Torri opened her eyes and spat in his face.
The big orderly jerked back. Glaring down at her, he wiped her spittle from his cheeks and mouth.
“You little cunt—you’re gonna pay for that!”
“You’re a cowardly asshole!” Torri snarled. “You can’t get any unless you force a woman to give it to you!”
O’Toole’s face contorted into a grimace of rage.
“You don’t talk to me that way, bitch—nobody talks to Mike O’Toole that way!”
He slapped her hard across the face, rocking Torri’s head back across the pillow. She felt a flare of pain in her cheek and her lip split, filling her mouth with hot blood. She spat it at O’Toole, splattering bloody spittle across his pink scrubs, her head still ringing from his blow.
“Coward!” she gasped again. As painful as it was, she would rather he beat her than rape her.
But O’Toole was clearly intent on doing both. He groped between her legs again and Torri felt his cold, clammy fingers brushing the inside of her thighs.
“No!” She tried to close her legs but the thick leather restraints held her ankles strapped to the corners of her bed. She was trapped…trapped and there was no way to get away from her attacker…
Suddenly a familiar shape loomed up over O’Toole’s shoulder.
It was Vic—but Vic as Torri had never seen him. His eyes were glowing again, but not the soft blue she had seen in the dim hallway earlier. This time they were a burning red and he looked angrier than she had ever seen him.
Before she could even gasp his name, his big hands had found the sides of O’Toole’s head.
The orderly gasped as the vise-like grip closed on him. But before he could even begin to struggle, Vic gave a sharp twist to one side.
There was a sickening crack! And suddenly Torri found she was looking at the back of her attacker’s head instead of the front.
Vic had twisted the raping orderly’s head completely around, breaking his neck in the process.
He dragged the limp body off Torri and let it slump to the side of the bed. Then he reached for the restraints that held her right arm to the bed and began to tear at them.
“No, Vic—you have to unbuckle them—” she began. But the words died in her mouth as he tore the thick, padded leather in half as easily as someone else might tear a tissue or a paper towel.
Rapidly, he did the same to the other restraints, freeing Torri completely as she watched in awed silence. His eyes were glowing a little less brightly as he finished tearing the last restraint.
“Are you all right?” he asked, and she noticed there was none of the hesitation that had characterized his speech before.
“I…I think so.” Torri finally sat up and began unbuckling the torn restraints from around her wrists and ankles. “How…how did you do this?” she asked, nodding down at the restraints. “I mean, how did you get to me in the first place? He…O’Toole said he locked the doors.”
“He did.” Vic’s voice was still a low growl, as though he was trying to come back to himself from the state of extreme anger he’d been in. “My positronic net finally came back on-line and I was able to unlock the barriers between us.”
“Is…is that why you can talk again?” Torri asked. “I mean, without, you know, hesitating?”
Vic nodded and helped her with the straps around her ankles.
“Sorry—I guess I could have unbuckled these earlier,” he rumbled, frowning. “I just got so angry when I heard you screaming and I couldn’t get to you. I think I was going into Rage—I didn’t know that was possible for one of my kind.”
“Thank goodness you came when you did. He…he was…” Torri shook her head, her throat closing. She still hadn’t fully processed what had almost happened to her just now. It made her feel sick to even think about it.
“I told you I wouldn’t let him hurt you. I’m just so sorry it took me so long to get to you!” He finished unbuckling the last strap and let it fall to the floor. Leaning down, he cupped Torri’s hurt cheek gently in one hand. “Are you all right, Torri? Can you walk? We must get free of this place tonight.”
“You…you want to leave? To run away?”
Somehow the idea had never occurred to her. She had only thought about getting out through normal channels—being declared well and mentally competent so she could be discharged. But now, remembering what O’Toole had said about Dr. Burrows, she realized she would never have gotten out that way.
The only way out of St. Elizabeth’s was flight. But how were they going to get out when the nurse’s station and a guard at the front desk stood between them and freedom?
“I want to go,” she told Vic. “But I don’t see how we can make it! The nurses will see us if we try to leave. And even if we do manage to sneak past them, there’s still a guard at the front desk and the doors are kept locked at night.”
“Let me worry about all that. Will you come with me? We have to go and warn the Kindred of the Mother Ship that the Scourge are on their way to Earth.”
“The…the Mother Ship?”
It belatedly hit her that Vic was talking to her the same way he did in her dreams. All about his positronic brain and the Mother Ship and the Kindred. But those were just dreams, weren’t they? They couldn’t be real—could they?
“Am I dreaming?” she asked, looking around herself.
But this was nothing like the dreams she’d been having for the past week. Where was Nana’s cabin and the field of daisies and buttercups? If this was a dream, it was a nightmare. Her cheek and lip still throbbed and she could still see O’Toole’s twisted body slumped by the side of her bed, his head twisted all the way around, like some kind of horrible owl.
“You’re not dreaming,” Vic said firmly. “And we must leave now, before someone comes to check on you and finds your attacker’s body.” He looked at her anxiously. “He didn’t manage to…to hurt you, did he? I prayed I would get here in time.”
“You did,” Torri assured him quickly. “But you’re right—once they find him, they’ll put us both in the Violent Offenders wing. We need to get out of here, but I don’t see how we can do it unless you can turn us both invisible.”
A small smile lifted the corners of Vic’s sensual mouth.
“Come with me and don’t worry. Now that my positronic net is back online, we should have no trouble at all.”
Twenty-Three
Torri felt like she was in a dream again—an extremely strange one—as they left her room. Vic held her hand and they walked quietly but quickly down the hall, just as though they had every right to be out of their rooms at night.
They made it past the nurse’s station, mainly because no one was at the window, but just as they turned down another hallway, Torri heard the sound she’d been fearing—the soft squeak of rubber-soled shoes on the floor. One of the nurses or caretakers was coming and there was nowhere to hide!
“Vic! Someone’s coming—what are we going to do?” she whispered, as softly as she could.
Vic didn’t seem upset at all.