The Forbidden Trilogy(183)

Lightning crackled outside. A storm brewed to match my mood.

Father Patrick had left numerous messages for our contact at IPI but hadn't heard anything. Desirai had tried to find her via dream walking, but apparently babies didn't dream the same way adults did, so even if she found Ana, it might not tell us much. We'd accounted for everyone at the mansion, and no one had seen anything out of the ordinary. Susie had no idea how someone could have gotten to Ana from outside the house. She'd been taken from her crib in my bedroom and just disappeared.

We live in the middle of nowhere. How the hell could someone come onto our property, kidnap my kid, and vanish without a school full of paranormals seeing something? Anything? I would tear apart minds, if necessary, to find the answers.

My reaction frightened me. I had been protective of Ana during the pregnancy, but I'd always held my powers back out of moral concerns. I realized that holding her in my arms, feeling her tiny fingers wrap around mine, the sweet smell of her skin after a bath—all of this had bonded me to her.

I would do anything for her, ethics be damned. Mamma bears have nothing on me.

Bernard and the others wouldn't let me conduct a full-on mind raid tonight, not with everyone still in pain from my recent mind probe. They did, however, concede on waking Mary and bringing her down for a talk, after I told them about her standing in my room with the baby after the birth.

She appeared in the hall, a practiced look of indifference on her face. "What?"

I walked up and slapped her hard. "What did you do to my baby, bitch?"





Chapter 88 – Steele



Mr. Steele sat in the center of a large empty room. It had only one chair, and natural lighting that bounced off the all-white soundproof walls. A soundless cooling and heating system kept the temperature at a perfect 65 degrees.

Nothing can touch me here.

Beleth chose that moment to walk through the door with a scrawny boy in tow.

Correction, nothing should be able to touch me here.

"What do you want? Have we finally made tangible progress with our experiments?" Mr. Steele had little patience left for the fools in his employ. If they couldn't master this after so many years, he'd kill them all and find someone who could.

"The side effects are still a problem. The lab needs more time before you can attempt an extraction from the baby. If you try now, the baby will die, and you will not get the powers you desire."

The stillness of the giant man unnerved Steele, though he'd never admit that to anyone. How any being could embody such calm, he didn't know, but someday he would own Beleth's powers and finally understand. "What of the new specimens?"

"We pulled those who had useful and active para-powers. The undesirables are in a separate facility, awaiting your word." Beleth clutched the hand of the sniveling child next to him.

Why bring that rodent into my sanctuary? The child's large brown eyes stared into Steele, but he turned his gaze back to Beleth. "Sell them to the human traffickers. The girls can be sex slaves, the boys... well, they can too. Whatever you get for them, use that to make more Blue Power. We need more bodies to experiment on."

The air in the room shifted, and Beleth's mouth turned down in a slight frown. "There are other uses for them, other means of releasing them."

"None that will pay so high a price. Are you getting soft on me, Beleth? Do you no longer believe in our mission to empower humans and raise up the enhanced as rulers?"

Beleth said nothing for a moment, then pushed the boy forward. "He was slated to go out with the other disposables, but I believe his para-power could be useful to you."

"Step forward, boy. What's your name?"

"Tommy Beaumont."

"And what is this para-power that Beleth seems to think is so special?"

"They said that I'm an empath, that I can sense emotions."

Steele didn't know whether to laugh or curse. "And what do you sense in me?"

The boy's eyes widened. "Nothing. There's nothing in you. It's all black." He shivered, weak and afraid.

Steele sickened at such a pathetic excuse for humanity. To think he had been like that boy once—shoved into lockers, too weak to defend himself against his own father's fists, too powerless to leave. Never again.

He turned on Beleth. "What makes you think I'd want a heightened sense of people's feelings?"

Steele had never been able to intimidate Beleth, who now held his gaze without fear. No matter how many memory modifications he'd performed on the dark man's subconscious mind, he couldn't break him. He'd find a way, eventually.

"To read a person's deepest feelings and desires is great power, Steele. If you dismiss that, you are more short-sighted than I thought."