Is that the hospital where Blythe is living? Destiny was already heading toward the grounds, certain of the direction, almost as if Blythe were calling to her.
“Maybe she is,” Nicolae said with understanding. “She has suffered greatly. I think it best if you speak with her alone. I will be close, but unseen.”
Destiny was grateful for his sensitivity. Nicolae could easily force Blythe’s acceptance of him, but Destiny was reluctant to compel cooperation from someone who was most likely suffering, and Nicolae shared her view.
Destiny blew him a kiss as they walked through the halls of the hospital invisible to the human eye. She found Blythe huddled on a window seat, rocking back and forth, her tormented gaze riveted on the door. She didn’t appear to notice Destiny at first; her entire concentration was focused on the door.
Destiny cleared her throat to bring the woman’s attention to her. When Blythe turned her head, Destiny recognized the look in her eyes. She had seen it over and over on the faces of the abused and battered women who had fled their lives and gone to MaryAnn. There was despair and shame and hopelessness. Blythe was drugged, but there was awareness in her, a strong spark of life despite her situation.
“Who are you? How did you get in here?” Blythe asked nervously, but she was looking expectantly toward the door, not at Destiny.
“Is he coming? The doctor?” Destiny asked softly.
Blythe focused more fully on her. She nodded. “If he sees you here, you could be in danger.” At the mention of the doctor, Blythe’s heart rate increased dramatically.
“He hypnotized you, Blythe, didn’t he?” Destiny asked softly.
“I suspect that he did.” Blythe’s voice was surprisingly strong for a woman everyone believed to be mentally ill. “There’s no way to get away from him and know Harry is safe. He uses drugs and hypnosis.” She shrugged. “Everyone thinks I’m crazy.” She added the last as an afterthought.
Destiny noted that Blythe was becoming increasingly agitated. Her fists were clenching and unclenching. Destiny felt the same presence she’d discerned earlier that day. Evil. It was moving toward them, the footsteps hard on the hallway floor. Blythe whimpered and hurried to her window seat, pressing one hand hard against her mouth to keep from crying out.
Destiny slipped back into the shadows. “Get him to talk, Blythe,” she said softly. “Give me something to work with.” She could easily take the information from the doctor’s mind, but she wanted Blythe to participate actively in freeing herself.
The lock clicked and the door burst open. Destiny was half expecting a vampire, but the man glaring suspiciously around the room was wholly human and yet as vile as any monster she had vanquished. Destiny could see through the illusion a vampire projected with his voice and his looks to the rotting malevolence beneath, but this man shocked her. He was incredibly good-looking, a tall, blond man with a shark’s smile. Even looking closely, Destiny could not see past his surface good looks to the evil lying beneath.
“I heard you talking to someone.” He closed the door with deliberate finality. “Or are you so far gone that you talk to yourself now?”
Blythe huddled closer to the window as if she might throw herself out, except the way was blocked by bars. Her gaze shifted to the corner of the room where Destiny had disappeared. She lifted her chin. “I won’t let you touch me again.”
He laughed, the sound chilling. “Of course you will. You’ll do exactly as I tell you, just as you always have. You wouldn’t want to kill your husband, wonderful Harry. Slice him up into little pieces while he slept in bed, now would you? I could make you do that, Blythe, and you would deserve it for cheating on me with that nothing of a man. A bartender, for God’s sake. I am a genius, a man of greatness, and you turned your back on me and slept with a common nothing. You let him touch you.”
Blythe lifted her chin. “You can come here every night and rape me, drug me, force yourself on me, but I will never want you. I’ll always belong to Harry, never you.”