“This transformation was without his consent, Mr. Donaldson,” the judge said, her tone mild, and Jenna glanced at her, not sure where this was going.
“However,” Judge Warner continued, “as Ms. Carmichael indicated earlier, it may be impossible to reverse the process. I will contact Practitioner Master Drake and consult with him. If he feels he could change Mr. Brannigan back to a man, then he will. If not...”
She stepped over to the court reporter and bent down. With a flick of her finger, she flipped off the camera. “We now have evidence that we discussed the option of restoring Mr. Brannigan to his original form. If Master Drake feels he is unable to make the transformation, then Mr. Brannigan remains a dog and no longer a threat to society.”
She gave the pug a sweeping gesture with her hand, a look of satisfaction on her face. Jenna frowned, uncertain. Before she could question the judge further, dark specks began to dance in front of her eyes and she grasped the side of the conference table to keep upright.
“…looks like you just inherited a dog, Mr. District Attorney.”
“What?!?”
The words made little sense to Jenna as she sank to her knees, darkness closing in. Her breathing erratic, she struggled to hang onto consciousness.
“Ms. Carmichael. Are you all right?” The judge’s voice came from far away. Fuzzy. Floating. “Melanie. Call 911.”
Jenna fell onto her side, her head hitting the carpeted floor. Her eyes closed for a moment, but then she felt a soft paw on her cheek. It gently patted her face until, with an effort, she forced her lids upward and found a pair of beautiful green eyes before her. Very familiar green eyes.
‘I’ll take care of you, Jenna. You saved me in more ways than you’ll ever know.’ Another gentle pat on her cheek.
“Wha— What can you do, Jessica?” Speaking psychically was beyond her now. She wheezed the words out. “Where will you go?”
‘Call me Jezebel. I’m going to live with you. I belong to you and you belong to me now.’ The words were the last thing Jenna heard before darkness overtook her.
o0o
Note from the author:
I was thrilled when I was asked to participate in this anthology. As a fifteen-year breast cancer survivor, I have a personal stake in its success and in the success of Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF). Every year more and more women are being diagnosed, but with the ongoing research, those women will have a fighting chance of beating this insidious disease. Despite being clean for nearly seven years, my cancer returned and for the past eight years I’ve been undergoing active treatment. I attribute my continued victory over this bastard to research facilities like BCRF and the development of newer and more tolerable chemo.
FEEL THE MAGIC is Jessica/Jezebel’s story from my (hopefully) soon to be sold book, DRAGON MAGIC—a contemporary paranormal novel in which magic is possible and love is magical.
Liz Kreger is not only a stubborn breast cancer survivor, but also the author of two books. FORGET ABOUT TOMORROW and PROMISE FOR TOMORROW are romantic space operas published by Samhain Publishing.
More information about Liz Kreger can be found at www.lizkreger.com.
BREAKING OUT
Michelle Diener
Chapter One
Kel came awake suddenly, heart pounding, and hauled herself to her feet, the words that had woken her still echoing in her head.
“I just want to tell you something.”
She swayed, eyes wide, shuddering.
She was alone in the room.
Of course she was alone in the room. This was her prison cell.
But those words had been as clear as a direct whisper in her ear, ripping her out of sleep just as she was about to go under—and not for the first time.
She sat, slowly lowering herself back on the bed, her legs trembling as if she'd been sick and was getting up for the first time in a couple of days.
She dug her fingers deep into her hair, and tugged.
A heavy metal door slammed, and footsteps echoed down the hall, coming towards her cell. She froze, rabbit still.
“What you doing tonight?” Harvey’s voice echoed down the passage. Kel rose and walked to the door, pressed herself against it to hear better.
“Party. You?” Morris always spoke softly, and Kel just made it out.
“Yeah, same. Halloween always cracks me up.” Harvey chuckled, clinking the coins in his pocket. They were almost level with her door, but Kel stayed were she was, listening, even though they would probably open up. Check on her.
She was fast enough to be at her desk with a book if they did. Faster than they knew.
Morris made a sound in the back of his throat. “Seeing all those people in fancy dress… They’d mess their pants if they knew how real the monsters are.”
They were both silent a moment, as if contemplating it themselves.
She strained to hear if they were going to keep walking, and then realized they’d been quiet too long.
She launched herself across the room, contorting her body as she flew so she landed sitting down on the wide window sill, her back against one side of the wall, her feet propped against the other. She lifted the book off her desk five meters away, opening it to the bookmark as it sailed across to her into her waiting hands.
The door slammed open.
She turned her head towards it slowly, as if savoring a particularly riveting sentence, and only reluctantly giving them her attention.
