Chapter Twenty-One
“GET ME OUT OF HERE!”
Danni pounded on the heavy steel door, seething with rage. It didn’t even budge against the long bolts that held it in place. The door must have been insulated, too; the quiet thump of her hands against the metal would never be heard in Artax’s warehouse, much less in the shop outside. She was completely at his mercy – cut off from help, cut off from hope.
Cut off from Jared.
“Artax! Open this door, you fucking bastard! Let me out! I’m not crazy! You hear me?! I’M NOT CRAZY!”
She wheeled around, scanning the room wildly for something to break down the door. She grabbed the wooden chair that sat in front of the desk and dragged it over, then picked it up by the seat back and swung it against the door. It made a satisfying thunk as it hit, but the door still didn’t budge.
The tiny part of her mind that was still holding on to rational thought said that it wouldn’t do any good, that the door was far too strong to break down. Danni ignored it. She was past rationality. She wanted to hit something. She swung the chair again, and again, putting all of her considerable strength behind the blows.
“LET … ME … OUT!” she shouted, striking the door with each word. “LET … ME … OUT!”
The chair cracked and split, and finally shattered, the legs flying off across the room as the seat cushion fell at her feet. She threw the now-useless seat back across the room, knocking the phone off the nightstand table. Grabbing one of the chair legs, she swing it like a club, smashing one of the bedside lamps.
“How do you like that, asshole?!” she snarled, looking up at one of the closed-circuit cameras. “You ready to open that door yet?” She stalked over to the other side of the bed and smashed the lamp on that side.
“How ‘bout now?”
She went to the television and smashed in the screen.
“How ‘bout now?!”
She grabbed pictures off the walls and threw them across the room, but the glass was actually transparent plastic and they did not shatter as she had hoped. She turned over the desk, tore the hangers off of the coat rack in the closet, pulled out the dresser drawers and swung them at the door until they fell to pieces. She went to the bathroom and pulled the ceramic lid off of the toilet tank. She smashed the shower head, then turned and shattered the bathroom mirror. The lid broke in half as it hit the concrete wall behind the mirror, and she threw the remaining half into the shower stall. Through it all she screamed, calling down curses on Artax, Sasha, and everyone else who had taken part in this fucking conspiracy to separate her from Jared.
Jared. Oh gods, I’ve lost him! I’ve lost him!
She staggered back into the bedroom and collapsed, rage giving way to grief. They’d locked her away where Jared would never find her. They’d taken her from the only person who loved her, the only person gave a damn what happened to her. She could grab one of those shards of mirror and slit her wrists, and the only reason they’d care is because Daniel would die with her.
Daniel, you stupid fuck. You’ve ruined everything! I was going to be happy. Why couldn’t you just go away?
She looked down at her hands. She’d had a ring – the ring Catherine had left for her – but now it was gone. She’d had a locket, but that was gone, too. That traitor Daniel had left it in Jared’s apartment next to his stupid letter. Daniel had taken everything and left her alone.
Alone, again.
“Jared!” she sobbed, pounding on the floor with her fist. She put all of her feeble telepathic power behind her words, straining to reach the man she loved more than life itself. “Save me, Jared, please! Oh, gods, save me!”
But Jared would not hear her. She was alone, hidden from spells and psi alike, trapped in a prison she would never escape – a prison she was sure she would die in.
Alone again.
Forever.
Sasha turned away from the monitors and closed her eyes, unable to watch any more. She felt like she was going to be sick.
Artax stood beside her, still watching the screens with a furrowed brow and sharp, analytical eyes. Rebecca huddled in the corner of the room with her eyes fixed on the nearest monitor, unable to come close and unable to look away. Her golden-tan face had turned almost as pale as Sasha’s.
“I guess this means that it’s permanent, huh,” Sasha said, her voice coming out flat and lifeless.
The wizard stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Not necessarily. Obviously the conditioning is persistent, since she didn’t return to normal after being shut inside, but it may still fade with continued isolation. We’ll need to give her a few days, at least, before we can judge whether it’s permanent.” He looked over at her and quirked an eyebrow. “Believe it or not, this is good news. If the conditioning required a constant connection to Jared, that would mean that he has enough range to maintain his influence across half the city. No, at this point I’m inclined to believe his talent is strictly limited to influencing those in close personal proximity to himself. The more time a person spends in his company, the more that influence is reinforced.
A chill ran down Sasha’s spine. “Do you think he could use his power through a mindlink?”
Artax cocked his head. “It’s possible, but Jared is a very weak telepath – he needs physical contact to open a mindlink. At that range, the question becomes academic.”
Sasha nodded, feeling immensely grateful that Jared was one of the telepathic have-nots. She shuddered to imagine what he could do if he’d been a Level 9 like herself.
She glanced back at the monitor; Danni was still there on the floor, weeping. It was so eerie to know that she was just three doors away and yet be completely unable to sense her. She felt disconnected, like she was watching a computer simulation of a woman crying instead of seeing a real person in pain. Normally the sight of a person suffering moved her to action, made her want to do something to help them. Here she just wanted to turn it off, to make the strange not-person on the screen stop sobbing and wailing for her lover to come save her. It all looked real and sounded real, but it didn’t feel real. It felt like a very disturbing game that someone had taken way too far, and she wanted it to go away.
But she knew that Danni was real, and that made her feel guilty. Dear Eli, how do the mundies do it? How can they be capable of compassion and empathy when they can’t even feel the suffering of the people around them? She had a new appreciation for her own power, and a new sense of pity for the poor souls who struggled through their whole lives with their minds and hearts blinded to the thoughts and emotions of their neighbors. The fact that any of them managed to become good, kind, and caring people, in spite of their handicap, was a miracle of the highest order.
Artax put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Danni needs time to calm down before we’ll be able to do anything productive with her. Why don’t you two take a break and come back after dinner?”
Sasha managed a feeble smile. “That sounds like a really good idea.” She reached out and took Rebecca’s hand. “Come on, ‘Becca, let’s go.”
Rebecca pulled her hand away. “No. I’m not leaving.”
“Becks, Daniel’s not coming out for another twelve hours. You can’t do anything for him.”
Rebecca glared up at her. The expression was shocking on her gentle face. “Danni needs to know that I care about her, too,” she said. “She’s gonna want to talk to me sooner or later, even if it’s just to yell at me. I’m not just gonna leave her here alone.”
Sasha looked into her eyes a moment longer, then nodded. “All right. I’ll bring you some dinner when I come back.”
“Bring some for Danni, too,” Rebecca reminded her.
Sasha blushed. “Of course.”
She looked over at Artax, but he waved a hand dismissively. “Bah, don’t worry about me. I’ll just go up to my kitchen and whip something up. It may surprise you, but alchemy and cooking really have a great deal in common.”
Sasha smirked. “I guess they would.” She glanced at the monitor and winced. “Sorry that she made such a mess in there.”
Artax chuckled, though the mirth didn’t reach his eyes. “She wasn’t the first. Don’t worry, everything in the room is covered by a persistence enchantment. In a few hours it will all put itself back together again.”
Sasha whistled. “Remind me to get that enchantment from you once we have a toddler in the house.” She reached down and kissed Rebecca’s cheek. “I’ll be back soon, love.”
Rebecca hardly seemed to notice. She was still watching the screen.
Sasha entered the apartment, dropped her purse on the counter, and flopped down onto the couch, sighing. She closed her eyes and tried to banish the image of Danni sobbing on the floor of her cell.
Fiona didn’t make a sound as she approached, but Sasha felt the cool, steady current of her thoughts brushing against her mind. I take it that Danni’s prognosis is less than optimistic.
Sasha looked up as her lover perched on the armrest next to her head. “I don’t know what to do, Fi,” she said. The despair she had been warring with during the drive home was evident in her voice. She sent Fiona the memory of Danni’s breakdown and the subsequent conversation with Artax. “I was trained to pry into people’s minds, to find the things they didn’t want us to know. It’s been a year since I went civvie, and sometimes I still feel like all I know how to do is interrogation and psychic safecracking. I’m not even sure where to start with something like this.”
