Hypnotic - 8. Chapter 8

"This is going to sting." Dr. Pannar held my arm under the hot water and pushed open the cuts to let the water cleanse the pus. "I'd prefer to use sterile solution, but we just don't have it."

I clenched my teeth together and grunted. The alcohol he poured over the punctures was worse, burning so much that it felt like Benny’s claws were back in my arms. I felt the sweat beading up on my forehead and I swallowed convulsively as my mouth watered and my stomach heaved. I managed to hold it down, but barely. I rested my head against the cool counter, not watching as the doctor worked.

"That's the worst of it. I'll just put some ointment on it and some fresh bandages."

My ragged breathing was slowly steadying. "Thank you, Doctor."

"Nothing more than should be done. It was one of my kind that did this to you and in anger no less. Attacking a human. . . that is dangerous even after all of these years."

I shook my head. "I would never report Benny to the cops or talk to the press. I believe that he made an honest mistake. Carthera are different from humans. Even before they transform their nature can make them dangerous. I understand that."

Dr. Pannar's hands were quick but gentle as he wound the bandages around my biceps. "Yet you didn't give your mate a second look as we left the room."

"He's not my mate," I muttered.

He stared at me in shock. "But he marked you." He pointed to where the twin wounds from Dav's fangs were still clearly visible on my neck. "Not to mention the scales on your back are a dead giveaway."

"Maybe so," I tried to push down the hurt, deep inside, "or maybe not. Somehow he broke our bond this morning. I can't feel him at all anymore." I couldn't believe how much that bond had come to mean to me in just the few days since Dav had first claimed me as his mate.

"That's not possible."

"So you think. But obviously there is a lot about Snakes you don't know."

Dr. Pannar snorted. "Isn't that the truth. The ones that don't die are driven off as soon as they are mature enough to not die on the streets. The ones that don’t live in the wilds are so volatile and angry that most clans won't risk them near their women and young anyway. Out of the few Snakes I've known, only Dav has ever really let me question him and he says precious little. Admitting weakness is not in the nature of most Carthera males but for a Snake it is often deadly."

"I know. I read the files you had. He was surprised that I knew as much as I did and that I wasn't afraid of him then."

Dr. Pannar's eyes jerked to mine. "Then?"

"He said he wished I was dead," I said in a strangled voice. "He even tried to kill me himself. I’d have to be a god damned idiot not to be afraid of him."

Dr. Pannar looked sympathetic. He sighed. "I don't blame you but I wish--"

"I wish many things; most of all to know what is really going on. But wishes are not reality, and nothing will change the fact that the man who supposedly loved me could believe that I would betray him and kill innocent people. He's been inside my head, inside my heart. Our ‘bond’ must not have made us as close as I thought it did. I thought I knew him, that I could trust him, but obviously I was wrong," I said viciously. "I don't have a mate. I wouldn’t want him back now anyway."

I concentrated on the anger I felt, not the pain. Even so, I had to look away from the pity in Dr. Pannar’s eyes.

"You sure that's fear you're feeling?" Dr. Pannar asked me in a strange voice.

"I don't want to talk about it anymore. Are we done?" I shivered; it was cold without my shirt on.

"Not quite." Dr. Pannar pulled out an old-fashioned thermometer and I obediently stuck it under my tongue and held it there for a few minutes while he put away the bandages and leftover ointment.

He pulled it out and held it up, reading the numbers. "You're definitely running a fever. I don't feel comfortable with you going home alone when you leave here. I assume you won't be going to Dav's apartment."

"No," I said shortly.

"Then you'll come back to the clinic. You can stay with me until your temperature comes down."

I didn't really want to be around anyone, but I didn't really want to be alone either. I nodded wordlessly. The pain, my fever, and the thought of going back in the room were about all I could handle. Arguing about going home alone when I knew professionally that the doctor was right would be stupid.

Dr. Pannar helped me get my shirt on and we headed back to Velaku's office.

I wasn't looking forward to this at all.

"Come in," Velaku called when Dr. Pannar knocked on the door.

