Текст книги "Taken by Midnight"
Автор книги: Lara Adrian
Соавторы: Lara Adrian
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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 22 страниц)
And if, or, rather, when Dragos tired of sharing the future he alone had envisioned and ensured was brought to fruition, then he would call upon his personal army of assassins to remove every second-generation contemporary, as well.
He sat in contemplative, if bored, silence as his lieutenant rushed to review the finer points of the plan that Dragos himself had masterminded just a few days earlier. Step by step, tactic by tactic, the other Breed male laid everything out, assuring him that nothing had been left to chance.
“The Gen One and his family have been under our surveillance round the clock since their arrival back home,” the lieutenant said. “We are ready to pull the trigger on the operation on your command, sire.”
Dragos inclined his head in a vague nod. “Make it happen.”
“Yes, sire.”
The lieutenant’s deep bow and scraping retreat was almost as pleasing to Dragos as the notion that this pending offensive strike would make it clear to the Order that he might be down, but he was far from out.
In fact, his presence at the swank Boston hotel—and one of several important introductory meetings that had taken weeks to arrange between him and a hand-picked group of influential humans—would solidify Dragos’s position on the ladder toward his ultimate glory. He could practically taste success already.
“Oh, one more thing,” Dragos called out to his departing associate.
“Yes, sire?”
“If you fail me in this,” he said pleasantly, “be prepared for me to feed you your own heart.”
The male’s face bleached as white as the carpet that blanketed the floor like snow. “I will not fail you, sire.”
Dragos smiled, baring both teeth and fangs. “See that you don’t.”
CHAPTER
Nine
After the death-soaked mess of his night’s work in the city, Brock considered it a personal triumph that he’d managed to avoid Jenna for most of the day that he’d been back at the compound. With the two men’s bodies dumped in the frigid backwaters of the Mystic River, he had stayed out alone until near dawn, trying to shake off the fury that seemed to follow him all night.
Even after he’d been back at the Order’s headquarters for some hours that morning, the unwarranted—completely unwanted—sense of rage that gripped him when he thought of an innocent woman coming to harm made his muscles vibrate with the need for violence. A couple of sweaty hours of blade work in the weapons room had helped take off some of his edge. So had the scalding, forty-minute shower he’d punished himself with following the training.
He might have felt damned good, felt that his head was screwed on straight and tight again, if not for the one-two punch that Gideon had delivered not long afterward.
The first hit was the news that Jenna had come down from breakfast with the other women of the compound and had asked him to run another round of tissue testing and blood work. She had recalled something about the time she’d spent in the Ancient’s company—something that Gideon had said left the stalwart female pretty shaken up.
The second blow had come almost immediately after the first samples were drawn and run through the analyzers.
Jenna’s blood counts and DNA had changed significantly since the last time Gideon had run them.
Yesterday, her results were normal. Today, everything was off the charts.
“We can’t jump to conclusions. No matter what these reports seem to indicate,” Lucan finally said into the quiet, his deep voice grave.
“Maybe we should run another sample,” said Tess, the only one of the females in the tech lab at the moment. She glanced up from the disturbing lab results to look at Lucan, Brock, and the rest of the Order who’d been summoned there to review Gideon’s findings. “Shall I get Jenna and bring her back down to the infirmary for a second test?”
“You can,” Gideon said, “but running another sample isn’t going to change a thing.” He took off his pale blue glasses and tossed them onto the acrylic workstation in front of him. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he slowly shook his head. “These kinds of DNA mutations and massive cellular replications simply don’t occur. Human bodies aren’t advanced enough to handle the demands that changes of this significance would place on their organs and arteries, to say nothing of the impact something like this would have on the central nervous system.”
Arms crossed over his chest, Brock leaned against the wall next to Kade, Dante, and Rio. He said nothing, struggling to make sense of everything he was seeing and hearing. Lucan had advised that no one jump to conclusions, but it was damned hard not to assume that as of right now, Jenna’s future well-being was severely in question.
“I don’t get it,” Nikolai said from the other side of the tech lab, where he sat at the large table along with Tegan and Hunter. “Why now? I mean, if everything was normal before, why the sudden flood of mutations to her blood and DNA?”
