Free Through The Veil by Christi Snow Page B

him would look like. She got the feeling that didn’t happen too often.
    “Sorry about that. The last few days have been a bit much
for my body to handle, I think.”
    He gazed down at her and she could see the concern and
something that looked like fear in his eyes. “Malcolm’s meeting me at the house
and he’ll help you feel better.”
    “Okay, just don’t leave me. Promise…”
    “I promise. I won’t leave your side.”
    She nodded and let oblivion flow over her, knowing that
Marcus would take care of her.
    * * *
    Lori surfaced through sludge while she tried to regain
consciousness. The fact she even realized that little detail didn’t bode well
for what was happening to her. She knew it would be bad when she woke up and
that made her want to burrow further into her unconscious, but safe, mind. But
they weren’t going to allow her that luxury.
    “Come on. Wake up.” She could feel a hand slapping her
cheeks. When that didn’t convince her to open her eyes, the cruel hand grasped
her naked breast.
    Her eyes flew open in alarm, but immediately squinted
shut again from the bright light in the room. Again the hand pressed at her
breast. They kept her naked during these experiments to humiliate her and so
she couldn’t escape.
    From the other side of the room came a low threatening
growl of the panther. Oh no, they’d brought William in for this. She hated it
whenever they brought in any of the Others to be tortured to convince her to go
along with the testing, but William hovered on the verge of breaking. He’d been
here longer than most of them—eleven years—and was already more than a little
wild because of his existence as an animal shifter. Now he lived in danger of
becoming completely feral. They all worried for his sanity.
    She tried to reach out to him telepathically, a connection
they’d managed to keep hidden from their captors, but her mental push just
caused him to growl more.
    As an animal shifter, William could shift at will except
when captive. If his hands or paws were restrained, he had to stay in the form
he appeared in when they restrained him. It was a weird quirk of nature that
the scientists and doctors in the lab took full advantage of.
    Her eyes flew open again and she glared with contempt at
the man smiling gleefully in front of her. A short man with a wide girth and
balding head, Dr. Henderson was one of the most sadistic of all their doctors
who conducted the experiments. He got a special twisted kick out of causing
them pain.
    She looked down at the instruments in his hand. The
forceps.
    “It’s nice of you to join us, Ms. Renshaw .”
His smile emanated pure evil.
    Her gaze flew to William again. While in panther form,
they took pleasure in removing his claws by force to punish her when she didn’t
cooperate. He found it extremely painful and left him incredibly vulnerable
when in animal form. They’d even gone so far as bringing other big cats in to
attack him after pulling out his claws. It had been horrific and William still
carried the scars from it.
    “I’m sorry to say that it’s never a pleasure to join
you, Dr. Henderson.”
    He backhanded her and pain ricocheted through her head.
She really should know better than to provoke him by now, shouldn’t she?
    Her brain scrambled trying to find a way out of this.
She could just cooperate and would, if it had been any other doctor. But Dr.
Henderson wouldn’t be satisfied until he hurt one or both of them, regardless
of whether she cooperated or not. He needed that from these sessions.
    She reached out again to William’s mind. “William,
listen to me. I’m going to remove your restraints, but I need you to be ready
because he’s going to grab for the tranquilizer gun. I’ll try to get to it
first, but am not sure I’ll have any power left after freeing you. Protect
yourself, William. He’s going to hurt you.”
    Manipulating her power from this distance was difficult.
If she had physical contact with the