Fiona ran her fingers through Sasha’s short blonde hair. “Perhaps you should begin by confronting her with the things that she does not want herself to know,” she suggested.
Sasha sat up and stared at her. Fiona shrugged, unruffled. “Danni has been operating on the false assumption that Daniel was her old identity, rather than an alternate aspect of her present identity. She has been denying a part of herself and defining her current identity entirely in terms of one narrow aspect of her life: her relationship with Jared Tamlin. If you can make her aware of the barrenness of her current emotional state, it may help her to realize the need to change.”
It took Sasha a few seconds to find her voice. “…yeah, no, I saw what you were getting at,” she said, “and it makes perfect sense. I’m just … trying to figure out where you came up with it.” She smiled wryly. “No offense, love, but emotional analysis? Not usually your strong suit.”
Fiona looked away, the muscles around her eyes tightening slightly. “I know. In this case, I must admit that I was drawing on … recent personal experience.”
Sasha winced. Damn it. Nice going, Sash – so distracted by Danni’s problem that you completely forgot about Fi’s. She sat up on the couch and made a spot for Fiona. “Sorry. I’ve got time to start working with you, if you’re ready.”
Fiona slid gracefully down to the seat and took Sasha’s hand. The corner of her lip turned up in a rueful expression. “I may never be ‘ready’,” she admitted, “but problems rarely resolve themselves if we ignore them.” She looked down at their joined hands then back up at Sasha. When she spoke again, her voice had softened. “What do you need me to do?”
In answer, Sasha opened up the link between them. “Just lie back, relax, and open up as much as you can,” she said. “I’m going to have a look around in your subconscious. Let’s see if we can figure out what’s behind those walls.”
Fiona nodded and lay back, closing her eyes. Focusing all her attention on her power, Sasha dove down into Fiona’s mind, beneath the calm, steady surface thoughts and into the currents beneath.
Sasha knew Fiona better than anyone, so she wasn’t surprised by the intensity of the emotions that swirled under her calm exterior. She saw Fiona’s concern for the safety and stability of their family; the struggle between her loyalty to the Hive and her anger at its recent decisions; her fierce love for the unborn child growing inside Rebecca; the jealousy she fought to control as she saw how much of Rebecca’s heart still belonged to Daniel, an outsider; and the guilt she felt for labeling Daniel an “outsider”, when he had once been a central part of their circle of friends.
These and a hundred other emotions roiled and stirred inside Fiona, kept safely below the surface by cold logic and Fiona’s iron self-discipline. These were all feelings that she had acknowledged within herself and relegated to their proper places; she did not hesitate to share them with Sasha and the others when they entered gestalt. Because she understood them, they did not control her.
The true source of Fiona’s inner conflict, her fear of being powerless – that was something that lay deeper. She didn’t understand it, and she had only recently even been able to acknowledge it. That was what Sasha needed to help her uncover.
Sasha dove deeper, past the swirling currents of emotion and into the lightless depths of Fiona’s subconscious. Memories floated past her like glowing jellyfish – some of them solitary and disconnected, others moving in schools that were driven along by specific currents of thought. Sasha studied them as they went by, seeing images of Fiona’s life that danced inside their gelatinous forms.
It was the solitary memories that interested Sasha the most. On the whole, Fiona’s mind was an orderly place: she knew why she did what she did, and she had good reasons for doing it. One of the things that made her so extraordinary within the Psi Collective was her ability to look at situations objectively and then act on a logical basis. Even when her emotions were informing her decision, she considered their input as only one piece of the larger puzzle. For these memories to be disconnected from any of the obvious currents, they had to be driven by something more subtle … something deeper.
Sasha reached out to some of these disconnected memories, examining them in more detail.
…a familiar-looking wizard handed Fiona an exquisitely-carved amulet. “This is our premium model,” Artax said, the pride evident in his voice. “Guaranteed one hundred percent effective in all circumstances, even against incubi and fertility potions. Under more mundane circumstances, it’s rated for a minimum of ten years…”
…Fiona and Brian conferred in secret in a storage room at their old MID base. “Are you sure?” Brian asked. “You have seniority, you know. Technically, you should be the one to have the first child.” Fiona crossed her arms. “I am familiar with the custom,” she said, “but Rebecca has wanted a child for years. It would help her to integrate into the family if she were the first to conceive.” She did not tell Brian the real reason for deferring to Rebecca: above all else, she knew that she must not become helpless…
…Fiona gazed in silent horror at the scene in front of her. This wasn’t just the drug lord’s headquarters; it was a harem. Two dozen women from all over the world stood watching her, glassy-eyed and barefoot, enchanted mind-control collars latched firmly around their necks. She spun on her heel and walked back to the office where she had left the drug lord handcuffed and tied to his own chair. She raised her gun and fired, striking him in the groin. He shrieked and screamed, wailing like the pig he was. She shifted to a different vantage point and shot him again, this time in the throat. The bullet destroyed his larynx while leaving his spinal cord untouched. He hissed and sputtered and gurgled as he died. After he stopped moving, she untied him. She took a gun off the body of a guard and pressed it into his hand. Putting his finger on the trigger, she squeezed off three rounds into the bookcases at the far end of the room. She would tell the others that he died resisting capture…
Sasha forced back her own nausea and tried to look for the overall pattern. All of these events had been driven by the same motive, a motive so deep that Fiona could not explain them even to herself. In her mind’s eye, Sasha perceived it as a deep ocean current, an upwelling from the abyss of Fiona’s subconscious mind. It was slow, cold, and inexorable; though almost unnoticeable by itself, it shaped all of the faster currents above it. These memories, though, were driven by it alone.
Sasha went deeper. The water here was freezing, the pressure almost unbearable; this part of Fiona’s mind did not give up its secrets easily. She came to the lip of a vast chasm, a jagged tear in Fiona’s psyche that she had submerged under countless layers of conscious and subconscious thought. The upwelling rose out of that chasm, driving before it the small, glowing lights of those scattered memories. Sasha looked over the edge and saw the faint glow of a light far below her. That’s the source, she thought.
A voice boomed through the water, assaulting her ears. No. You cannot go down there.
Sasha looked around in alarm. She was far below the level of Fiona’s conscious thoughts; if Fiona was trying to speak to her, the voice would be more distant. This seemed to come from the chasm itself.
“I need to go down there,” Sasha said. “That’s where the answers are, Fi. Look at the size of this chasm! This sort of pain doesn’t happen without a reason.”
You must not go down there, the voice said again. I will not allow it!
Sasha smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry, Fi, but you asked me to do this. I love you too much to let you back out now. You’ll thank me when this is over, I promise.” She moved past the ledge and dove into the darkness.
Something was waiting for her. A tentacle snaked out from below and wrapped itself around her throat. Suddenly the imagery of the ocean was more than a metaphor; Sasha felt the creature’s grip around her neck, and she found herself unable to breathe. A dark form rose out of the abyss, its body pale and ghostly against the dark water around it. An eye the size of a dinner plate regarded her with cold, alien hostility, while its arms drew her closer to its snapping maw.
Panicking, Sasha struck out with a mind blast – but the creature was deeper than conscious thought, as deep and old as instinct, and her telepathic attacks did little damage to something so primal. She reached out and sent a beam of thought up toward Fiona’s conscious mind, imagining it as a grappling line fired from a spear gun. A single thought propelled it to the surface: Help me!
For a long, terrifying moment Sasha hung there in the darkness, gasping for air that she couldn’t see, while the creature relentlessly tightened its hold. Sasha’s vision began to go dark – but just then something grabbed the lifeline and pulled her upwards.
Abruptly, Sasha found herself back in her own body. She was lying on her back on the couch, Fiona on top of her. Fiona’s hand was around her throat – looser, now, but still pinning her down.
“Fi…?” Sasha gasped.
Fiona sat back on her heels, her face as white as a sheet. She looked down at her hand in astonishment, as if it belonged to someone else. She looked back up, her jaw slack. Her brow broke out in a cold sweat.
“Sasha?” she whispered. Her voice sounded very small. “What … what just happened?”