Gideon shrugged vaguely. “Could be the fact that until just yesterday she’d been in a deep sleep, almost a coma. We knew her muscle strength had increased once she had awakened. Brock saw that firsthand, and so did we, when Jenna fled the compound. The cellular changes we’re seeing now could have been a delayed reaction to simply waking up. Being conscious and alert may have acted as some kind of switch inside her body.”
“Last night she was shot,” Brock added, biting back the angry snarl that was clogging the back of his throat. “Could that have anything to do with what we’re seeing in her blood work now?”
“Maybe,” Gideon said. “Anything is possible, I suppose. This isn’t something that I, or anyone else in this room, have ever seen before.”
“Yeah,” Brock agreed. “And doesn’t that just suck ass.”
From the rear of the tech lab, his booted feet propped up on the conference table while he tipped back in his chair, Sterling Chase cleared his throat. “All things considered, maybe it’s not such a good idea to give this woman so much freedom around the compound. She’s too big of a question mark right now. For all we know, she could be some kind of goddamn walking time bomb.”
For a long moment, no one said a thing. Brock hated the silence. Hated Chase for putting something out there that none of the warriors would want to consider.
“What would you suggest?” Lucan asked, shooting a sober look at the male who had spent decades as part of the Breed’s bureaucratic Enforcement Agency before joining up with the Order.
Chase arched a blond brow. “If it were up to me, I’d remove her from the compound ASAP. Lock her away someplace tight and secure, as far away from our operation as she can get, at least until we have a chance to take Dragos down, once and for all.”
Brock’s growl erupted from his throat, dark with animosity. “Jenna stays here.”
Gideon put his glasses back on and gave a nod in Brock’s direction. “I agree. I would not be comfortable removing her now. I’d like to keep an eye on her, get a better understanding of what’s happening to her on a cellular and neurological level, at a minimum.”
“Suit yourselves,” Chase drawled. “But it’s gonna be all of our funerals if you’re wrong.”
“She stays,” Brock said, aiming his narrowed gaze down the table to where it skewered the smirking ex-Agent.
“You’ve had a hard-on for this human since the second you saw her,” Chase remarked, his tone light but his expression dark with challenge. “You got something to prove, my man? What is it—you just one of those born suckers for a damsel in distress? The Patron Saint of Lost Causes. Is that your deal?”
Brock vaulted across the table in a single leap. He would have had his hands around Chase’s throat, but the vampire saw him coming and moved just as fast. The chair toppled, and in half a second the two big males were eye to eye, jaw to jaw, locked in a simmering standoff neither one of them could win.
Brock felt strong hands peeling him away from the confrontation—Kade and Tegan, there before he could take the shot Chase deserved. And behind Chase were Lucan and Hunter, the two of them and the rest of the warriors ready to dial the situation down if either male thought to escalate it.
Glaring at Chase, Brock allowed himself to be guided away from his comrade, but only barely. For what wasn’t the first time, he considered the antagonistic, aggressive nature of Sterling Chase, and he pondered what it was that drove the otherwise skilled—once upstanding—male to be so volatile.
If the Order had a time bomb to worry about in its midst, Brock wondered if he wasn’t looking at the source of that danger right now.
“What the hell is taking them so long?”
Jenna hadn’t realized she’d spoken her frustration out loud until Alex reached over and took her hand in a reassuring grasp. “Gideon said he wanted to run some extra tests on your samples. I’m sure we’ll hear something soon.”
Jenna huffed out a sharp sigh. Cane in hand, even though she felt only the smallest need to lean on it, she got up from the sofa she’d been sitting on and limped to the other side of the apartment’s living room. She had been brought there by Alex and Tess following her blood draw in the infirmary a few hours ago, told she’d been granted use of the private quarters as her own for the duration of her stay at the compound.
The residential suite was a big improvement over her room at the infirmary. Spacious and comfortable, with oversize leather furniture and dark wood tables that were meticulously polished and free of clutter. Tall wooden bookcases were lined with a library’s worth of classics, philosophy, politics, and history. Serious, thought-provoking books that seemed in contrast to the shelf full of neatly organized—good grief, alphabetized—popular commercial fiction that sat alongside it.
Jenna let her gaze wander the shelves of titles and authors, needing even the momentary distraction to keep herself from dwelling too long on what might be keeping her waiting all this time for answers from Gideon and the others.
“Tess has been down there for more than an hour,” she pointed out, idly pulling a book about female jazz singers from its place in the history section. She flipped through a few pages, more to give her hands something to do than out of any real interest in the book.