“Good evening, gentlemen.”
Harvey did not respond. He never did. He thought it intimidated her, but in truth, she wasn't that scared of him.
Morris, now. He made her nervous.
The doc was in his own league.
“Afternoon, you mean.” Morris stepped in behind Harvey. Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
Kel gave both their watches a gentle nudge forward. “Evening, afternoon, whatever.”
Harvey looked down at his wrist and his eyes widened. “Shit. It’s later than I thought.”
Morris looked at his own watch. Looked up at her.
Kel stared innocently back. She’d never changed their watch times before. Morris might suspect, but he had nothing to go on, yet.
Hopefully when he worked out what she’d done, it would be too much bother to come back and call her on it.
Harvey made a quick surveillance of her room, while Morris kept his gaze on her. It was what they always did. One to look around, one to make sure she didn’t try any funny business. Only, Morris wanted her to try some funny business. He probably dreamed about it.
As always, she watched the way he held his syringe gun, his finger gliding up and down the smooth silver casing. She felt his hunger to use it like a palpable odor rising off his skin, hot and sour.
He noticed her looking and gave her a smile that dropped an icy rock into the pit of her stomach.
Harvey had finished up and his hand was on the door when the shouting started.
A fight in the corridor, coming closer.
Kel started to rise, but one look from Morris and she sunk back down on the sill.
Harvey peered out into the passage.
They must be almost at her cell, given the volume of the screaming and struggling. Two orderlies, by the sound of things, one really angry patient.
Scratch that. There weren’t any patients here. One really angry inmate.
She silently cheered him on. Hoped he was throwing as many punches as he was getting.
And then the fight was suddenly in her room.
Harvey leaped back as a writhing mass of male fell through her door. It was Evans and Longmore, two of her least-favorite, and someone she’d never seen before.
Well, duh.
Of course she hadn't seen him before. She hadn't seen anyone. Anyone like her, that is.
This one was big. Tall. His face twisted with effort as he fought the two orderlies, the muscles in his arms bunching as he wrestled and punched.
To give him a hand, Kel s
pun the heavy melamine cup off her washbasin and slammed it into Longmore’s head. She kept most of her focus on Morris as she did it, but he didn’t notice in the chaos.
Really, she should give Doc Greenway more credit. He might be the devil incarnate, but when she’d come here, she could just about move a spoon across a table.
Without taking her eyes off Morris, hands tightly clasped in front of her, she tipped the light-weight wire wastebasket under her desk over and rolled it across the floor. When it was close enough, she jammed it over Evans’ head.
The fighting man, her compatriot, looked up, straight at her, as she did it. A shock ran through her, like she’d closed her hand around a live wire. And for a moment, she could hear nothing.
His eyes were very dark, but blue, she thought, not brown.
Longmore punched him in the face, breaking the connection, and Kel’s head jerked up, heart hammering at the thought of losing track of Morris for even one second.
But it was okay.
He’d actually turned away from her, syringe gun at the ready, trying to find a gap. He was eager as a dog at a rabbit hole.
Kel wondered what the dose in that thing was. More than was needed to take one man down, she’d guess.
Morris lunged.
She didn’t know if she’d live to regret it, but Kel jinked the gun just to the right as he did, and instead of getting her fighting man in the face, he caught Evans in the arm.
“Shit.” Morris pulled back, panicked, as Evans went limp. Biting her lip, Kel waited for his arm to drop to his side, nice and loose, his finger still on the trigger, and then jinked it again. Straight into his leg.
“Wha…” Morris spun to her, eyes wide, the rage and hatred in them making her press back against the window. He took one step, and fell. Like a tree going down.
His head made a nice sharp crack as it hit the leg of her desk and she winced, despite herself.
Harvey was still by the door, his focus completely on the fight, his one leg back a bit, as if looking for the opportunity to put the boot in.
And the noise had died down to almost nothing, with Evans and Morris out of the game. Longmore and her fighter were grunting and swearing as they grappled and twisted on her floor.
What was good was no one seemed to have radioed it in yet. They liked a bit of physical ‘correction’ now and again, did the lads.
Just to make sure, Kel slid all their radio buttons to off.
She had no objects handy that would make a significant dent in Harvey’s skull. There was still the cup, and at the thought of it, she lifted it up and smacked Longmore in the head with it again. But it was just nuisance value.
Everything else was bolted down or too light.
And then suddenly, the game changed.
Longmore slumped to the ground. Still and limp as Evans. And her comrade in arms rolled to his feet, staggering a little when he got upright.