Sasha tried to speak, coughed, then sat up before trying again. “I think … that it’s gonna take a while to get through those defenses of yours.”
”Hey, this is Egan. I’m not here, so leave me a message and I’ll call you back.” Beep!
Miriam rang off and looked down at the telephone, frowning. After a moment’s consideration she dialed another number.
“Yes, Elder?”
“Peter, have you heard from Agent Hunter in the last twelve hours?”
“I’m afraid not, ma’am. Why do you ask?”
“He left a message on my phone last night. Apparently he found a lead on Victor and Abbey’s whereabouts and was following up on it. I’ve been trying to reach him all morning, but it keeps putting me into voicemail.”
“That’s odd. Egan’s usually pretty meticulous about checking in.”
“Agreed.” Miriam looked out the window of her fifth-level apartment, watching the streams of skimmer traffic flowing past on the skyways below. Her brow furrowed as she considered her options. Egan Hunter’s uncharacteristic silence put her in a difficult position: if he had gotten into trouble and lost his phone, then it was likely that he was on the right track in his pursuit of Victor. Miriam would have to send in backup, and quickly, or they would risk losing the trail entirely. On the other hand, it was possible Egan had gone silent because he needed to be stealthy; perhaps Victor was on the move and Egan was following him. If so, sending in an operations team might alert Victor to Egan’s presence and cause him to go to ground.
She sighed. They weren’t going to get anywhere by being timid, but a modicum of caution was still in order. “All right. Put together a team of teeps and espers and have them scout Agent Hunter’s last known location. Tell them to converge to a block away and try to contact him telepathically. If that doesn’t work, have the espers scan the area before moving in. Your first priority is finding Agent Hunter – we need to know what he knows.”
“Understood. Don’t worry, ma’am, we’ll find him.”
“Be careful. If Victor discovers that we’re following him, he is likely to take the offensive. Tell our operatives to assume that he is hostile and extremely dangerous. They should be prepared to use deadly force.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Elder Bakhtavar,” Peter said carefully, “Victor may have retired from the Collective, but he’s still one of us.”
Miriam winced. She hadn’t told Peter yet about what she had learned from Callie Linder, how Victor had murdered Del Matthews and Trace Umbara and pinned the blame on Felipe Deveraux. That wasn’t information that she wanted to become common knowledge – not until Victor was dead or in custody. If it came out, the Hive would demand to know why Miriam had been unable to spot his deception, and she didn’t have an answer to that. Her Elder status might be revoked for her apparent incompetence, and then she would be powerless to help Abbey.
“He’s a rogue, Peter,” she said firmly. “I can’t give you the details right now, but trust me, Victor is no longer one of us. If the opportunity presents itself, kill him. Don’t give him a second chance.”
“Un…understood, ma’am. Peter out.”
Miriam rang off and put the phone in her pocket. She found herself pacing the floor, looking up at the ceiling, staring at the walls. She pulled out the phone and dialed Egan’s number again.
Blast it all, Egan. What’s happened to you?
Victor looked down at the caller ID on Egan Hunter’s phone and smiled. He silenced the call, then pulled out his own phone and dialed a number.
“Yes?”
“Good afternoon, Mr Westerson,” Victor said brightly. “I hope I haven’t awakened you too early.”
“Only if you intend to waste my time, Victor. What do you want?”
“Oh, it’s not what I want. It’s what you want. As I hear it, you’ve been looking for the mastermind behind certain operations that have caused great embarrassment to you and your employer.” Victor grinned. “I can give her to you.”
William Westerson only hesitated an instant. “How?”
“Here, take down this number.” Victor read off the phone number on Egan’s caller ID. “She’s been using that phone to try to contact one of her operatives. She’ll keep it with her in case he calls back. Trace the signal, corner her when she’s vulnerable, and she’s yours.”
Westerson made a sound deep in his throat, something disturbingly close to a purr. “Excellent. Well done, Victor.”
“Thank you, Mr Westerson. I should give you fair warning: This target is the complete package. Brains, beauty and power, all rolled into one. She won’t go quiet, and she won’t go easy.”
“That will make the hunt all the sweeter,” Westerson said. “Now, tell me all about this target. What are her habits? What are her strengths, her weaknesses? Where shall we have the best chance of running her to ground?”
Victor smiled as he tossed Egan’s phone into a nearby trash bin. “I’ll tell you all that and more…”
The clock read a quarter to seven when the door to Danni’s cell opened and Sasha walked in carrying a tray full of food. Someone slid a chair into the room behind her, then the door closed and bolted shut. The petite blonde woman looked around at the pictures, the desk chair, the television – everything that Danni had smashed earlier, all of it once more intact and apparently none the worse for wear.
She shook her head and whistled. “That is both the most useful and the scariest bit of magic I think I’ve ever personally seen.”
Danni sat on the bed and glared at her, saying nothing.
“I brought you some dinner,” Sasha said, setting the tray on the table. “It’s from that Rukilian place on 87th that Daniel likes.” She glanced at Danni and showed her a half smile. “I hope that’s all right. I haven’t gotten to know you all that well yet, so I had to make a guess that you two would have similar tastes.” She went back over to her chair by the door and sat down, crossing one foot over the other and folding her hands in her lap.
Danni was hungry enough that she would have been tempted by anything that even remotely resembled food. The smell of the lamb curry was like a deva promising a passport to paradise. But she hadn’t forgotten for a moment where she was.
“It’s a trick,” she said. “You’ve done something to the food. Drugs, maybe, or some kind of potion.”
Sasha’s eyebrows shot up. “What makes you think we would do something like that?” she asked. She kept her tone neutral, as though she were merely politely interested in a matter that had nothing to do with her personally. Fucking shrinks.
“Well, let’s see,” Danni said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “You take me away from the man I love, stick me in a private prison run by a crazy wizard, and then say you’re going to cure me of this mysterious, horrible affliction that nobody’s ever heard of and nobody’s quite sure even exists. In fact, the only symptom seems to be that I was actually happy for once in my life.” She spread her hands and gave Sasha a wide-eyed, mock-innocent expression. “Gosh, I don’t know, Sasha. Why do you think I’m suspicious?”
The corner of Sasha’s mouth twitched, some facial expression that she covered before it could even show itself. Her crystal-blue eyes turned grave. “The food is safe, Danni. No drugs, no magic.” She lifted a hand from her lap and held it out toward Danni, fingers splayed. “Look, I’m dropping my shields. Look in my mind and see for yourself.”
Danni glanced at the food, then back at Sasha. “You’re just trying to get in my head.”
Sasha sighed and rubbed her temples with her other hand. “Danni, if I really wanted to get into your mind, I wouldn’t need to trick you to do it.”
Danni scowled, but she got to her feet and cautiously approached the woman. Stretching out one hand, she lightly touched her fingertips to Sasha’s palm. She reached out with her own meager telepathic talent and combed through Sasha’s thoughts, looking for any sign that she was lying about the food. As near as she could tell, she wasn’t. On the other hand, she did find memories of Sasha and Rebecca doing some kind of incantation to help Daniel hijack her mind.
Her fist clenched, and she briefly entertained the thought of driving it straight into Sasha’s face. She fought back the impulse, though, because she could also see why the two women had done what they did. For all that their meddling had screwed up Danni’s life, they had done it out of love. They really, honestly believed that they were helping her. Saving her, even. They had a bunch of stupid, crazy ideas about Jared — And they think I’m paranoid! — but they were driven by compassion and genuine affection. Not just for Daniel, as she might have guessed, but for Daniel-and-Danni as a unified person. Even after the deliberately cruel things Danni had said to Rebecca, they still cared about her.
Which made it really hard for Danni to hate them.
She snatched her hand away from Sasha’s, growling in disgust. She stalked across the room, sat down and began to eat.
After she had polished off the curry, she took a long drink from the glass of mango juice that Sasha had ever-so-thoughtfully included. Then she got up and straddled the chair backwards, resting her arms on the seat back. Like it or not, she knew she wasn’t getting out of here until she played Sasha’s little game and answered her questions. Maybe Danni could persuade her to let her go if she cooperated.