"Good timing, Doctor. We have some questions for you, Ellis, if you wouldn't mind."

I shook my head, making my way over the empty chair in front of the desk. I kept my eyes on Velaku and Natham and ignored the other men in the room.

"You want to know about Isiah,” I said softly.

Velaku nodded. "He's your identical twin brother?"

"Yes, we’re twins," I rubbed my hands on my thighs; the air moving around chilled me, “mirror twins actually. Opposites of each other. That's why he's left handed and I'm right handed."

"Can you think of any reason for your brother to be working with my enemies?"

"No! I don’t know what was really going on in that video, but he wouldn’t do that!"

Velaku sighed. "What you saw on the tapes wasn't the only time we saw your brother working with them. I know you; you’re a good man Ellis, but this is serious. We need to know anything you know so that we can find out what’s going on. Nothing makes sense anymore."

"I don't know. When we graduated high school he enlisted in the Army. Our parents . . .you might say. There wasn't much I could do beyond saving his piano when they disowned him. They were going to have it destroyed when I left for school. He'd always been the one who pushed, who defied their strict conventions. Our parents are, to be perfectly honest, snobs. When they chose to disown my brother I severed ties with them too." I closed my eyes at the old pain that caused. My parents weren’t exactly mother and father of the year material, but they were family. It hurt that they chose their reputation and lifestyle over their children. I focused and went on.

"Isiah hasn't been home that much. Once or twice since he graduated basic but that's about it. Last package of gifts I sent him went to an Army base in Texas. He's been there for a while, but I'm not sure what his job is exactly. We don't talk about what he does because he respects that my calling in life is to help people heal. He’s trained to kill. I guess in that aspect we're mirror opposites as well."

I’d never really thought of it that way before.

"If he's stationed at an Army base in Texas then what is he doing here in Oregon?"

"I don't know." I met Velaku's eyes. "I know you have few reasons to trust me, but I swear I don't know. I got a call from him a few weeks ago, he told me he had some leave coming and to expect him in about a month for a visit. He said he had someone he wanted me to meet coming with him."

"He's coming here?" Natham asked, speaking for the first time.

I nodded. "I'm supposed to pick him at the airport." I bit my lip. "If I tell you when, I'm afraid that you'll do something to hurt him. There's an explanation, I know there must be. I don't know what else you saw him doing but the Isiah I know is a good man who would never harm an innocent person."

Natham's eyes were twitching and his claws were visibly extending and retracting. A low growl seemed to rumble from his chest.

Velaku put a hand on him. "Calm down, my mate."

I winced at the words and heard rustling across the room where Velaku's guards stood next to Dav. I kept my eyes trained on the pair in front of me, refusing to look at him.

Velaku kept his hand on Natham's arm when he spoke again, his fingers massaging the rigid muscles. "Natham hadn't seen all the pictures earlier. Going through them, we realized that his brother is in one, standing right next to yours. They seemed. . .close. He might be the key to finding Natham’s brother. We thought he was dead."

My mouth dropped open; no wonder why Natham got so upset. "His brother?"

I had access to Dr. Pannar's notes. I would never speak of what I read there, but the early file from when Natham was captured had information on his family. He'd been adopted by a dangerously unstable yet diabolically brilliant leopard Carthera who had used Natham to attack and kill Velaku's father. That had somehow initiated a blood bond between Velaku and Natham and bonded them as mates even though they had been at least fifty miles apart and had only met once.

When Mishtar rescued Velaku and Natham after he had them kidnapped, his father lay dead, torn apart by Natham after he attacked and tried to eat Velaku.

"My brother was never found," Natham said bitterly, "not until now."

"Until Dav and his males found these humans and Carthera still working together to overthrow me and take over our territory," Velaku corrected him. "We thought it was suspicious that only the Jaguar clan in my territory was infected with the plague. When Dav tracked the smugglers some of them fought and some fled. We think there is someone else behind everything that has happened so far.

