Theta Waves Box Set: The Complete Trilogy (Books 1-3) (Theta Waves Trilogy)

by Thea Atkinson

  "You're stupid, what kind of idiot can't slide down a slide?" The man reached out to shake his daughter. "I don't know why your mother ever kept you. I don't know why she didn't smother you in your sleep when you screamed and screamed and screamed all night long."

  The toddler just looked up at him, her face frozen in a soundless wail.

  "Don't look at me like that," he said. "You're the reason she's gone. She couldn't stand your screaming anymore. I can't stand it anymore."

  Kat pushed herself to her knees and hands, tried to work herself up to a stand and toddle away, but her father gripped her by the elbow and yanked her back. He gave her another shake that would have rattled an adult's teeth.

  "You're a bad girl," he said. "Say it. Say you're a bad girl and you're the reason your junkie mother is gone."

  "I a bad girl," the little one said.

  A protest formed before Theda could remember whose life she was watching, and she lunged forward instinctively to grab the child from those rough hands.

  "Stop." Theda couldn't help interjecting, but no sound exited her mouth. Trying to interact was useless. She was a shadow there. She had the ludicrous thought of Scrooge and his Christmas ghosts. Echoes of the past, and nothing more. Even so, being witness to this inhumanity made something inside of her squeeze tight, trying to protect itself from the emotion trying to rush over her. She didn't want to feel it. She didn't want to feel this pity. It didn't matter where Kat the woman had come from, she was evil to the core and Theda didn't want to let one splinter of sympathy in.

  She fought her way backwards, seeking some way to spin out of the kaleidoscope of memories. She needed to find a different lifetime, maybe one previous to this one, where the girl wasn't so tortured, a lifetime where Kat was an adult and aware and in control.

  Theda staggered backwards in the memory, fumbling for another incarnation. All that came, was rush after rush of moments lived in that one. She watched the toddler grow into a spindly but long-legged child. No more loved than she'd been as a toddler. A girl tormented on the playground until she learned to strike back. And strike back she did, coming to rule her small schoolyard with a sort of feral determination, going home to transform into a hollowed-out shell suffering something worse than torment--neglect.

  Theda watched her day after day leaving the apartment hungry and feeling a strange yearning in her tissues that she never quite understood, that never quite got assuaged with canned milk or stale bread. She left the same rundown apartment in the worst part of the city over and over again to walk the same five blocks to school so she could sit in the back of the same classroom. Like on some sort of film replay, Theda saw her sit alone, content to be ignored by the teachers, by the principle, by the janitorial staff and the other kids. The girl simply didn't care. She was used to it. She wasn't worthy of attention, and any attention she got was the kind that made her want to shrink into her clothes and disappear beneath the floor.

  And then He appeared. And Theda recognized in him the shadow that had darkened the nursery.

  He came to her the first time on her way home from school. His gleaming car sidled next her, humming like a thousand bees as it pulled next to the curb. Such a gorgeous head of black hair, eyes that reminded her of the sky beyond the skyscrapers in the middle of July. He couldn't be looking at her. He couldn't be waving her over. And yet he was. The ice cream he held out to her was already dripping onto his fist.

  He smiled at her. "Take it. Hurry," he said. "Before it melts all over me."

  She grabbed for the cone before he could pull it back inside the car. She gave him one quick, cautious glance, and then she whirled away before he could change his mind, or realize he'd given the treat to the wrong girl. She hurled her way down the street, jamming the ice cream into her mouth so quickly her forehead started to hurt. It felt like she had fallen onto the pavement face first, and still she jammed the ice cream in. She barely tasted it, even, couldn't say what flavor it was, only that it must have come from Heaven.

  That's when Kat knew.

  She'd seen an angel.