“I know you think you’re helping me,” she said, “but you guys would have done a lot more good if you’d just left me the hell alone.”
Sasha pulled her chair halfway across the room and sat down again. “I’m not so sure about that,” she said gently. “Think about it, Danni: You were completely repressing half of yourself. You can see Daniel’s memories, right? You know how hurt he was by what you did to him. You know how cut off he felt, how isolated, how rejected. You told Rebecca that he was dead, but that wasn’t really true; he was just trapped inside you and couldn’t get out.”
Danni looked down at the floor, feeling the heat rise into her cheeks. “Look, I’m sorry for what Daniel was going through. I didn’t realize that was happening to him. Hells, I didn’t know there was a ‘him’ that was separate from me.” She looked back at Sasha and narrowed her eyes. “But that doesn’t give him the right to screw up my life. I was repressing him without realizing it; he kidnapped me and put me in this glorified jail cell! How is that any better?”
“If he were planning on leaving you here, it wouldn’t be,” Sasha said. “But that isn’t what he wants. Look inside your shared memories, Danni: he wants to find a way to live with you.”
“He didn’t have to do this!” Danni protested. “We could have worked something out with Jared! If he could’ve just … just talked to me, or … I don’t know, done something to let us know he was there! We could’ve made it work!”
Sasha sat back in her chair and steepled her fingers. She fell silent for a long moment, her brow furrowed in thought. Danni took a piece of flatbread from the tray and mopped up a bit of vegetable korma while she waited for the other woman to speak.
“Something I’m curious about,” Sasha said at last, touching the tips of her index fingers to her bottom lip. “After you had sex with Jared that first time, did you ever change back into Daniel?”
Danni shook her head.
“Why not?”
Danni chewed, swallowed, and took another drink before answering. “I didn’t like it.” She shrugged. “Didn’t want to remind myself of the old me anymore.”
“And why was Daniel so totally connected in your mind to your ‘old’ self?” Sasha asked. “After all, you became an androgyne, not a full-blooded woman. Daniel’s as much a part of who you are now as Danni is. Most androgynes don’t spend all their time in just one gender, do they?”
Danni frowned, thinking of Evan and Eva. She’d gotten most of her advice from Eva, but Evan had been the one who picked up the phone as often as not. “I guess not,” she admitted.
Sasha gestured toward Danni with one hand. “So why did you never change back? I know there were parts of Daniel’s life he enjoyed – skyball and martial arts, just to name two. Have you played any pick-up games since you started dating Jared? Have you been to the samnak even once?”
Danni shook her head again.
“Why not? Those used to be regular pastimes, things you liked doing.”
Danni sighed. She felt … inarticulate,uncomfortable with Sasha’s questions, and that frustrated her. “I don’t know. It just never felt right. Those were the things Daniel did, and I felt more at home being Danni.”
Sasha leaned forward, gazing at her intently. “And what does Danni enjoy? What do you like doing instead of playing skyball or visiting the samnak?”
Danni considered that. “Jared and I go dancing. We go for walks. I’ve been helping him organize his photo albums. I like cooking with him.” She smiled. “This one time we went to the library and spent the evening looking for the worst, sappiest love poetry we could find, and then reading it to each other.”
“Anything else? Anything that doesn’t involve Jared?”
Danni glared at her. “We’re in love,Sasha. We like spending time together.”
“Even people in love have their own hobbies and pastimes,” Sasha pointed out. “Rebecca paints. Brian has a wargaming group that he meets with in virtual. Fiona competes in freerunning tournaments.” She grinned. “Me, I write slash fiction for popular TV shows. Yes, we love each other, and we spend a lot of time together, but we do have lives of our own. What does Danni like to do?”
Danni frowned and turned back to her plate, pushing the remains of the food in little circles. “I guess I hadn’t given it much thought,” she said slowly. “Everything with Jared happened so fast, I haven’t needed to worry about that. Whenever I’m around him … just being with him is enough.”
“And that’s part of what concerns me,” Sasha said gravely. “Healthy people don’t orient their entire lives around another person, Danni. Like you said, that relationship with Jared happened fast – so fast that you haven’t figured out who you are when you aren’t around him. And in the process, it looks like any part of you that wasn’t part of that relationship got pushed to the back and suppressed.”
Danni turned back to Sasha, letting their eyes meet. A loud and defensive corner of her mind screamed at her that Sasha was trying to trick her, trying to manipulate her, trying to brainwash her in the same way that they had accused Jared of doing – but she looked in Sasha’s eyes and saw only genuine, honest concern. Yes, Sasha was a shrink; yes, she was skilled at working people over; and yes, she was one heck of a telepath. But right now, Danni didn’t believe Sasha was trying to trick her.
And besides, what she had said about healthy people not building their lives around one person – that had the unpleasant sting of truth.
She looked away again. “Maybe. Maybe you’re right.” Tears rose unexpectedly in her eyes, and she wiped them away. “But damn it, I was happy, Sasha! So what if that’s not ‘healthy’?” She looked back at Sasha, her voice pleading. “I had someone who loved me, and a place where I belonged. That’s more than Daniel had!”
More tears came, and Danni squeezed her eyes shut as she covered her face with her hand. A moment later she felt small, gentle hands take hold of her free hand. Sasha’s presence flowed up to the edges of her mind — offering comfort, if Danni were willing to take it.
“You still do have someone who loves you, Danni,” Sasha said. “Someone who loves all of you. She’s sitting outside right now and listening to us. She wants to talk to you, if you’re willing.”
Danni snorted, as she raised a paper-thin wall between her mind and Sasha’s. “Does she know that Brian told Daniel not to fuck her until the rest of you give him your blessing? Gods, you treat her like a little kid!”
Sasha’s grip on her hand tightened – not in anger, but just enough to make sure Danni paid attention to her. “Fiona and I had the same talk with Rebecca while Brian was talking to you,” she said. “She understands how we feel and agreed to respect our wishes. That’s not treating her like a child; it’s being open and honest with each other and setting boundaries that honor our commitment to each other. That’s how you make relationships work.”
Sasha withdrew her mind from Danni’s, respecting the boundary she had put in place. She let go of Danni’s hand and rose to her feet. “You may not believe this right now, but we all care about you, Danni. We want to help you find that place of belonging that you’re looking for. But we’re not going to let you lock up Daniel again in order to do it. If you want to be happy — if you want to find a way to live your life as a whole, complete person – then you’re going to have to figure out how to get along with Daniel.”
Danni said nothing. She wanted to trust Sasha. She wanted to believe that things could work out, that she could find a way to live with Daniel without them always fighting each other. But she still loved Jared, and being separated from him hurt more than it had hurt when Daniel had been separated from Rebecca.
A man she had known for a few weeks was inside her heart as thoroughly as the woman Daniel had grown up loving. It was intense, and passionate, and surprising … and strange. Very, very strange.
She hadn’t wanted to think about it before … but maybe that meant something.
“Do you want me to send ‘Becca in?” Sasha asked, her voice low.
Danni shook her head. “No. Not yet. I think … I think I need to talk to Evan and Eva.”
Sasha paused. “Who?” she asked, puzzled.
“Evan and Eva Selindi,” Danni said, looking up at her again. “They’re the ones who gave me the idea to try being an androgyne. I want to see them.” She crossed her arms and set her jaw. “Unless the warden isn’t allowing visitors.”
Sasha winced at that, but she nodded. “All right. How can I get in touch with them?”
Danni grabbed a pencil and notepad from the desk and wrote down the androgyne’s phone number. She tore off the top sheet and handed it to Sasha. “They’re pretty easy to get ahold of. Just don’t call before ten A.M. on the weekends – Evan’s not exactly a morning person.”
Sasha smirked and tucked the paper into her pocket. “I’ll get them here as soon as I can. In the meantime, you might want to think about getting some rest.”
Yeah. Abduction takes a lot out of a girl. Danni refrained from saying the words, and she hoped that Sasha hadn’t heard them. The blonde left without further comment. When she was gone, Danni turned around and finished her meal. As she pushed back her tray, her eyes fell on the notepad.
