Born to Darkness Read Free

tackle him to the ground, but his theory was proven dead wrong as he himself jumped and jolted when his own electric current was thrown back at him. To his credit, D hung on, even though the addict was trying to push him away, and even though without that physical contact, the electrical circuit would have been broken.
    The bad guy was shouting, too. It was just mindless screaming, but he was making it rhythmic—
“Arhh! Arhh! Arhh …!”
—and Mac knew that not only was Diaz taking all that electrical energy, he was also absorbing the joker’s vocal punches.
    She wanted to help but she didn’t know how, until Bach spoke. But her ears were ringing from that latest mental blast. The air around Diaz was crackling, too, and she couldn’t make out his words.
    So Dr. Bach gained entry into her mind the way he always did, provided he was at a close enough range. He gave a little push asking permission, which Mac granted immediately by lowering her defenses.
    And then she felt the warmth and calm that meant Bach was inside of her head. He didn’t so much speak as guide her thoughts.
    What did you do to me?
The addict had asked that when he’d first come out into the hall.
    But Mac didn’t know what the man had meant—except then,suddenly, she
did
know. The joker had been favoring the very same foot that she’d injured, the same ankle she’d trashed when she’d fallen down the stairs. He’d been
limping
.
    Maybe there were some powers that Nathan couldn’t deflect. Maybe …
    She scrambled to her feet and instead of compartmentalizing and hiding the pain she felt when she put any weight on her left foot, she disintegrated her carefully constructed guard. And she didn’t just step onto her injured foot, she jumped onto it. Pain rocketed through her and she heard herself scream.
    Nathan screamed, too.
    Bingo.
    Mac felt Bach pull out of her head, and she knew he must’ve then paid a visit to Diaz’s mind, letting
him
know about the joker’s weakness, because Diaz, too, dropped his guard and let out a blast of everything that he was feeling. And to Mac’s surprise, that included not just the pain from the mentally looped electrical current, but anger and frustration, and—holy shit—an aircraft-carrier-load of pent-up sexual energy.
    Considering he was the Prince of Celibacy,
that
was a stunner.
    But that wasn’t the biggest shocker of the evening. The fact that Diaz walked around suppressing a forty-thousand-ton urge to screw everyone in sight was nothing compared to the wall of pain that Bach set free.
    Unlike Mac’s and Diaz’s mostly physical suffering, what Bach let loose was a blast of emotional hurt that knocked Mac to her knees.
    It was indescribable—the grief, the loss, the regret, the sheer sorrow.…
    It was too much to bear—not just for Mac, but for Nathan, too.
    “He’s out, I think that did it, I think he stroked out,” she heard Diaz gasp.
    Bach agreed with an urgency in his voice that she rarely ever heard. “Nathan’s out—and we need the medical team in here,
now
! Let’s not lose this one!”
    And there was the great irony of what they did. Risk their lives to subdue the joker, but then, when he was subdued? Rush his bad-guy ass to the special hospital unit over at the Obermeyer Institute and work their medical team around the clock to attempt to detox him—to try to keep him from dying.
    As the OI med team poured into the house, Mac pulled out of the fetal position she’d curled herself into.
    Dr. Bach came over and gave her a hand up. “You should get that ankle checked at the clinic,” he told her.
    “
I’m
fine,” she said, her subtext clear. Yes, she’d been injured, but
he
was the one who needed about a decade of grief counseling. Not that she’d ever dare to say something like that to his face. Still, he was Bach, so he surely knew what she was thinking. “My ankle’s not that bad—I can heal it overnight. I’ll be back to speed in the morning.”
    Bach nodded,