"Natham's father could not have been acting alone; he probably wasn't even the Carthera who come up with the plan on how to bond us in the first place. All the evidence we have points to someone who has great knowledge of our clans here being responsible.”

"They got more than they bargained for when they bonded us. You're mine, and I will always protect you." Natham put one hand on Velaku’s face and leaned down, kissing his mate tenderly.

That brought another spasm of pain to my chest and I instinctively tried to wrap my arms around myself. That was a mistake. I made a sound at the pain from moving my still sore arms.

His scent surrounded me just before his hand touched my shoulder. "I can't take it anymore. You're hurting."

I jerked away, jumping up and backing away from Dav until I hit the edge of the desk.

"Ellis?" He stood by my abandoned chair, one arm held out toward me.

"Don't touch me," I snarled.

"But..." He took a step closer and I took a step sideways around the desk corner and backed away from him. He stopped, his mouth working silently. His tongue flicked out and he scented the air.

"You... you're afraid of me?"

"Hell yes I'm afraid! You tried to kill me less than an hour ago!"

He flinched and looked away. "That was a mistake."

"Wrong."

His head whipped around. "What?"

My voice was icy and hard when I spoke again. "That was far beyond anything you could call a mistake. A mistake is something you can learn from, that you can recover from. There's no going back from what you did," I said flatly. "You tried to kill me! You think I trust you now? Why should I?

"You broke our bond. I don't know what you did or how you did it, but I don't care anymore. Don't touch me; don't come near me, because I don't want you. I don't want anyone who could think so little of me to believe that I would murder someone. You didn’t even give me a chance; you just tried to kill me for something I didn’t even do! A mate should have your back, always. You betrayed our bond."

I felt something akin to satisfaction as I watched something in his eyes wither as his pain grew. Whatever he was feeling now, he deserved it. I ignored the pain in my arms as I scrubbed at the tears of rage falling from my eyes.

"You're not my mate,” I said.

That statement, said with grim finality, must have been more than he could take.

He turned and ran, and while most of me was relieved that he was gone, some small part of me was hurt. He didn't even try to apologize. My entire rant took less than two minutes, but it felt like hours passed while we were focused on the problem between us, ignoring the others in the room.

"I'm sorry," I said to Velaku. "I just can't do this right now."

"It's okay. I think it's been a very stressful week for you. We can put the rest of the meeting off for a few days until you are. . .better." Velaku's wings rustled as he stood up.

"He'll be going back to the clinic with me," Dr. Pannar said from beside me. I jumped, not realizing he'd gotten so close. Damn quiet Carthera. "You can reach him there if you have more questions."

"Let's plan on meeting back here in three days. We should all have had time to calm down and maybe with cooler heads we can figure out what the enemy is planning, because trust me gentlemen, they’re planning something."

***

All I really wanted to do was go home, take a shower, and curl up in bed with my misery. Instead on the way to Dr. Pannar's the worst happened. The bright sunshine combined with the stress of the day triggered the last thing I wanted to deal with. Rings of color began to flow around the stoplights, and I whimpered.

"What's wrong?" Dr. Pannar asked from the driver's seat.

"I'm getting a migraine."

"Now? Do you have your medication?"

"No. Just one more thing to chalk up to this fucked up day." I groaned at the first spike of pain and closed my eyes.

"Just hold on Ellis. I don't have your medicine in the clinic, but I can put you out until the headache is over. It's not the safest after a head injury, but it's better than you facing a migraine without any pain medicine."

I stayed still and quiet, fighting the nausea the movement of the car made worse until we pulled into the parking lot of the large clinic. The sun stabbed at my eyes; it felt like spikes all the way to the back of my skull when I tried to get out of the car. I groaned, closing my eyes until they were barely open enough to see.

Dr. Pannar came rushing around the car to help me. He was slender enough I didn’t want to lean too heavily on him, but he spread his dark wings a little and blocked the sun.

“Thank you,” I said softly.

“You’re welcome. Let’s just get you inside.”