The pencil was in her hand before she’d given it much thought. She wrote across the top of the pad in large block letters: WHO I AM WHEN I’M NOT WITH JARED. She underlined it, then wrote a number one on the line below it. She paused, pencil poised over the notepad, and thought.
She sat there like that for a very long time.
Miriam sat in the window seat near the middle of the subway train, watching as the lights of the tunnel raced by. No one took the seat next to her, but no one paid her any real attention, either. The Grey was like that; as long as she didn’t do anything too unusual, the mental screens that she wrapped around herself would insure that no one remembered her face, her name, or even her gender. They had taught her to use it when she first became an Elder, in order to separate her role as the voice of the Hive from her role as an individual member. She had soon found that it had other uses, as well. The Grey wasn’t quite invisibility, but in some ways it was even better. For one thing, an invisible person would constantly have people running into her.
She was coming home after a long meeting with the other Elders of the Metamor Hive. She could have taken a taxi, or requisitioned a private skimmer, but Miriam preferred the trains. A skimmer could be tracked fairly easily, but in the subway system she could move like a ghost, coming and going as her duties required without anyone ever being the wiser. Besides, her job was lonely enough that she enjoyed being out among people, even if she rarely interacted with them.
At the moment, though, she wasn’t in the mood for people-watching. The meeting with the other Elders had been tense, to say the least. Most of them had written off Abbey Preston as a lost cause, in spite of her potential; they were content to wait for her to return on her own, if she ever did so. Miriam, of course, knew enough about Victor now that she suspected Abbey couldn’t return home, even if she wanted to.
Miriam told the other Elders that the runner, Callie Linder, had implicated Victor as an agent of the vampire syndicate, but she had kept back the full story of how long Victor had been working for them. She still didn’t have a satisfactory answer for why she had been unable to read Victor’s mind; until she did, she didn’t want to weaken her own position in leadership by admitting how Victor had murdered his fellow psis and pinned the blame for his actions on Felipe Deveraux.
Without that crucial piece of information, the Elders were content to leave Victor alone. The chief priority now was decoding the vampires’ nanotech virus and developing a counter for it. The vamps no doubt considered Victor a valuable ally, and moving against him might provoke them to unleash the nanos before the Hive was ready.
And in the meantime, Abbey Preston is left to fend for herself, Miriam thought in disgust. It continually amazed her how the Elders could be so cautious about endangering their own lives, while at the same time they let teeps like Abbey, Brian and Fiona – the bright, young future of the Collective – put themselves in grave danger for the sake of the Hive’s long term goals. Miriam had long argued that the young were the Hive’s most precious resource — far more important than the Elders themselves, many of whom were past the age of childbearing. Of course, given that she was a deputy headmistress at Westfall, that position was only to be expected, and perhaps for that reason the other Elders gave it little weight.
She sighed. We’ve shaped our entire society around maximizing reproduction … yet when the time comes to endanger our own lives for the sake of those children, we hesitate. Making sacrifices for the next generation is so much easier to think about in the abstract.
She looked around the subway car, wondering if she would see any children among the passengers. She was somewhat surprised to find that she was alone; the other passengers must have all gotten off at previous stops. That’s another thing about the Grey, she thought ruefully. There’s no one to stop you from sinking into your own little world.
She glanced at the clock, and marveled again when she saw that it was only a quarter to midnight. Fairly late, certainly, but on Saturdays the trains ran until three in the morning. She would have expected at least some other passengers to be headed uptown at this hour.
A soft prickling sensation began to crawl down Miriam’s neck, a gentle but persistent urging that she hadn’t felt in a long time. She had learned to pay attention to that feeling. Getting to her feet, she went over to the map and looked for the glowing red LED that showed the train’s present location. They were well out of the downtown district, and the next two stops were both closed for renovation. The nearest exit was fifteen minutes away.
She had just processed the implications of that when the lights in the subway car abruptly went out. The overhead fluorescent panels, the running lights on the floor, even the exit signs and the little LED on the map – all of them went black at once, plunging the car into total darkness. Even the lights in the tunnel outside seemed to be out of commission.
The darkness wrapped itself around Miriam like a serpent – cold, supple, and suffocating. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, focusing her psychometabolic power on her sense of sight. When she opened her eyes, she could see again, albeit in fuzzy shades of black and white. Infrared vision wasn’t very good for making out details, but it was enough to let her defend herself. She kept taking deep, steady breaths as she channeled the rest of her power into enhancing her strength and agility. She was concerned, of course; frightened, even. But she was far from defenseless. She had every reason to be confident in her abilities.
Then the doors opened at both ends of the subway car, and her confidence slipped away like sand through her fingers.
There were twelve of them, six on each side: a mixture of men and women, but all of them with athletic frames and a lean, hungry look in their softly-glowing eyes. They were armed with electric stun wands, clubs, chains, and other implements of mayhem — weapons designed to incapacitate and capture, rather than kill.
But most disconcerting of all was the fact that they all looked dark. She saw some with Irombian features, some that had to be milk-white Northlanders, and a whole range of faces in between, but right now all of them looked dark gray. In the black-and-white world of Miriam’s infravision, that could only mean one thing: their bodies were barely above room temperature. Fighting down a surge of fear, she opened her ears and listened.
She couldn’t hear a single heartbeat among them.
The group in front of her parted, making way for a young man in a leather jacket. He was of average height, with short, spiky hair, angular features, and eyebrows that looked like they had been sculpted. His expression was one of smug self-assurance, with a crooked sneer that promised cruelty untempered by human compassion. He raised a stun wand in his manicured fingers and crossed it over his chest, sketching a mocking bow toward Miriam.
“Good evening, Ms Bakhtavar,” the vampire said, grinning like Death itself. “We’d like to talk to you about the opportunity of a lifetime … so to speak.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Miriam watched the vampires closely, taking stock of her tactical situation. The prognosis wasn’t good. Her psychometabolic powers were more than a match for an average, low-blooded street vamp, but these vampires knew who she was. If they had learned that much, they would know what she was capable of. They wouldn’t send fledglings to take down Miriam; they would send the strongest thugs they could spare.
The lead vampire gave her a knowing smile. Obviously he’d seen the realization dawning on her face. “This doesn’t have to get ugly, Ms Bakhtavar. Malcolm ard’Valos just wants to offer you a job.”
Great Maker, Miriam thought, as terror wrapped its claws around her heart. They’re going to turn me. She hoped they would be stupid enough to try biting her while she was still conscious. A vampire’s mind was disconnected from its physical brain, suspended in a sort of no-man’s-land between life and death, so normally telepathy couldn’t affect them. The act of feeding changed that, creating a psychic bond between the vampire and its victim. A vamp could use that bond to exert its will over its captive, binding them to its control. Mundanes could do nothing to stop them … but telepaths were another story altogether. A vampire who entered a teep’s mind created a link that the teep could exploit. Vamps had no defenses against a mind blast or a psychic compulsion that was force-fed to them through their own blood-bond.
Of course, that would only work if Miriam were still conscious. Judging from the clubs and stun rods the vamps carried, they probably already knew that.
Keep him talking. Look for options. “And what makes Mr ard’Valos believe that I’m interested in working for him?” she asked. “I have a very rewarding job already, thank you.”
“Oh, but I think you’ll find that Mr ard’Valos can be very generous,” the vamp said, grinning. “He’s heard all about your talents. We’ve been looking for someone like you for a long time.”
Miriam eyed the windows on either side of the subway car. Perhaps she could break one and escape through the tunnels? She didn’t like the odds on that. Her regenerative powers could deal with jumping out of a moving train, but the problem was the tunnels themselves. The entire mag-lev network was kept depressurized to one third of an atmosphere in order to cut down on friction. In the event that a train broke down, that was still enough oxygen to keep everyone alive until they could be rescued, but not enough to do anything strenuous. It would be like trying to run a race on top of the highest mountain in the world. Think, Miriam, think! There must be a way out of this.
“Well,” she said, “if we’re going to discuss business opportunities, perhaps we should begin with introductions. You clearly know who I am, but I am afraid I cannot say the same in return.”
