didn’t need it. I could pull, drain, manipulate anyone’s emotions within this fucking place, so I did.
With animals, it was always a careful thing. I loved them and didn’t want to hurt them, so I cautiously tweaked and twisted, checking to see how they fared as I went.
I showed no such care now.
I reached into the minds of every single one of the men standing beyond the glass and wrenched. Jealousy, desire, brutal instincts, sadism, pleasure, I smashed into them and made them mine.
I felt like Mickey Mouse in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice as I mentally fanned all the paranoia and viciousness that dwelled there. The perceived slights when they felt Hollingsworth gave one lot precedence over the other, the times when one had fucked up in front of his work mates. Petty jealousies about money, sex, dick size. They all roiled around inside them, heady fuel, just waiting for a match.
I was that match.
I amplified aggression and reduced inhibitions about striking out at your work mates. There are no consequences, I whispered in their minds. Do whatever you want.
Guns were pulled from holsters, collapsible batons snapped out to full length, which alerted Hollingsworth to what was happening, his mouth opening to protest as shots were fired, blows were struck.
“What the…?” Jai came to stand beside me. “Are you…?”
I saw his fear and his desire and his relief all swirling around him like a haze, and I hoped to hell what I was about to do would be worth it. Hollingsworth started shouting orders as men’s bodies hit the floor, exploding in splatters of blood, some bludgeoned to their knees before bullets were emptied into them. The only sound after the last body fell was Hollingsworth’s trailing off orders.
“You,” he said finally, staring at me.
“Everybody join hands,” I said to my fellow inmates, and in a mockery of what he’d always asked for, we stood in a line before the glass wall, united.
“Turn it off! Shut her down! Now!”
“Christian, if I just shut what we’ve set in motion down, we’ll kill her. I have to titrate her system lower.”
“I don’t—”
Hollingsworth’s words froze in his throat as I drew in a deep breath and speared into his mind.
It was connection I’d needed more of, I realised that now, worrying about what changes I’d unwittingly wrought, what further damage I’d done to these men, but I couldn’t dwell on that. I’d committed to this direction, and I was going to see it through. I felt it, up the line, strong from my two mates, almost as strong from Caleb, waiting to take his place by my side. Kazimir and Nero linked up, a tightly bound node of love and lust and fear and anger, and then there was Gaden. I felt him last, his hand taking Caleb’s, and a cold, heaviness came with it, something I needed to change. We smashed into the cesspool that was Hollingsworth’s mind and were instantly swamped by a deluge of refuse.
Don’t get taken in by it, I said, trying to keep my voice calm and only partially succeeding. It felt like we were sinking into quicksand.
Hollingsworth had created a strange little world in his mind. Faced with knowledge that shifters were real, he’d taken in their strength, speed, brutality when required, and physical beauty, and concocted a reality where somehow he was at the top of that tree, no matter what evidence there was to the contrary. Quite the opposite, he burned with a need to create a world that reflected that. Every time he caged a shifter or forced one to do his bidding, his view was reinforced. He was the apex predator and he did what he willed, because that was how nature worked. He could no more be held to account than a storm or an earthquake.
“You pathetic little worm,” I murmured, then cut his legs out from under him.
Show him, I said. Show him all of it.
In the way of thoughts, a great angry hornet of a thing formed from all the injustices and pain and anguish, the crushing boredom and isolation, the loneliness, the violation, the devastation, until Gaden. It crystallised the messy squall of emotions and memories and thoughts into something knife sharp.
“I love you,” she said. Amika, that was her name. She was beautiful, despite the drab gown, the simple garment only highlighting the delicate lines of her body. She had long dark hair and luminous brown eyes, eyes that shone with love as she looked upon Gaden. She bounced