The drugs Dr. Pannar pumped into me couldn’t hit fast enough. I managed to puke in the garbage can, but the pain from the heaves blacked out my vision. I was barely hanging on to consciousness but the pain wouldn’t let me go. It was like a giant knife impaling my head and the agony flooded me in waves. It felt like it would never end.

The transition from migraine to sleep took me unaware.

I woke up with a horrible taste in my mouth as I rolled over and sat up on the bottom bunk in the spare room of the clinic. My arm itched and I scratched at a small red spot. The small room smelled a bit bitter, like sweat. We kept it for family members who wouldn’t leave their mates or young but needed to get some rest. The bed wasn’t luxurious, but it was better than the gurneys.

No matter where I slept I knew I would have woken up feeling like I had been pummeled to within an inch of my life. I stumbled off in search of coffee in the office. I didn’t usually drink it, but if ever a morning called for coffee, this one did. I stirred in a large amount of sugar and cream until the liquid was a pale brown.

The first sip made me grimace at the sweetness with the bitter undertone of dark roasted beans but I kept drinking.

“Hey Ellis, how are you feeling this morning?” Dr. Pannar said when he walked in. He went to the sink and washed his hands before coming over to me and checking me, peering into my eyes and checking my pulse after he felt my forehead. “Headache gone?”

“Yes, for the most part.”

“You don’t feel feverish anymore, but I’d like to check your arms. I figured while you were out of it I could do a course of IV antibiotics. That should have helped kill the infection.”

That had been the source of the itchy spot on my forearm.

Pouring his own cup of coffee, Dr. Pannar gestured to the table. We went and sat down. “Do you feel like eating anything?”

The idea made my stomach cramp, so I shook my head.

“How long has it been since you ate last? If you go too long you could get a rebound headache, especially drinking coffee. Caffeine and an empty stomach aren’t a good combination.”

I tried to think back to the last meal. “I think it was lunch at the café right before Benny attacked me.”

“That was almost two days ago. You have to eat, Ellis! Especially with your condition.”

I sighed. “Alright.” I left my cup on the table and went to put some bread in the toaster. Along with beds, we kept a fridge stocked with snacks and sandwich fixings. Aside from injured Carthera, hungry ones were the second most dangerous. I scraped a thin layer of butter over my toast when it popped up and sat back at the table to force it down.

When I was done, Dr. Pannar picked up our cups and put them in the sink.

“Okay, let’s go look at those arms and put fresh bandages on them.”

We walked into one of the clinic treatment rooms, and Dr. Pannar peeled off the tape holding the bandages on my arms. He unwound the gauze and the pad fell off. I looked at the skin of my biceps in amazement.

“Are you sure I only slept through one night?”

Dr. Pannar was running his hands over the pink marks on my arm, all that was left of the puncture wounds that had been red and infected the day before.

“Positive.”

He shook his head, gathering up the clean bandage material and putting it back. “You’re not going to need these anyway. Has this ever happened before?”

“No. I think I’d remember something like that.” I was running the tips of my fingers over my left arm, marveling at the small pink spots.

“And you are sure that you’re completely human?” he asked. “No Carthera mixed in with your bloodlines?”

I made a rude noise in my throat. “With my family’s preoccupation with reputation and snobbery? Not freaking likely.”

“It must be something to do with your bond with Davis then--”

I cut him off. “I told you, we have no bond anymore!”

Dr. Pannar gestured for me to put my shirt back on. “Look Ellis, like it or not, those markings on your back tell me you and Davis bonded and are mates. No matter what happened afterward, if he was somehow able to block that bond, it doesn’t change the fact that you’re connected.”

I didn’t want to think about that. If I did. . .that would mean that since I still couldn’t feel him, he was still blocking me. If he was blocking me, then he clearly didn’t want me to be his mate. I shook my head; it was moot anyway, the man tried to kill me.

I looked at the clock. “It’s almost nine. I’m not feeling too bad all things considered, and I don’t feel like going home to sit around brooding over everything that’s been happening. How about I stay here and help out?”

“Only if you promise to take it easy.”