The vamp sketched another mocking bow. “You can call me Braddock, ma’am.”
Braddock? Malcolm’s scion?!
Braddock chuckled. “I see you do know me.”
Miriam fought down the rising panic and nodded. “By reputation, at least,” she admitted. “Mr ard’Valos must be … particularly interested in my talents, for him to send such a … prestigious messenger.”
“Consider it a mark of his respect,” Braddock said dryly. “But if you know me, then you should also know that I’m a very busy man. I’m afraid I only have time to make this offer once.” He extended a hand. “Mr ard’Valos wants to meet you. Come along peacefully and you won’t be harmed.”
Out of time. She looked up at the ceiling, hoping for inspiration from on high – and spotted it. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it would have to do. “I’m sorry, Mr Braddock, but I’m afraid I’m rather busy myself tonight. If Mr ard’Valos would care to contact me at Westfall during normal business hours, perhaps we could make other—”
Miriam’s enhanced senses gave her only a split-second of warning, but that was enough. She leapt up and grabbed the handrails on the ceiling of the car, pulling her body out of the way. The spell that one of the vamps behind her had been preparing shot through empty air and struck the vamps in front of her, wrapping them in a mesh of crackling purple energy. Entanglement spell. She swung her legs forward and let go of the handrails, landing in the doorway behind the pack of entangled vamps. She took off into the next car as fast as her enhanced muscles could carry her.
“After her!” Braddock snarled. “And Keenan, get this thing off us, you stupid fuck!”
Miriam’s car had been six cars away from the front of the train. She made it through the first and was halfway across the second when the first pair of vamps caught up with her. They grabbed her legs and held on with a viselike grip, letting her fall face-first toward the floor.
Channeling all her available power into boosting her strength, Miriam tucked and rolled with her momentum instead of falling flat. Her somersault flung the two vampires through midair and slammed them onto their backs in front of her. She struck out, lightning-fast, and put out their eyes with a pair of two-handed hook-strikes. While they writhed in pain, she back-flipped and regained her feet.
She grabbed one of the vertical steel poles in the standing-room section of the train and pulled it loose from its moorings. Wielding it like a quarterstaff, she crushed the heads of both vamps, then ran past them, continuing her run toward the front of the train. If she could just reach the control station in the front car, she had a chance of getting out of this alive.
She heard two more of her pursuers closing in on her as she entered the third car, so she turned and struck out with the pole as they drew near. The vamps dodged the strike — Too fast, they’re just too fast! — and one of them, a black-haired female, swung a chain at her, wrapping it around her wrist. The vamp darted around one of the vertical poles and yanked hard on the chain, using the pole as pulley to draw Miriam into range. Meanwhile the other vamp, a slender Irombian male, pulled a handful of reagents from his belt and started casting a spell. Miriam threw her staff at the wizard like a blunt-headed javelin, crushing several of his fingers and spilling the ‘gents onto the floor of the train. Then she let herself move with the force of the chain, darting toward the pole faster than the female vamp could drag her there. Miriam grabbed the pole in both hands and swung herself around in a flying kick, aiming for the vamp’s head. The vamp dropped to the floor, dodging the blow, and sprang back up immediately, launching a quick series of blows at Miriam’s head and torso. Miriam blocked and answered with attacks of her own, even as she worked to unravel the chain from her wrist.
The vamp was faster than Miriam, but Miriam was stronger. She finally got a solid grip on the woman and pulled her into a grapple, trapping the chain between them. She struck the vampire’s knee and snapped it backwards, sending her sprawling to the floor. The wizard tackled Miriam from behind, but she threw him over her shoulder and sent him sailing to the back of the car, where he struck two more vamps that had just entered. Behind them were the two she had incapacitated earlier, their eyes already regrown in their sockets.
Fighting them takes too much time! Miriam thought desperately. Need to slow them down…
Five vamps in one confined spot: she wasn’t going to get a better opportunity than this. She pulled out one of the egg-shaped reagent pods she had purchased earlier that day and threw it at the cluster of vamps. The garlic bomb exploded just over their heads, creating a cloud of fine dust that was barely visible in her black-and-white heat vision. I have to remember to thank Ms Linder for that idea, if I ever see her again…
While the other vampires staggered and retched, Miriam snapped the neck of the one at her feet. She would regenerate quickly, but the injury gave Miriam enough time to pull a knife and a gun from the woman’s belt. She checked the clip, which was full, then slid it back in and put bullets in the heads of all six vamps. Between the cranial injuries and the garlic, she hoped she’d bought herself enough time.
Channeling all her power back into speed, she raced for the head car. Once there, she locked the door to the car behind her and used two of the steel poles to bar it shut. The door to the control station was locked, so she pulled the door off its hinges. The little one-person compartment was empty; no doubt the train was set for remote operation.
None of the text on the control panel was readable in infrared; all of the equipment glowed in various shades of flat grey, depending on how much heat it was putting out. Miriam hit the light switch by the door, then switched her eyes back to normal-spectrum vision. Now that she could read the controls, Miriam switched the system back to manual control and pressed the button labeled EMERGENCY DECOUPLING. A touch panel lit up, showing a diagram of the train with the coupling points marked in red. Miriam tapped the box in the upper right corner that read SELECT ALL. A confirmation message popped up: DECOUPLE ALL CARS? She pushed YES.
A series of soft jerks ran through the train, as one by one the trailing cars decoupled and disappeared from the display. Each of the cars would glide to a halt, using their individual mag-lev engines to decelerate before sinking gently to the ground. Meanwhile Miriam’s car sped onward, heading for the next open subway station. The vampires would no doubt pursue her on foot, but once she got out of the tunnels she would have no trouble disappearing into the crowds. On a hunch, she pulled out her mobile phone and turned it off; it was the only way she could think of that they could have tracked her location. They must have captured or killed one of her agents and used his phone to trace back to her.
Exiting the control booth, she slid wearily into one of the passenger seats and closed her eyes.
Ten seconds later, one of the windows on the opposite side of the train shattered.
Wind howled. Safety glass showered the floor. Miriam’s ears screamed with pain at the sudden pressure change, as the train vented its atmosphere to the depressurized tunnel outside. A pair of legs slipped down from the roof of the car, and Braddock pulled himself inside, his fangs glinting in a death’s-head grin. “Peek-a-boo…”
Gasping in the too-thin air, Miriam put all her power into speed and darted around him before he had the chance to act. She threw herself from the train without a second’s hesitation.
For an instant there was only the sound: the crunch of snapping bones, oddly muted in the thin atmosphere of the tunnel. Then, pain. A world of it, a universe of it, desperate agony that erased any sense of time or place or purpose. Her body instinctively threw all of its psychic power into regeneration, knitting her back together with inhuman speed, but from Miriam’s perspective the pain was infinite and eternal.
The whine of mag-lev engines decelerating brought her back to the present. Somewhere, further down the tunnel, Braddock had stopped the car.
He would be coming back for her.
Miriam struggled to her hands and knees, then finally to her feet, bracing herself against the wall of the tunnel. She looked around for an emergency exit, and spotted a sign pointing to the left, back down the way they had come.
She staggered down the tunnel, one shaky step in front of another. Her body had exhausted its oxygen stores in the effort to heal herself, and it still hadn’t been able to finish the job. All of her psychic powers depended on her brain, and her brain needed oxygen. Down here in the tunnels, she barely had enough air to walk and remain conscious, much less to use any of her powers.
The emergency exit appeared up ahead, maybe a hundred meters away: an illuminated airlock painted in stripes of red and yellow. A ladder ran up the curving side of the tunnel and into the small alcove that housed the airlock. Miriam kept moving forward, gulping down deep, heaving gasps of air. She could feel the nitrogen boiling out of her blood, setting her lungs on fire and driving sharp lances of pain into her joints. Her vision blurred. A splitting headache began to pound in her temples. Still she kept moving.
By the time she reached the ladder, she had nearly forgotten where she was or what she was trying to accomplish. Part of her just wanted to lie down and go to sleep until the pain went away — No, keep moving, you old fool! Damn you, keep moving!
