holding her breath for as long as she could stand it.
Tactical advantage be damned, she thought. I’d rather take on these two idiots than have to inhale one more molecule of Chaunders’ stench.
“Miss Williams,” Short and Stocky spoke up, “we will escort you back to your room now.” From his waistband he pulled out what looked like a taser gun. Tall and Lean followed suit.
“Do you know who I really am?”
She sensed hesitation from both soldiers before Short and Stocky spoke up.
“You’re Meg Williams, daughter of Dr. Kenneth Williams.”
“No, I’m Meg Winter. I’m the one who’s going to make you regret ever underestimating a girl.”
Meg tapped into her reserve energies, so sure this was a life-or-death moment.
She watched each soldier carefully, moving her body to the center of the room as they positioned themselves to shoot. Short and Stocky moved into position first. She could sense his intentions perfectly—as though he’d just whispered a countdown for her. Just as he shot, Meg ducked behind the bed. Only the probes didn’t fly overhead as they should have.
She peeked around the foot of the bed and saw something that made no sense to her already foggy brain. Tall and Lean was standing holding his taser pointed directly at his partner and had shocked him. Short and Stocky crashed to the floor, body spasming.
The grotesque doctor still bleeding from the throat began screaming profanities at Tall and Lean.
Meg started crawling backward with her knife in hand trying to figure out why the crazed soldier took out his partner when she heard a second taser gun discharge.