As she thumbed past a section on 1920s-era nightclubs, a yellowed old photograph slipped out. Jenna caught it before it fell to the floor. The beaming face of a pretty young woman dressed in shimmering silk and glossy furs stared out of the image. With her large, almond-shaped eyes and porcelain-light skin that seemed to glow against her long jet-black hair, she was beautiful and exotic, particularly within the setting of the jazz club behind her.
With her own life spiraling into confusion and worry, Jenna was struck for a moment by the sheer jubilation in the young woman’s smile. It was such a raw, honest joy, it almost hurt Jenna to look at it. She had known that kind of happiness herself once, hadn’t she? God, how long had it been since she’d felt even half as alive as the young woman in that photograph?
Angered by her own self-pity, Jenna slid the picture back between the pages, then returned the book to its place on the shelf. “I can’t take this not knowing. It’s driving me crazy.”
“I know, Jen, but—”
“Screw this. I’m not waiting here any longer,” she said, pivoting to face her friend. The tip of her cane thumped on the rug-covered floor as she made her way to the door. “They must have some of the results back by now. I have to know what’s going on. I’m going down there myself.”
“Jenna, wait,” Alex cautioned from behind her.
But she was already in the corridor, walking as fast as she could manage between the impediment of her cane and the twinge of pain that shot through her leg with every hasty step.
“Jenna!” Alex called, her own footfalls quickly gaining in the empty hallway.
Jenna kept going, around one curving length of polished white marble to another. Her leg was throbbing now, but she didn’t care. Tossing away the cane that only slowed her down, she all but ran toward the muffled sounds of male voices coming from up ahead. She was panting as she reached the glass walls of the tech lab, a sheen of pain-induced sweat beading above her lips and across her forehead.
Her eyes found Brock before anyone else in the solemn-looking group. His face was taut, the tendons in his neck drawn tight as cables, his mouth flattened into a grim, almost menacing line. He stood in the back of the room, surrounded by several other warriors, all of them seeming tense and uneasy—all the more so now that she was there. Gideon and Tess were huddled near the bank of computer workstations at the front of the lab.
Everyone had paused what they’d been doing to stare at her.
Jenna felt the weight of their gazes like a physical thing. Her heart lurched. Obviously, they had the analysis of her blood work. Just how awful could the results be?
Their expressions were unreadable, everyone holding her in cautious, silent observation as her footsteps slowed and came to a stop in front of the tech lab’s wide glass doors.
God, they looked at her now as though they’d never seen her before.
No, she realized as the group of them remained unmoving, simply watching her through the clear wall that stood between her and the sober meeting on the other side. They were looking at her as though they might have expected her to be dead already.
As though she were a ghost.
Dread settled cold and heavy in her stomach, but she wasn’t about to back down now.
“Let me in,” she demanded, pissed off and terrified. “Goddamn it, open this fucking door and tell me what’s going on!”
She lifted her hand and fisted it, but before she had a chance to pound on the glass, it slid open on a soft hiss. She stormed inside, Alex following in on her heels.
“Tell me,” Jenna said, her gaze traveling from one silent face to another. She lingered on Brock, the one person in the room aside from Alex for whom she felt a measure of trust. “Please … I need to know what you’ve found.”
“There have been some changes in your blood,” he said, his deep voice impossibly low. Too gentle. “In your DNA, as well.”
“Changes.” Jenna swallowed hard. “What kind of changes?”
“Anomalies,” Gideon interjected. When she swung her head to look at him, she was struck by the concern in the warrior’s eyes. He spoke carefully, looking and sounding far too much like a doctor doling out the worst kind of news to his patient. “We’ve found some odd cellular replications, Jenna. Mutations that are being passed into your DNA and multiplied at an excessive rate. These mutations were not present the last time we analyzed your samples.”
She shook her head, as much in confusion as it was reflex to deny what she thought she was hearing. “I don’t understand. Are you talking about some kind of disease? Did that creature infect me with something when he bit me?”
“Nothing like that,” Gideon said. He shot an anxious look at Lucan. “Well, not exactly, that is.”