She put her hands on the rungs, gripped them as tightly as her agonized fingers could manage, and began to pull herself up, one rung at a time.
Her tortured joints pleaded for mercy. Her vision dimmed – graying at the edges at first, then blacking out entirely. She kept going, working by touch, feeling for each rung and then gasping in pain as she pulled herself up. How many rungs were there? She couldn’t remember. She knew she had to be nearly there, it couldn’t possibly be much further…
She reached up for the next rung and her hand closed on empty air. Panicking, she flailed around, seeking anything to hold on to—
And then she had it. Her fingers closed on the handle for the airlock.
With one last gasp of strength, she pulled down on the handle. There was a rumbling noise as the hatch slid open, but she felt it in the rungs of the ladder more than she heard it. She reached up again, grasped the frame of the airlock door, and began to haul herself up.
Then a hand grabbed her foot and pulled, hard, and she fell three meters to the concrete floor of the tunnel.
She landed on her shoulder, which dislocated on impact. Stars danced in front of eyes already blinded by loss of air. It was nowhere near as bad as falling from a moving train, but her body’s regenerative powers were long since gone. She gasped and sobbed, unable to move, unable to think. She felt the cold, numbing fingers of unconsciousness begin to wrap themselves around her mind, and part of her welcomed it.
No! Get up! Move! Run!
But she could not.
She felt strong arms wrap themselves around her, cold hands caressing her skin. She couldn’t see anything, but she heard the voice. “Damn, you look like you’re in pretty bad shape there, Miriam,” Braddock said. “But don’t worry. I’ll make it all better…”
The bolts on the door slid open. Danni set down her pencil and turned to face the entrance as Eva slipped inside. The androgyne rushed to Danni’s side immediately, worry etched on her face.
“Gods, Danni, are you all right? When Sasha told us you were at Artax’s place, I never imagined something like this!”
Eva put her hand on Danni’s shoulder, offering an embrace. Danni accepted. As she wrapped her arms around the other woman, she whispered, “Thanks for coming, Eva. I … I needed to talk to someone who understands what it’s like.”
“Of course, of course,” Eva soothed, running her hand over Danni’s hair in a comforting gesture. “You know that all you had to do is ask…”
They sat down on the edge of the bed together. Eva pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at the tears running down Danni’s face. “In earnest, my dear, are you all right? I can’t believe they have you … just … locked up in here!”
Danni sighed. “I’m holding up okay, considering. Try not to get too angry with them, okay? I know it looks bad, but they’re doing this because they care about me.” She looked over at her notepad. The list she’d been working on — WHO I AM WHEN I’M NOT WITH JARED — was still disturbingly sparse. “Besides,” she added in a low voice, “it’s possible that my judgment has been a little … biased, lately.”
Eva put an arm around her in a sideways hug. “Transition been hitting you hard, has it?”
Danni laughed bitterly. “That’s the understatement of the year.”
Eva fell silent for a moment. “I’m sorry,” she said at last. “I’ve made a real hash of things, haven’t I?”
Danni frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s my fault you’re in this fix, isn’t it? I’m the genius who suggested that you should take the Curse.” She lowered her head. “I thought I was helping you, but I think I just bollixed things up even worse.”
“This isn’t your fault, Eva. You gave me the idea, but it was meeting Jared that convinced me to go through with it.” Danni reached out and touched Eva’s chin, gently urging her to look up. She did, and Danni gave her a little half-smile. “Besides, if you hadn’t suggested it, I wouldn’t even exist. So I’m actually kind of grateful.”
Eva returned the smile, though her eyes still mirrored the sadness that Danni felt herself. “Tell me how I can help,” she said.
“I need your input,” Danni said. “Ever since Daniel and I split into two people, we’ve been at each other’s throats. Metaphorically, anyway,” she added, off Eva’s astonished look. “Daniel and I have different needs. We want different things. I need you to teach me how to live with him – how to compromise, find balance.”
Eva looked into her eyes for a long moment. “Just so we’re clear,” she said slowly, “you’re saying that you actually perceive of Daniel as a separate person. Not just a different filter over your perceptions, an alter-ego with a different way of looking at the world … but an actual, separate personality?”
Danni nodded. “Pretty much, yeah.”
Eva took Danni’s hand and squeezed it. “Maybe you’d best start at the beginning.”
An hour later, Eva walked out of Danni’s cell and into the observation room, shifting back to Evan as she did so.
“You have a problem,” he said.
“Just one?” Sasha murmured. “That’s an improvement.”
“What’s wrong?” Rebecca asked, in a tone that was not quite bordering on panic but indicated she was ready to make the trip.
Evan gestured over his shoulder. “That is the most bifurcated first-gen I have ever seen.”
Rebecca blinked.
Evan sighed. “Look, normally a first-gen androgyne has only the faintest notion that there’s any real difference between himself and herself. The differences in thought and behavior are all subconscious.”
“Which obviously isn’t the case with Daniel and Danni,” Sasha said.
“Exactly. It takes several generations for the Curse to alter a family’s genetics to the point that they display this sort of independent, parallel processing. I’ve seen sixth-generation androgynes who are less double-minded than Daniel and Danni. Not only do they perceive of themselves as separate people, but their desires are divergent enough that they’re actually fighting each other.”
“Do you think that’s because of Jared?” Rebecca asked.
Evan snorted and threw up his hands. “I don’t see what else it could be. I’ve never seen anything like this before.” He paused. “Well, actually that’s not true. I have seen one androgyne who took the Curse at adulthood and had similar troubles adjusting.” He smiled humorlessly. “Poor sod was an orphan, grew up on the Street. Turns out he was a fifth-gen and didn’t realize it.”
Sasha winced. “Ouch. What happened to him?”
“Had to be institutionalized,” Evan said. “Physically speaking, his brain was prepared for the parallel processing, but emotionally he couldn’t cope with the sudden split in his psyche.”
“What?!” Rebecca gasped.
Evan sighed and sat down on the corner of the desk next to the computer monitors. “Imagine if you had a twin brother who suddenly woke from a twenty-year coma, with no memory of his life prior to that moment. He’s a fully independent, fully conscious person, but he has no … context, no sense of place or identity. Even if you could give him access to all of your memories, that wouldn’t tell him who he is. Your memories are too deeply rooted in your own self-image, and your identity as a woman. Most high-gens take the Curse soon after birth, so they have a lifetime of memories for both of their personalities. The first-gens who take the Curse later in life have to do some adjusting, but they usually just think of themselves as one person with two bodies; the differentiation between their male and female sides is subtle, and it takes years to fully manifest.”
“So Danni has the worst of both worlds,” Sasha said. “A high-gen’s split personality with a low-gen’s inexperience.”
“Exactly,” Evan said. “And that makes her unstable. Danni doesn’t know how to be Danni, and Daniel’s memories are too different for her embrace them as hers. Ironically, she was actually doing better before she realized Daniel was still inside her; she could tell herself that he was her old self and she’d just been reborn as someone new.” He grimaced. “Now that she knows Daniel is still in there, she feels like those memories belong to him … which leaves her feeling like she has nothing.”
“Except Jared,” Rebecca murmured.
“Except Jared,” Evan agreed.
Rebecca wrung her hands and looked over at Artax, who had been listening quietly in the back corner of the room. “Can we fix this? Can we give Danni something that would … I don’t know … stabilize her? Help her feel more like a complete person?”
“Or maybe reintegrate her with Daniel?” Sasha added.
Artax stroked his beard thoughtfully. “It might be possible to do both,” he said. “Sasha, the Collective has psi-therapists who can reconstruct the minds of the insane, do they not?”
Sasha nodded. “Yeah, we do. It’s a really specialized field of telepathy – very delicate, very tricky. I’ve still got seven years of training left before they’ll let me tackle something like that.”
“No offense, my dear, but I find that rather comforting,” Artax said dryly. “You’re far too young to be rebuilding someone’s mind from the ground up. Nevertheless, you must know people who are qualified to perform that sort of work.”
“Sure,” Sasha agreed. “You think we could do something like that for Danni?”