He looked like he was going to go down the same way as Morris had, and at last, Kel saw the syringe gun sticking out of his leg. Longmore must have got it in seconds before he had his lights punched out. Probably how her tall, blue-eyed friend had gotten the final jump on him.
He reached down and yanked the syringe out, turning to look at her, just as Morris had. But his eyes were very different. Just as full of emotion, but this one, she couldn’t read.
He threw the gun at Harvey, as if he knew what she could do, and obligingly, she turned it, sharp end pointing the right way, and drove it straight into Harvey’s neck. She made the trigger depress, and Harvey simply fell sideways and rolled forward a little, so he was more or less face down.
Kel jumped down off the sill, scrambling back a little as her fighter lurched towards her.
He looked like he wanted to say something, but he was going down, and they both knew it. Just as he toppled, Kel created a safety net, caught him in mid-air, and using his own momentum, propelled him onto her bed.
He hit it hard and bounced.
And suddenly, she was in complete silence.
With five unconscious men around her.
o0o
Nate woke up to swearing.
He cracked open his eyes and saw the woman who had helped him earlier struggling to cuff the orderlies in a complicated weave of arms and legs.
He stared, fascinated.
She seemed to be braiding their arms and legs through each other, cuffing a wrist to an ankle, to another wrist. Four syringe guns sat neatly to one side.
She worked with a focused intensity that was a little frightening, and he made a mental note never to piss her off.
It came to him that he was lying on her bed, and he wondered how that had happened, when he knew he’d gone down on the other side of the room.
Not that the room was that big, but it would have been impossible for her to have lifted him. She stood about 5’6” to his 6’2” and he outweighed her significantly.
Finished at last, she took a deep breath and stepped back to admire her handiwork, her hands on her hips, her dark ponytail swinging. “Get out of that, you assholes.”
She was so slender, so graceful, even in the standard green scrubs and white t-shirt they all wore. She looked breakable.
He’d never seen her before, and he thought he’d seen most of the inmates. Maybe she was new, but that didn't make sense. Why would they bring in someone new? Things were going to hell.
“Now let’s make sure you can’t scream for help.” Her voice was quiet, but steely. He reassessed his thought that they would break her.
Man, he really needed to make sure he never pissed this woman off.
She turned suddenly to the bed, her gaze going to the sheets folded at the foot of it, but went very still when she saw he was watching her.
She took a step back, and the instinctive quality to the movement was like a hard, sharp punch to his chest. The only way she knew to be safe was to be out of reach. In here, it was the only sane conclusion.
“How long have you been awake? The others are still out cold.” Her gaze never left his face and he wondered what was going on behind those pale blue eyes.
“A couple of minutes.” His voice was scratchy. Rough. He cleared his throat. “Longmore didn’t get the chance to pull the trigger. I only got a small dose.” He waited a beat. “How’d you get me on the bed?”
She frowned, dismissing the question with a wave of her hand. “Doesn't matter. You’re just lucky I have good aim.”
“Oh, I’ve been lucky since the moment I fell into your cell.”
He could tell she didn’t know what to make of that, but he meant it. Things had been going nowhere until that jackass of an orderly stuck his head out of her room to rubberneck the fight moving towards him.
Nate had thrown himself at that open door with everything in him. If it delayed reaching the steel and glass door at the end of the corridor for even one minute, it was worth it.
It had been worth a lot more than that.
“My name’s Nate.” He wondered when her need to get the sheet would overcome her reluctance to get close.
“Kel.” She finally moved closer, caught hold of a sheet and pulled it off the bed. Started ripping it into strips.
“Why has no one else come?” Nate forced himself to sit up, swinging his legs down. He propped his elbows on his thighs and put his head in his hands. He could feel he was healing already, the bruises and cuts on his face smoothing out, closing up. Longmore had cracked his cheekbone, and the tight, hot sensation he always got with a bone heal throbbed on the left side of his face.
“It’s the weekend. I’m guessing these four were the only ones on duty, except maybe for someone up at admin. But they never called this in while it was happening. I switched off their radios, just in case, but even when Harvey had a couple of seconds at the end there, he didn’t so much as try to reach for his. So maybe there is no one in admin.” She rolled a piece of sheet into a ball and stuffed it into Harvey’s mouth as she spoke, then wound a stri
p across his mouth and tied it behind his head.
“You think we’ve got them all? Right here?” Nate lifted his head, and for a moment they stared straight into each other’s eyes. An uncomfortable pounding started in his chest, and it had nothing to do with the situation they were in. He dragged his gaze away. “Longmore and Evans were taking me out. There must be someone waiting for me to arrive somewhere.”
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