“Then what exactly?” she demanded. The answer hit her not even a second later. “Oh, Jesus Christ. This thing in the back of my neck.” She put her hand over the spot where the Ancient had inserted that granule-size bit of unidentified material. “This thing he put inside me is causing the changes. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
Gideon gave her a faint nod. “It’s biotechnology of some kind—nothing the Breed or humankind has the capability to create. From the newest X rays we took today, it appears the implant is integrating into your spinal cord at a very accelerated rate, as well.”
“Take it out.”
A round of uneasy looks traveled the group of big males. Even Tess seemed awkwardly silent, unwilling to hold Jenna’s gaze.
“It’s not that simple,” Gideon finally replied. “Perhaps you should see the X ray for yourself.”
Before she could consider whether she wanted to see proof of anything she was being told, the image of her skull and spinal column blinked full-screen on a monitor mounted to the wall in front of her. In an instant, Jenna noted with sick familiarity the rice-size object that glowed brightly at the center of her uppermost vertebrae. The threadlike tendrils that had been present yesterday were more numerous in this newer slide.
Easily hundreds more, each thin strand weaving intricately—inextricably—through and around her spinal cord.
Gideon cleared his throat. “As I said, the object is apparently comprised of a combination of genetic material and advanced high technology. I’ve never seen anything like it, nor have I been able to find any human scientific research that even comes close to what this is. Given the biological transformation we’re seeing in your DNA and blood work, it would seem the source of the genetic material was the Ancient himself.”
Which meant part of that creature was inside her. Living there. Thriving.
Jenna’s pulse hammered hard in her breast. She felt the pump and rush of her blood racing through her veins—mutated cells that she imagined were chomping their way through her body with each heartbeat, multiplying and growing, devouring her from within.
“Take it out of me,” she said, her voice climbing in her distress. “Take the goddamned thing out of me right now, or I’ll do it myself!”
She reached up with both hands and started clawing at her nape with her fingernails, desperation making her go a little crazy.
She didn’t even see Brock move from his position on the other side of the tech lab, but in less than a moment, he was right beside her, his large hands wrapping around her fingers. His dark brown eyes found her gaze and didn’t release her.
“Easy now,” he said, a low whisper as he gently, but firmly, drew her hands away from her nape and held them in his warm grasp. “Breathe, Jenna.”
Her lungs squeezed, then released on a hitching sob. “Let go of me. Please, leave me alone, all of you.”
She pulled back and tried to walk away, but the heavy drumbeats of her pulse and a sudden ringing in her ears made the room around her pitch violently. A dark wave of nausea swept her, cloaking everything in a thick, dizzying fog.
“I’ve got you,” Brock’s soothing voice murmured somewhere close to her ear. She felt her feet leave the ground and for the second time in as many days she found herself caught up in the safety of his arms.
CHAPTER
Ten
He didn’t make excuses for what he was doing or where he was taking her. Merely strode out of the tech lab and carried her back up the corridor she’d come from with Alex a few minutes before.
“Let go of me,” Jenna demanded, her senses still muddled, ringing with each long stride of Brock’s legs. She shifted in his arms, trying to ignore how even that small bit of movement made her head spin and her stomach twist. Her head fell back over his muscled forearm, a pained groan leaking out of her. “I said put me down, damn it.”
He grunted but kept walking. “I heard you the first time.”
She closed her eyes, only because it was too hard to keep them open and watch the ceiling of the corridor contort and swirl above her as Brock carried her deeper into the compound. He slowed after a moment, then turned sharply, and Jenna glanced up to see that he had brought her back to the apartment suite that was now her private quarters.
“Please, put me down,” she murmured, her tongue thick, throat gone bone dry. The pounding behind her eyes had become a jackhammer throb, the ringing in her ears a deafening high-frequency whine that seemed to want to split her skull wide open. “Oh, God,” she gasped, unable to hide her agony. “It hurts so much …”
“Okay,” Brock said quietly. “Everything’s gonna be okay now.”
“No, it won’t.” She whimpered, humiliated by the sound of her own weakness, and the fact that Brock was seeing her like this. “What’s happening to me? What did he do to me?”
“It doesn’t matter right now,” Brock whispered, his deep voice held too tight. Too carefully level to be believed. “Let’s just get you through this first.”
He crossed the room with her and knelt down to place her on the sofa. Jenna lay back and let him gently straighten her legs, not so far gone with discomfort and worry that she didn’t recognize the tenderness of the strong hands that could probably crush the life from someone with little more than a twitch of this man’s will.