I agreed quickly. I really needed to keep busy, and fortunately the clinic was bustling once office hours started. There were a lot of small injuries I could help with and a few major injuries that required Dr. Pannar’s expert touch. Even though I sat down a lot and only helped Dr. Pannar a few times, I was exhausted by the time the clinic closed. I sat down in the chair behind the desk with an exaggerated sigh.

“Now that doesn’t sound like you were taking it very easy,” he scolded me.

I shrugged. “I know, but I really wasn’t too busy. I think I’m still a bit worn down from everything.”

“Well go home and rest,” he said. “But call me if you need anything, Ellis.”

“I’ll need to call a cab.” He put his hand over the phone when I reached for it.

When I looked at him in surprise, he looked away, his wings rustled a little. It was a fidget I’d noticed in other bird Carthera that was a lot like humans wringing their hands together.

“What?” I asked suspiciously.

“Well, Davis dropped off your car while you were sleeping off your migraine. So you don’t need to call a cab.”

I could feel my shoulders tightening and my mouth flattening in a thin line. “Did you let him in my room?” My heart was racing at the thought of Dav in a room with me while I was drugged and unconscious.

“Of course not!” Dr. Pannar looked up at me in indignation.

“I’m sorry. I guess I’m still just. . .upset with everything going on with him. Don’t worry; I’ll be back to normal soon.”

Dr. Pannar’s expression was nothing short of skeptical.

“I will!”

He shook his head and grabbed his jacket off the coat rack and grabbed his keys. He pulled my keys off their hook and tossed them to me.

“If you say so,” he said.

The drive home didn’t take long, but I was yawning when I walked in. I considered making something to eat, but I just wasn’t that hungry. I’d eaten a bit of soup in the afternoon when Dr. Pannar threatened me bodily harm if I didn’t, but he wasn’t there now to force me to eat.

I dropped my keys on the counter. They’d been hanging on the hook in the break room at the office. I know Dav got them out of my stuff at his apartment and had to have picked up my car and dropped it off at the office for me. We’d ridden in his car to the bar the day before after we had lunch.

I didn’t understand it. Not when he was still blocking our bond. Obviously he was trying to get on my good side.

Not happening.

Especially when I keyed in the code for my voicemail and there were ten messages all from him. I hadn’t even turned my cell phone on. I deleted my entire inbox, not listening beyond his quiet, “Ellis, please listen.”

Definitely not happening.

The next two days were long and tiring. I wasn’t sleeping well, and I only ate when Dr. Pannar nagged at me to. The meeting Velaku arranged was getting closer and closer, and my stomach churned when I wasn’t focused on my work if I thought about it. I was just finishing up some paperwork on Friday when my cell phone rang. I’d finally turned it back on, and there had been a huge volume of messages all from the same number. I’d erased them and then blocked it. I knew it had to be Dav.

I looked at my phone, ready to hit end, but the caller id popped up with Isiah’s name. My heart started racing.

“Hello?”

“Hey little brother! How’s it going?”

“You know you’re only about two minutes older than me right?”

“Still older,” he laughed.

I still felt like my heart was going to pound out of my chest, and it was really hard not to blurt out questions about the video I’d seen but I knew Velaku was right. Answers had to come in person. I just had to make sure that they weren’t going to hurt him.

“Anyway, little brother, I was wondering if I could change our plans a little.”

“What do you mean by that?” My hand was clenched on the edge of the desk.

“Well, I have someone I really want you to meet, and I’m able to get away a few days early. I thought we’d fly out tonight; the airline will switch our tickets if you can pick us up. If you don’t have room for both of us, we can stay in a hotel.”

I thought fast. This changed things; this changed a lot of things. “Who is it?”

Isiah laughed. “Oh no, that’d be telling. I want it to be a surprise. Don’t worry though, you’ll love them. I do.”

“Them. Not her? Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Maybe.” Isiah was quiet for a minute. “Well, sort of. I’ll tell you about him when we get there.”

I nibbled on my lip, considering the options. It wasn’t that hard to make my decision. I took a deep breath.

“What time will your flight get in?”

 

 

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