“The scent seems stronger in here.” Nik led the way into the greenhouse, which before the Penton siege had probably been a beautiful place. Most of the plants were long dead.
“And strongest back here.” Robin knelt and dragged aside a turf mat that had been pulled over a trapdoor of some kind.
“I think we should wait—”
She’d already pulled open the hatch, so no point in finishing that sentence. All he could do was follow her into the bowels of the earth and try to ignore Pop Costa’s dire warnings.
By the time he reached the bottom of the ladder, she’d disappeared into a doorway that branched off to the side through a heavy steel air-lock-type door. Damn it, Robin. He stepped through the blood-spattered doorway and swung the arc of his flashlight up and onto something that surely to God was a torture rack straight out of one of Dante’s inner circles of hell.
“Look.” Robin had knelt again, and he followed her gaze with the flashlight beam. A silver knife lay on the floor. “I’m not touching it. I think it’s silver and not steel.”
Shifters could touch silver without danger, but a silver-inflicted wound, unless superficial, would kill them. Even if Nik did feel physically inferior sometimes, being human was much simpler.
“Leave it there, Robin. We’ll let Mirren and Cage come back for it if they need to see it.” Then again, damn it, he liked these Penton people. Didn’t he have an obligation to help them if he could? “No, on second thought, I want to use the Touch on that knife.”
“No.” Robin took her shoe and shoved the knife away from him. “You’ve had two nosebleeds today, and I know that means you’re overdoing it. You don’t know what the long-term effects are, Niko. I’ll wrap it in something, and you can do it tomorrow if you feel like it.”
He knew better than to argue with that tone, but it didn’t mean he had to do what she said. “Sure, okay. Maybe there’s something over there in that rubble to wrap it in. Fabric, or plastic sheeting.”
“I’ll look.” She walked over to the head of the collapsed tunnel. “This thing led all the way into the clinic subsuites, didn’t it? It must have taken them forever to build all this.”
While she dug in the debris and chattered about the brilliance of the Penton infrastructure, he took a deep breath and walked to where the knife lay. As soon as he wrapped his hand around it, the burning pain hit him. Like when he’d held the glass, only stronger. Such rage, and such pain.
He dropped to his knees and held the knife with both hands, willing not just the emotions to come, but the images. Finally, they filled his mind, vivid images in bright, nightmare-inducing color.
Britta, pinned to the St. Anthony’s cross by knives.
A jaguar, lapping up the blood at her feet.
Fen Patrick, with blood on his chin.
Then it was all gone, and Robin was holding his head in her lap and talking in a nonstop, soft drone. “Nik, you idiot. You beautiful, sweet idiot.”
He tried twice before choking out the words. “Get me out of here, Robin. Help me. It’s bad this time.” He’d never reached out for the images before; he’d always let them come to him. Good to know he could summon them if he tried; bad to know it could kill him.
She tried to pull him to his feet, but he couldn’t stay upright. Finally, she pulled his right arm around her slim shoulders and lifted his weight. “You’re gonna have to climb out. I can’t carry you up the ladder, but I can push you from behind. Think you can hang on?”
“Or die trying.” He’d try to climb to the stars if it would give him one fresh breath of air, away from the smell of death and the vision of Britta Eriksen hanging on that cross.
Each rung of the metal drop ladder was harder to heft himself onto than the one before it, but when his head finally cleared the opening of the hatch, he gulped enough fresh air to give him the energy to finish the climb. He collapsed on the floor of the greenhouse and waited while Robin closed up the hatch and replaced the turf mat.
“I’ve gotta see Aidan now.” He tried to get up but couldn’t. “Gimme a minute.” He closed his eyes and waited. His equilibrium would come back. It just took a while, and Robin was right. He’d overdone it.
He was moving and realized Robin was mostly carrying him toward the SUV.
Then he was in the passenger seat, the truck was bumping along the road, and Robin was talking as if from a long distance.
Then he awoke, and the sun was out, and he was naked, and Robin was curled up beside him.
Everything was a blur except for the most important things: Fen Patrick. The jaguar. Britta.