“Relax,” he said, and those strong, tender hands came up near her face. He leaned over her and lightly stroked her cheek, his dark eyes compelling her to hold his gaze. “Just relax and breathe now, Jenna. Can you do that for me?”
She’d calmed a bit already, easing into the sound of her name on his lips, the feathery warmth of his fingers as they skated slowly from her cheek to her jaw, then down, along the side of her neck. The short bursts of breath that sawed in and out of her lungs began to slow, to ease, as Brock cupped her nape in one hand and glided his other palm in an unrushed, soothing back-and-forth motion across the top of her chest.
“That’s it,” he murmured, his gaze still locked on hers, intense and yet so impossibly tender at the same time. “Let go of all the pain, and relax. You’re safe, Jenna. You can trust me.”
She didn’t know why those words should affect her as much as they did. Maybe it was the pain that had weakened her. Maybe it was the fear of the unknown, the gaping abyss of uncertainty that had suddenly become her reality since that frigid, horrific night in Alaska.
And maybe it was just the simple fact that it had been a long time—four lonely years—since she’d felt the firm, warm caress of a man’s touch, even if offered only in comfort.
Four empty years since she’d convinced herself she didn’t need tender contact or intimacy. Four endless years since she’d remembered what it was to feel like a flesh-and-blood woman, like she was desired. Like she might one day be able to open her heart to something more.
Jenna closed her eyes as the prick of tears began to sting at them. She pushed aside the swell of emotion that rose up on her unexpectedly and focused instead on the soothing warmth of Brock’s fingertips on her skin. She let his voice wash over her, feeling his words and his touch work in tandem to coax her through the anguish of the strange trauma that had seemed to be shredding her from the inside out.
“That’s good, Jenna. Just breathe now.”
She felt the vise of pain in her skull loosen as he spoke to her. Brock caressed her temples with his thumbs, his fingers splayed deeply into her hair, holding her head in a comforting grasp. The piercing ring in her ears began to fade away, until, at last, it was gone.
“You’re doing great,” Brock murmured, his voice darker than before, just above a growl. “Let it go, Jenna. Give the rest of it to me.”
She exhaled a long, purging sigh, unable to keep it inside her as long as Brock was stroking her face and neck. She moaned, welcoming the pleasure that was slowly devouring her agony. “Feels nice,” she whispered, helpless to resist the urge to nuzzle further into his touch. “The pain isn’t so bad now.”
“That’s good, Jenna.” He drew in a breath that sounded more like a sharp gasp, then exhaled a low groan. “Let it all go now.”
Jenna felt a tremor vibrate through his fingertips as he spoke. Her eyelids snapped open and she gaped up at him, stricken by what she saw.
The tendons in his neck were strung tight, his jaw clamped down so hard it was a wonder his teeth didn’t shatter. A muscle ticked wildly in his lean cheek. Beads of perspiration lined his forehead and upper lip.
He was in pain.
Staggering pain—just as she had been, not a few minutes before his touch had seemed to ease her agony away.
Realization dawned on her then.
He wasn’t just calming her with his hands. He was somehow pulling her pain out of her. He was siphoning it, willingly drawing her pain into himself.
Offended by the idea, but even more embarrassed that she had let herself lie there and imagine that his touch was something more than pity, Jenna flinched out of his reach and scuttled into a seated position on the sofa. She breathed hard with outrage as she stared into his dark eyes, which flashed with specks of amber light.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she gasped, leaping to her feet.
The muscle that had been ticking in his jaw gave a tight twitch as he stood up to face her. “Helping you.”
Images crowded into her mind in an instant—a sudden vivid recollection of the aftermath of her captivity with the creature who’d invaded her cabin in Alaska.
She’d been in pain then, too. She’d been terrified and in shock, awash in so much confusion and horror, she thought she might die from it.
And she remembered the warm, caring hands that comforted her. The face of a grimly handsome stranger who’d come into her life like a dark angel and kept her safe, kept her sheltered and calm, when everything in her world had been thrown into chaos.
“You were there,” she murmured, stunned to realize it only just now. “In Alaska, after the Ancient was gone. You stayed with me. You took away my pain then, too. And later, after I was brought here to the compound. My God … did you stay at my side all of the time I was in the infirmary?”
His eyes remained fixed on her, dark and unreadable. “I was the only one who could help you.”
