Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Chapter 36
Well, I’m resisting the urge to tear off his head and feed his balls to the wild vultures for the time being.
—Reply from Dahlia Dehlavi to Adam Garrett (today)
Sophia Russo—alerted by Bram—had a PsyMed air-evac team waiting for them by the time they got Eleri to the nearest major hospital—it happened to be the same place Chief Cross had been taken after his heart attack.
Naia had done all she could, but Eleri was in bad shape.
“She needs specialized care,” Sophia had said over a comm call, the fine tracery of scars on her face melding with skin gone too pale. “With the drugs and possible unshielded contact with a psychopathic mind, she suffered a catastrophic overload that most likely led to a seizure. The risk is nowhere near past—this could still turn fatal for her.”
Adam hadn’t argued; Naia had been clear that she couldn’t reach Eleri, not even through the blood bond Adam had forced into being. If Eleri didn’t want it, she’d have to wake the hell up and tell him. She could reject it, reject him, rejoin the PsyNet. He didn’t care. As long as she was alive.
“I’m going with her. She’s one of mine now,” he’d said, not about to tell this near-stranger that Eleri was his mate, that she’d always been his, would always be his even if she walked away.
Because he’d fight for her every second of every day.
As for WindHaven, Dahlia, Pascal, and Maraea would handle clan security—and the arrangements for the man who was now an involuntary guest of the clan—while Adam was gone.
Malia was safe with Saoirse and Amir, with Kavita having already set her arm. Naia would also double-check on his niece as soon as she landed at the Canyon.
Adam had also made it a point to talk to his niece over the phone and was proud of her stalwart heart. He’d make sure her emotional bruises had the care they needed, but for today, she wouldn’t miss him—per Amir, all Malia wanted to do was snuggle on the sofa with her family and watch reruns of her favorite comm shows.
“Our girl is almost asleep already,” Amir had shared, his relief intermingled with a taut anger. “Adrenaline crash mixed with the aftereffects of the drug the bastard gave her. Kavi says it should be out of her system in the next couple of hours.”
Edward, the nurse who’d joined Naia in the underground bunker, had found the pressure injector the killer had used on Malia and Eleri, and the empty drug ampule inside had proved to be nothing that would cause Malia long-term harm; changelings used a smaller dose of the same drug as an over-the-counter pain reliever.
The same drug, in such a concentrated dose, was poison to Eleri’s Psy mind.
He held her hand throughout the evac flight, while the medical team tried to stabilize her in ways Naia simply couldn’t. “How bad is it?” he asked the short and trim fortysomething medic with a cap of dark-blond curls who appeared to be the lead.
Her name was embroidered above the pocket of her dark green scrubs: Agata Czajka.
“Bad,” was the clipped response.
Czajka checked a handheld device as the heavily stabilized air-evac jet-chopper took them out toward the nearest hospital with the right facilities—thirty minutes by air. “Js of Eleri’s generation,” she said as she worked, “were reconditioned by having a thin layer of their personality scraped off. Eleri is listed as having undergone the procedure eight times.”
Recalling the brutality of what had been done to Eleri made his falcon’s talons push at his fingertips, his voice dropping. “You sound like you know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m a neurosurgeon, not one of those Council butchers they called reconditioning techs,” Dr. Czajka said in the same clipped tone. “I was brought onboard by Sophia Russo to lead a team whose goal it is to try to fix the neural damage across the senior cabal of the Corps.”
Though her expression didn’t alter, she was gentle as she used a swab to clear a patch of blood from under Eleri’s eye. “The task is complex and difficult even with Js who were only reconditioned once. Add severe drug toxicity to that…the fact she’s alive is what the other races term a miracle.”
“Eleri doesn’t give up.”
“No, clearly not,” the doctor said. “I didn’t even realize that they continued to recondition after the fifth pass—that’s considered a hard line in Psy neuro-medicine.” The clipped tone was a razor blade by now. “Eleri’s sense of self would have been hanging on by a thread.”
Dr. Czajka glanced at him, her eyes a hard blue. “I’m seeing evidence of a memory seizure—if she wakes up, you have to prepare yourself to meet an Eleri whose memories have been overwritten or corrupted. It usually causes the impacted Js to turn either violent and aggressive, act for short periods like the person whose memories they now carry, or to become catatonic.”