and you might find a fork in your leg.”
“Worth it,” he mumbles as he begins cutting into his steak.
Casting all of them a dirty look, I head for the room with the prisoners. The hall’s quiet, the only sound my footsteps echoing as I move across the old, worn floorboards. Some days it feels a little empty in the giant building, but other times I’m glad the Prez doesn’t exactly like every member wandering around the more secure areas of our compound.
Opening the door, I step into the room, and my gaze moves from the president to the blonde prisoner, who’s currently staring back at him, her face guarded. Prez moves closer, the bear of a man towering over me. His neck’s red, the veins sticking out, and his eye is doing that strange twitching thing that I dread.
Damn it. He’s already pissed.
“She won’t tell me more than that she volunteered to be a test subject for those animals. Can you talk to her?”
I know what he really means. Can I try to see whatever she’s not telling us?
“Yes, sir.”
I move toward her. Something inside of me tenses when I see her draw back from me. I glance down at myself. Of all the guys, I’m probably the least intimidating. Every living being has an energy within them. Some people are more sensitive to the energy. Some people don’t notice it at all. Part of my ability is sensing energy, and I know that the men have a tendency to radiate a brutal kind of strength, an anger, a tension.
But I don’t. Sensing energy has taught me to hide my own better. Sometimes it unsettles people when they look at me and can’t draw anything from me, but it’s better than if they can feel the chaos that beats within my heart.
So why does she fear me? Because I’m a massive man? Because she’s been hurt so much? Or is she a supernatural creature that can see beyond my defenses?
Kneeling down, I lock eyes with her and the air rips from my chest. The energy that radiates from her as our eyes lock is like nothing I’ve felt in my life. It’s like being caught in a storm. A storm that’s too incredible to look away from, but at the same time that smells of danger and death.
I almost fall forward, but catch myself on the cage.
Her eyes are a strange blue that borders on purple. They draw me in, and images flash in my mind of these same eyes haunting my dreams night after night. They’re innocent, and yet, the eyes meld with screams of pain, blood, and death. For a minute, I can’t stop the images, the screaming that courses through my mind, tearing at my very soul, and those eyes of hers.
And then she looks away.
I’m panting as I shake my head, trying to clear the nightmares from my mind.
“What do you see, Phoenix?”
Again, I shake my head. Even though he stands behind me, I can practically feel him glowering. I know his mouth is drawn into a thin line of annoyance, and yet, I’m one of the few people he allows to behave this way. He knows how important it is not to distract me, even though he always does.
“We need to know more,” I finally say.
She studies me and her eyes hold suspicion. Not that I blame her. The energy around her shifts and swirls as it reflects her indecision.
“Please,” I implore, “it’s important.”
Her arms curl around her, drawing her knees to her chest, and I sense her vulnerability. Or maybe I don’t sense it at all. Maybe it’s something I’ve seen in my mind, because I already know the nightmares that have been torturing me revolve around her.
“There was a lot of blood. A lot of death. And the screaming…”
Her expression changes, and her energy seems to freeze for a moment before it changes yet again. “There was. Most of their test subjects died. And their deaths weren’t…peaceful.”
“But you survived?”
Her eyes close and her arms squeeze around her knees again. “I guess I did.”
“And the others.” I nod to the cages. “They aren’t like you. Right?”
More flashes enter my mind. Of creatures. Terrifying creatures. Not human. Not supernatural. Something else. Something dangerous.
“How do you know that?” Suspicion creeps into her voice.
Her energies shift again, and I sense that I’m losing her, so I switch tactics. “Can you tell me your name?”
She lifts a brow. “If you don’t know, you must not be one of