  The angel visited regularly. One night, just after she'd sprouted thick ginger hair between her thighs and had grown pert breasts the size of McIntosh apples, she caught sight of him outside her window as she got ready for bed. She pretended she didn't see him and stripped off her clothes in front of the mirror so she could see his reaction. She stood there in the semi-dark of her lamp-lit bedroom, slipping a finger between the hot folds of her cleft. An unfamiliar surge of emotion rose within her as she watched his eyes gleaming through the lamplight. He was watching her. Her. Those lamplight eyes were for no one but her and she felt the delicious thrum rise from her core, coiling as it slid up her back like a snake stretching in the sunlight. She shuddered as she stood there, fingers caught between the folds of slick skin, waiting for the inevitable look of revulsion to steal his face. His eyes never wavered from hers in the mirror. The disgust never showed itself.

  He smiled shyly for her when it was over, and she went to him nude and unashamed. She folded her forearms on the windowsill and leaned toward him.

  "You're beautiful," he said to her.

  "Issat so?" she didn't believe him, and she wanted--needed--him to say it again.

  "You know you are," he said. "And you're strong, so strong."

  She wanted his eyes to trail down to her new breasts, maybe reach out to touch her, but he kept her gaze instead. So intense. The blue was better than the sky in July; it was as good as crystallized water on a humid summer day.

  She imagined her life without him. She tried to picture what it would be like to never know the sound of his voice again. The snake within her chest coiled itself into a tight knot.

  "I'm not strong," she said. "I'm weak. I'm nothing."

  "You are strong," he said. "You're strong enough to overcome anything, anyone."

  She wanted to squeeze her eyes shut in delight at the words, but he reached for her, finally, placing his thumb against the corner of her eye and she wanted to relish it, take in the wrist and arm that led to the face of her angel.

  "Do you believe me?"

  She nodded.

  "Good," he said. "Because one day that strength will explode in you and you will know exactly how strong you are. And it will be exactly how strong I tell you it is."

  "How will I know?"

  "When the time comes," he said. "You will know it for what it is. You will know that time will be now."

  Chapter 17

  Time melted like scorched wax then hardened into days of unrelenting chaos. Theda knew the teen was struggling to keep her chin up each time her father brought home yet another man who ended up lounging, legs splayed and naked across her bed, pleasuring himself as he watched her dress and undress. She'd win a smile from her dad then, just a flash of smile as his palm--flattened out toward the john--found itself dressed in five dollar bills.

  Kat despaired of ever seeing her angel again, of realizing the promised strength within herself, and her patience began to wane. She was weak in the face of that one wan smile her father served with the john, the twinkle in his eye that made her imagine all sorts of possible idyllic images. The best image, the one she conjured the most, was of a pig-tailed toddler sliding into the open arms of her dad as he squatted at the bottom of a playset. The catch. The lift. The swing into the air that whirled pigtails into a blur.

  Her dreams kept her company as she waited for the angel to appear again. One Saturday night, hours past her bedtime, her father came into her room and shook her awake.

  "Time to really earn your keep, little girl."

  She brushed the sleep from her eyes and tried to find a clock.

  "Never mind what time it is. Just get up." He tossed a filmy teddy-style negligee on top of her blankets. "Put this on."

  Without thinking, she reached for the gauzy thing. It was pretty in a grungy sort of way, but it smelled of alcohol and cigarette smoke.

  "What will I be doing?"
r />   She couldn't imagine going anywhere in that see-through thing.

  "Ever hear of a snuff film, darlin'?"

  She shook her head.

  He grunted in what she took to be satisfaction. He was always trying to trick her and she imagined she'd passed.

  "Doesn't matter," he said. "All you have to do is what you're told."

  He ushered in to the sanctity of her tiny bedroom a squirrelly man with several cameras and a trunk he dragged behind him that looked to be stuffed with all sorts of leather goods and chains. She felt a little bird chirping in her chest as she watched him drop it in the corner; something didn't seem quite right. She twisted the hem of the nightie in her hands, backing toward the window, praying for her angel to visit.

  "Come here," her father said.

  She felt the windowsill against her back and fought the urge to twist to see outside it.

  "I said get over here." He twisted her elbow, digging fingernails into her skin. "You've got company."

