Cassandra Palmer 1(53)
I backed against the wall and realized only when I fell through it that I didn't have a body, at least not a corporeal one. After a stunned instant I recognized the torture room I'd visited before, but this time only the victims were there. I got up and took a few tentative steps forward. I felt very solid. My feet didn't disappear into the stone as I'd half expected, and I could see my arm. Thankfully it was mine instead of Tomas'; at least my spirit knew which body was mine. I felt the arm and it was solid, too. I could take my pulse. I was breathing. And yet none of the prisoners seemed to notice me.
The woman I'd freed at the casino was lying right in front of me, back on the rack as I remembered, except she wasn't burnt. She didn't look good, but I could see a faint rise and fall of her chest and an occasional flutter of her lashes, so I knew she lived. I heard a noise behind me and looked back over my shoulder to see a couple of thousand people, all standing quietly, watching me. The room couldn't possibly hold that many, but they were there anyway. And, unlike my experience with Portia's brigade, that didn't seem to be playing havoc with my senses. I could see them without my eyes crossing or trying to crawl out of my head; maybe I was getting used to it. «I don't know what to do,» I said, but no one gave me any hints.
I turned back to the woman and saw with surprise that she was looking straight at me. She tried to say something, but nothing came out of her cracked lips except a thin croak. Someone handed me a dipper of water. It was slimy and vaguely green, and I looked at it dubiously. «This stuff is gross.»
«I know, but there doesn't appear to be anything else.» It shows you how out of it I was that it took me at least five seconds to connect the voice to the person.
I looked up slowly, then jumped back, sending the slimy water sloshing across the room in a wide arc. «Shit! Tomas!» I swallowed my heart back down to where it belonged. «What are you doing here?» He was holding a bucket with more of the disgusting water in it. He looked solid, but that didn't mean anything. So did I, and I'd just fallen through a wall.
«I don't know.» I was inclined to believe him since he looked as shaken as I felt. I suppose even for a vampire this counted as strange. The water in the bucket was trembling in a grip that wasn't entirely steady, and neither was his voice when he spoke. «I remember you taking control of my body, and being unable to speak or react. Then, suddenly, we were here.» He looked around in amazement. «Where is this place?»
«I'm not sure.»
«Is this where you went before?» Something that looked like eagerness came over his features. «Is that Franchise?» He saw my surprise. «Raphael told me about the vision that upset you. Is this the woman you saw?»
«I guess.» I was still staring at the bucket he was holding, because it had occurred to me that he shouldn't have had it. If he'd somehow piggybacked onto my vision, we should both be bound by the usual rules. We weren't actually here; this was a record, an image of something that had happened long ago. We should be nothing more to it than the viewers of a movie are to what happens onscreen. But there he stood, holding a heavy wooden bucket like it was no big deal. «Where did you get that?»
He looked bemused. «It was in the corner.» He gestured with his free hand to a spot where the condition of the straw made it obvious that it doubled as a latrine. Of course, the whole room smelled like a cross between an open sewer and a butcher shop, one where the meat wasn't too fresh and unused bits were allowed to rot in the corners. I thought irrelevantly that it was unfair that I had to smell this when I didn't even have a body. My old visions had never come complete with scents and sensations, and I vastly preferred it that way.
«I can't give her that.» Screw the metaphysics; I'd figure them out later. If Tomas could hold a bucket, obviously we could interact with this place, at least a little. And if that was true, maybe we could change a few things that had gone—or were about to go—seriously wrong. My first priority was to get the woman out of here, but she wasn't going to last long without something to drink, and she kept sending longing glances toward the filthy bucket. I wondered how thirsty you had to be before something like that looked good.
Tomas smelled it and dipped his finger in for a taste. I remembered how acute his senses were when he made a sound of distaste and spat it back out. «You're right. It is about a third salt. It is merely another form of torture.» He threw it down and the noxious stuff soaked into the dry straw. «I will try to find something else.»