Free Bad Blood (Book 4 of The Warden series) by Felicia Jedlicka Page A

over his workstation.
    The double doors to the room clapped shut. Even before her eyes reached the door, she could feel static electricity drawing the hairs on the back of her neck up. Efrat in all his casual glory stood by the entrance with his hand on the light switch. She couldn’t remember what the rules were for conductivity, but she was pretty sure a man with that much power could surge enough electricity into a light switch to electrocute a man working an electrical panel twenty feet away.

He looked the same as he had nearly a year ago when she faced off with him. His jeans and t-shirt layered with a blue flannel, reminded her of how out of place he seemed in the prison. He should have been sitting on a couch watching football and drinking beer, not trespassing through the prison plotting his escape. His blond hair was still just a little long, making it flare away from his face. His face was handsome, but more so because of his brilliant blues; the same brilliant blues that were now staring at her.
    His eyes widened mirroring her surprise. He must not have expected to find her there. The time bubble was not often visited by anyone. The self-sustaining prison was a bit off the beaten path for sightseeing.
    Efrat’s surprise dissipated and his eyes became predatory. She knew she had only one chance of surviving this. Her gun was inches from her hand, but her opponent’s weapons were his hands. She needed to go back into the time bubble. It was a risk, but her chances in there were calculating higher than out here, at the moment.
    Just as his hands rose, she reached for her gun simultaneously leaping back against the bubble. The backward swan dive met the bubble just as the bolt of electricity hit her. She felt the recoil of her gun, but the sharp pain of Efrat’s electrification didn’t stop. She felt heat resonating from her gold rings burning her fingers where the metal touched. Her back arched painfully, anatomically wrong. She thought it might break, but as fast as the pain hit her, it left. The world around her swirled into a watercolor painting.
    Then oblivion.
     
     
     
     
     
    14
    Cori woke in her bedroom. The room was chilled. The lights were on. Her alarm was quietly humming somewhere below the bed, where she had knocked it to when it had assaulted her sleep. She checked her body and hands for charring, blood, or missing digits.
    Nothing.
    The skin beneath her rings was blanched, as it should be. Her lower back was a little achy from her days spent lifting dirt in the greenhouse, but not so painful that she might suspect she had just performed an act from the exorcist.
    It was a dream.
    Unfortunately, the dream must have been premonitory because she was indeed late for duty. Like in her dream, she didn’t bother with a shower. She dressed and grabbed a token breakfast of a granola bar and headed into the prison.
    This was a fine start to her week. Her husband was no doubt shacking up with her fem-wolf archenemy; Efrat, her murderer, was now trying to kill her in her dreams; and Danato was likely going to gripe her out for being late. Granted being late was the least of her worries, but when the background stress was so high, everything seemed like a kick in the head.
    Cori bounded into Danato’s office just as…
    “Gun!”
    She retreated from the doorway and placed her firearm in the bin with a minor muffled scream. She couldn’t believe she had forgotten again. She stepped into the office and shut the door. She hadn’t slammed the door, but the glass shuttered a little anyway.
    Just as in her dream, Danato was doing paperwork, while Belus sipped on his coffee in the chair in front of the desk. “Sorry I’m…” She looked up at the clock; it read 8:05. She was now certain it was forty-five minutes off. “…a little late.” Danato glanced up at the clock and grunted his concession before returning to his paperwork. “This is so weird.” She sat on the arm of the chair, with her feet on