Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 110492 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 552(@200wpm)___ 442(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110492 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 552(@200wpm)___ 442(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
With an exclamation of relief, he pressed his right hand once more to the door and felt a liquid metal appendage extrude from the heel of his hand. It found its way into the keyhole and traced the dimensions of the lock. After a brief moment, he heard a clicking sound and the bolt snapped back.
“Thank you, Goddess,” Vic muttered hoarsely. He was “back in business” as the humans said. Time to go save the female he cared for.
He just prayed he wasn’t too late.
Twenty-Two
As O’Toole climbed onto the bed with her, Torri shut her eyes tight and refused to look at him.
Take yourself away! she told herself frantically. Be someplace else—take yourself away so you don’t have to feel it happen…
It was all she could think of to do. There was no point in screaming—the nurses would just assume she was having another night terror and none of them would come. Anyway, screaming and fighting only seemed to make O’Toole more eager to rape her. He seemed to like it when she shouted and cried and made a racket—Torri refused to give him the satisfaction.
“Hey, darlin’. Hey, you little bitch,” he muttered in her ear, his breath hot and stale as he reached between her legs. “Hey, scream for me, why don’t you? You know I love to hear you screaming.”
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.”