  Several men came from behind him, then, all ragged looking and unshaved. Only one of them approached near attractiveness, but he fell short by about a dozen paces. He had to be at least forty, with a broad jaw and snapping black eyes. His chest hung like breasts beneath his T-shirt and he chewed on his tongue as he hung about. Even so, she pinned her gaze to him as the rest of them set industriously about altering her bedroom.

  By the time they had winched her to the ceiling by her wrists, and torn the nightgown to shreds, and pushed themselves into her over and over, she had long forgotten the wan flash of smile that promised so much.

  The only saving grace was the shadowy form outside her window, watching quietly, keeping her eye, helping her to numb the pain with his unflinching attention. She took strength from the steely gaze that no one else seemed to see, and when they released her and extracted several carving knives from the trunk that caught the light from one of the cameras, she looked past the blades to the window.

  Her angel's face was as clear as if he'd been lit from within, and it was filled with righteous anger, an anger that flowed through her in ways that made her feel ten feet tall.

  One of the men came toward her, thumbing the edge of his blade to test its sharpness. He, like the rest of them, was naked and flaccid, but each time he nicked the tip of the blade over her skin, bringing one more bubble of blood to the surface, his member twitched and grew harder. She looked past his shoulder to the window, rose to her knees so she could see it better.

  And when her angel mouthed the word 'now' she knew it was time.

  She laid waste to them all, reveling in the fierce strength that surged upward through her bare feet, coming from some black-soiled place that reminded her of old basement. A deeply guttural rattle burbled in her throat as she struck back, tasting their blood on her tongue as it spattered on her face. Five of them, and not one of them able to withstand her strength, strength given to her by her angel.

  She crossed the room when it was over, covered in blood, seething with newly spent rage and adrenaline. If she trembled, she knew it was only from excitement, not from shame. But the habitual guilt was difficult to shake off.

  "I shouldn't have done that," she said to him.

  "They deserved it," he said. "Yours is a righteous anger. You had a right to it."

  "I had a right to it."

  "Yes, you did. And no one will stop you now. Do you believe me?"

  "I do believe you. I'm yours."

  "Good girl," he said and reached for her. When her hand slipped into his, she felt the excitement so strongly that it scorched her throat.

  It burned so strongly that Theda felt as though something had seared its way through, and she tasted the blood again so clearly she swore she must have bitten her own tongue. It felt swollen in her mouth, spasming within it of its own accord. She gagged and a blackness overcame her so complete she thought someone must have pulled a bag over her head.

  She was choking on something. Something coppery. Thick clots of hot fluid slid to the back of her throat...

  And Theda was jerked free.

  "Get out of here." Cain's voice, ordering her. "You don't have much time."

  Theda's vision came back like pins and needles in her limbs. Kat stood in front of her, just to the left, a look of horror on her face. She yanked her finger free of Theda's mouth to clutch at her own throat. Clutching at something stuck in it.

  Theda swung her head for a better view. Cain stood there, holding onto the handle of the ice pick that he'd jammed into Kat's throat. The tiny point of it showed through on the other side. Blood dripped from the point onto the floor.

  "I thought you couldn't kill her," Theda mumbled, because the shock had stolen every sensible thing from her mind.

  "I can't, but I can hurt her. Now get out of here."

  Kat let go of the ice pick and scrabbled for the cattle prod that had dropped to her side. Theda's gaze was glued to the way she tried to twist it around in her hand even as she gurgled blood onto the buried wood, pooling her fluids onto Cain's fist.

  "But I can't leave you." Theda protested. "What if she--"

  "Things knit back together, Theda. They always do."

  She tried to imagine his burnt flesh trying to heal, trying to pinken itself healthy over scarred and scabbed tissue. She knew it would take forever; even the marked of the god needed time. She reached for the weapon, trying to twist it of Kat's grip.

  "Don't waste your time," he hissed. "Run."

  Run. It was what she was best at.