“Who asked you to?” she demanded, knowingly harsh, but desperate to purge the heat that was still traveling through her, unbidden and unwanted.
Bad enough he’d thought it necessary to coddle her like some kind of child through her prolonged ordeal. All the worse when he seemed to think it was necessary to do so now, as well. She’d be damned before she let him think for one second that she had actually welcomed his touch.
His expression still pained from what he’d done for her a few moments ago, he shook his head and blew out a low curse. “For a woman who doesn’t want anyone’s help, you sure seem to need it a lot.”
She barely resisted the temptation to tell him where he could shove that sentiment. “I can take care of myself.”
“Like you did last night in the city?” he challenged. “Like you did just a few minutes ago in the tech lab, right before my arms were the only thing that came between your stubborn ass and the floor?”
Humiliation stung her cheeks like a slap. “You know what? Save us both some grief, and don’t do me any more favors.”
She spun away from him and started walking toward the door that was still open onto the corridor outside. Each miraculously painless step she took only heightened her anger at Brock. Made her all the more determined to put as much distance between them as possible.
Before she got within a yard of the threshold, he was standing in front of her. Blocking her path, even though she hadn’t seen or heard him move.
She stopped short. Gaped at him, astonished by the preternatural speed he evidently had at his control.
“Get out of my way,” she said, and tried to move past him.
He sidestepped her, putting his immense body directly in front of her. The intensity of his gaze told her he wanted to say something more, but Jenna didn’t want to hear it. She needed to be alone.
Needed space to think about everything that had happened to her … everything that was still happening, growing more terrifying all the time.
“Move aside,” she said, hating the small hitch that crept into her voice.
Brock slowly lifted his hand and swept a tousled hank of hair off her brow. It was a tender gesture, kindness she craved so badly but was too afraid to accept. “You’re in our world now, Jenna. And whether you want to admit it or not, you’re in way over your head.”
She watched his mouth as he spoke, wishing she didn’t find herself so riveted to the movements of his full, sensual lips. He was still weathering her pain; she could tell by the slight flare of his nostrils as he drew in his breath and blew it out on a controlled exhale. The tension in his handsome face and strong neck hadn’t abated, either.
Seeing him carrying a burden that belonged to her made her feel small and powerless.
All her life, she’d struggled to prove herself worthy—first to her father and her brother, Zach, both of whom let her know in no uncertain terms they doubted she’d had what it took to make it in law enforcement. Later on, she’d striven to be the perfect wife and mother. Her entire life had been structured on a foundation of strength, discipline, and capability.
Incredibly, as she stood there in front of Brock now, it wasn’t the fact that he was something other than human—something dangerous and otherworldly—that made her want the floor to open up and swallow her whole. It was the dread that he could see through the hard shell of the anger she wore like body armor and that he might know her for the scared, lonely failure she truly was.
Brock gave another faint shake of his head in the long silence that hung between them. His eyes took her in slowly, drifting all over her face before coming back up to meet her gaze. “There are worse things than needing to lean on someone once in a while, Jenna.”
“Damn it, I said get out of my way!” She shoved at him, her palms connecting with his broad chest as she pushed with all the anger and fear she had inside her.
Brock flew backward several paces, nearly crashing into the far wall of the corridor.
Jenna sucked in her breath, stunned and amazed at what she’d just done.
Horrified by it.
Brock was a towering force, six and a half feet tall and likely 250-plus pounds of muscle and strength. Something far more powerful than her. Something far more powerful than anything she’d ever known.
And she had just physically shoved him a couple of feet across the floor.
His brows lifted over his surprised gaze. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, more wonder in his voice than anger.
Jenna brought her hands out before her and stared at them as though they belonged to someone else. “Oh, my God. How did I … What just happened?”
“It’s all right,” he said, walking back toward her with that maddeningly calm ease of his.
“Brock, I’m sorry. I honestly didn’t mean to—”
“I know,” he said, nodding soberly. “No worries. You didn’t hurt me.”
A bubble of hysteria climbed up the back of her throat. First, the shocking news that the implant was somehow altering her DNA, and now this—a strength that couldn’t possibly belong to her, yet somehow did. She thought back on her escape from the estate grounds and the bizarre language abilities that she’d seemed to have picked up since the Ancient had left a piece of himself embedded in her spinal cord.