  Except running meant leaving him there at Kat's mercy. Except running meant Ezekiel would be left to the Beast's bidding. Except running meant never finding out what had happened to Ami.

  Indecision rooted her feet.

  "Get out, Theda." Cain was struggling now to keep Kat pinned with the ice pick. He had one hand wrapped around the back of the woman's neck, holding her against the bars and the other solidly on the wooden handle. Despite the pools of blood seeping from Kat's neck, despite the awkward way she was trying to twist the cattle prod toward him, the woman was incredibly strong and had managed to pull herself halfway free.

  Theda's stomach heaved at the grisly mess of her neck, racking her ribs in revulsion and making her gag. Gasoline fumes made her dizzy, clogging her sinus cavities and screeching a path behind her eyes.

  She fleeted a look at Cain and saw that he was giving everything he had to keeping the woman from freeing herself. The cords of his neck stood out and his face was twisted in effort. He'd recovered almost completely from his head wounds, but he still wasn't strong enough to hold the Red Rider at bay. Theda couldn't see Kat's face clearly enough to make out how she looked, but she could well imagine the same strained expression worked the woman's features. The only difference, Theda realized, was that Kat would inevitably be the one to win.

  Her heart in her mouth, Theda made the decision that she knew she had planned to make all along: she would let her feet fly.

  But first she would do what she could for Cain. She marshaled every bit of strength she had left, praying to whatever god would listen that she hadn't exhausted her adrenal glands. She told herself she felt no pain. She told herself that the slicing sensation running through her ribs and upper throat was excitement--butterflies gone wild--not her broken ribs stabbing into her tissues.

  She found herself clawing at the general's arm, raking her fingers toward the cattle prod. She had to get it, had to keep the general from sparking it. A gurgling growl came from the woman as Theda's fingers reached the baton and with both hands tried to wrench it free.

  "Just run," Cain growled. His hair was drenched in the flammable liquid and waves of fumes mottled his features. She couldn't let him burn. She wouldn't.

  "Not yet."

  Cain let go his own deep-bellied groan and Theda could tell by the sound of it that he had just realized he was losing. In the instant Kat heard it, she emitted what Theda took to be a chuckle of victory. It strengthened the woman's hold on t
he baton and even as Theda did her best to buck herself backward, twisting it the way an alligator would the leg of its prey, the effect was that she simply lost control of it and fell splayed on her bottom on the floor.

  In the moment she knew she had failed, she met Cain's eye and read within it the knowledge of his own defeat. He mouthed something at her, but she was too paralyzed by the moment to give in to his command. All she could manage was a desperate shake of her head.

  "Run," he mouthed again.

  Kat had better control of the prod. She aimed it toward the gasoline-soaked man.

  This couldn't be happening. It couldn't.

  "Wait," she shouted at the general. If she couldn't stop her with force, she'd try cunning.

  "I have your answer." She ran a desperate gaze over the walls, afraid to watch what would happen to Cain if Kat ignored her. "Don't do it. I have your answer."

  Theda held her breath. Time stretched into soft toffee again. If the woman relaxed, she was taking a chance that Cain would do her further harm; if she pressed on, she risked Theda running and taking the answer with her. Theda was pretty sure she knew which decision the general would bank on. That meant Theda needed a weapon. And quickly.

  Her gaze landed on a small knife held to a corkboard by silver grommets. She heard Cain shout at her once more, heard some noises coming from behind her that sounded like a rush of moving water. She didn't take the time to figure out whether the sound was coming from or what was making it. She launched herself, gripping her sides to harbor the pain as she ran toward the knife. The general might not have yet come to a decision, but she hadn't discounted making one either. And that hesitation gave Theda all the time she needed to throw herself forward and slice behind the woman's knee.

  Protection. Now Theda understood exactly what it felt like, and just how much effort it must have taken Cain to pierce through. Cutting through what should have been soft tissue felt very much like sawing through hard wood. Kat buckled just enough that Theda felt a brief moment of hope that what she had done would be enough. It was. For half a heartbeat.