“But Danni isn’t crazy,” Rebecca protested. “Not crazy crazy, anyway. If I get what you’re saying, Evan, the problem is that she feels like she doesn’t have a past … and she really doesn’t.”
“True, but your therapists may be able to mend that,” Artax said. “What if you could give Danni a past, a set of memories that could stand alongside Daniel’s? What if you could give her a childhood, an adolescence, a history of choices and decisions that would help her to understand herself?”
“That could work,” Sasha said slowly. “We could psychically regress her to earlier ages and let her role-play through a bunch of VR scenarios, without access to Daniel’s memories. She’d basically be building up an abridged version of her life, with the chance to make her own choices and develop her own identity.”
“But it wouldn’t be real,” Rebecca said. “You’d be giving her a bunch of memories of things that never happened!”
“Yeah, but her choices would be real,” Sasha said. “Life is less about what happens to you than how you respond to it. After we brought her out of the scenario, she’d know that the memories were fictional – but the decisions she made would tell her something real about herself.”
“And if you made those life experiences similar to Daniel’s, it would actually bring their two sides closer together,” Artax said. “Danni would be able to compare her version of events to Daniel’s, and the similarities and differences would help them to understand each other.”
“Do you think that will fix what Jared did to her?” Rebecca asked.
“It certainly can’t hurt,” Artax said. “Daniel’s soul ‘remembers’ things about who they are that Danni’s soul forgot under Jared’s influence. The more we can bring them together, the more Daniel’s soul will be able to help reverse that damage.”
“Like fixing a strand of damaged DNA by using the sister strand as a template,” Sasha said.
Rebecca smiled. “Daniel would like that analogy.”
Sasha looked up at Evan. “You see any potential problems with this?”
Evan shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “I’m afraid psychotherapy is outside my realm of expertise. It sounds good when you say it, but it also sounds terribly time-consuming.” He gave an apologetic smile. “And it means trusting the Collective, which is something neither Daniel nor Danni has been very keen on.”
“Yeah, well, they’re in good company,” Sasha said sourly. “But I know the therapists who do this stuff, and I think we can trust them.”
“Good enough for me,” Rebecca said, levering herself out of her chair. “Let’s go tell Danni and see what she thinks.”
Danni listened intently as Sasha outlined the plan. While she was calm on the surface, Rebecca could sense her mixed emotions about the whole idea, as well as the increasing feelings of self-doubt that gnawed at her mind. Rebecca sat on the edge of the bed, close enough to take Danni’s hand if she offered it but far enough away to avoid crowding her.
When Sasha finished, Danni sat back in her chair and folded her hands, her eyes going distant. “How well do you know the shrinks who would be doing the therapy?” she asked.
Sasha shrugged. “I’ve known all of them for at least a year. Longer, for the ones who trained me when I was in MID. If I ever went crazy, I’d trust them to bring me back.”
Danni nodded. “Do we have any other options?”
“Not yet,” Sasha admitted. “But if you aren’t comfortable with the idea, Artax is willing to keep looking for other possibilities.”
“But I’d have to stay here,” Danni said.
Sasha grimaced. “I’m afraid so. It’s the only way to keep both of you safe until you get this sorted out between you.”
Danni sighed and lowered her head. “Look, it’s really late,” she said. “And I need some time to think about this.”
“Take all the time you need,” Sasha said gently. “‘Becca will come by tomorrow to check on you. If you need me for anything, just tell her or Artax and they’ll send for me right away.”
“All right.” Danni hesitated, then looked up at each of them in turn. “It feels strange to be saying this, but … thank you. You’ve forced me to face some things that I probably wouldn’t have dealt with on my own.”
Sasha smiled. “You’re welcome. Go on and get some rest; I’ll be back on Monday.” She gave a quick bow, and Danni nodded in return. She slipped past Artax and out the door.
“Best of luck, Danni,” Evan said gravely, raising a hand in parting. “Call for me if you need anything.”
Danni got up and went over to him, wrapping her arms around him in a tight hug. “Thanks, Evan. Without you and Eva, I don’t know how I would have gotten through any of this.”
Evan looked surprised at Danni’s display of affection. For a moment he went rigid, blushing as he exchanged a look with Rebecca over Danni’s shoulder. Rebecca smiled, and Evan’s posture softened. He wrapped his arms around Danni and ran a hand gently over her wavy black hair. It was an oddly paternal gesture, but Danni seemed to appreciate it.
“You are most welcome,” he said softly. He drew back from the embrace and touched her cheek. “Take care of yourselves, all right?”
She laughed a little at that. “All right. Talk to you soon, Evan.”
He gave her a half-bow and walked out. Danni looked up at Artax, who was still holding the door open. She glanced over at Rebecca, then back at the wizard. “Give us a minute, okay? And turn off the microphones.”
Artax met Rebecca’s eyes for a moment, then nodded and shut the door. Danni turned to face her. They gazed at each other across the room for a long moment.
“I am a real, Grade A, Class One bitch,” Danni said.
Rebecca blushed. “Danni, it’s okay—”
Danni shook her head firmly. “No it isn’t. Those things I said to you before … they were totally uncalled-for. And stupid. And cruel.” She looked away. “And they weren’t even true. You didn’t kill Daniel. I locked him away … because he wasn’t convenient.”
Rebecca stood up and went over to her, putting a hand on Danni’s arm. “You didn’t know,” she said. “You weren’t trying to lock him away, it just happened. It wasn’t your fault.” It was Jared’s, she thought bitterly, but she didn’t say it. Danni flinched, and Rebecca wondered if she’d heard it anyway.
“No, but it’s my fault that I said what I did,” Danni said. “I’m sorry, Becks. I thought…” She sighed, sounding frustrated. “I finally had things figured out, and then there you were, making it all … complicated again. I thought that I needed to make a clean break with Daniel, with the person I used to be. I thought if I was … hard enough, cruel enough … that you’d stop chasing me. That you’d leave me alone so I wouldn’t have to deal with how you made me feel.”
Rebecca swallowed back the lump that was growing in her throat. “And … how did I make you feel?” she asked, carefully.
Danni looked up at her then, her bright blue eyes earnest and full of regret. “Like part of my life was missing,” she said. She reached up and touched Rebecca’s hair. “Maybe the most important part.”
For one long, dizzying moment they looked at each other in silence. Then they were kissing, and they clung to each other like a drowning man clings to a life preserver, and Rebecca didn’t know whether it had been her who started it or Danni … and then their minds opened up and wrapped around each other, and suddenly it didn’t matter whose idea it was.
I am so sorry, Danni’s voice said in her mind.
I forgive you, Rebecca said back.
You came back for us. For both of us. I didn’t expect that.
I love you. All of you! You’re two sides of the same person I fell in love with.
Danni’s mental voice was tinged with embarrassment and regret. I’m not that person anymore, Becks. Neither is Daniel.
I know, Rebecca assured her. And I’m not the person I was when we first fell in love, either. It’s okay. It just means there’s more for us to discover together.
A surge of emotion ran through the link, and Rebecca felt tears on both of their faces.
I don’t know what I ever did to deserve you, Danni said.
Rebecca clutched her even tighter and kissed her hard. You were yourself. That’s all I ever asked of you.
Danni broke the kiss and put her head over Rebecca’s shoulder, crying softly. Rebecca felt Danni’s knees starting to give way, and she guided her over to the bed before she lost her balance. They lay there, holding each other, while Danni let go of the burden that had been building up inside her. At last the tears stopped flowing, and they just looked at each other again. Danni’s hand found hers, and their fingers intertwined. The sensation was both strange and achingly familiar.
“Could this ever really work?” Danni asked. She sounded hesitant and vulnerable. “Would Brian and the others ever really accept me?”
Rebecca ran her thumb gently over Danni’s. “Well, I haven’t gotten any visions about it … but yeah, I think they will.”
Danni looked down at the patch of bedspread between them. “I was afraid … you know. To let myself hope. I started all this to see if I could really handle being with a man – to see if I could be Brian’s wife, if that’s what it took to be with you.”
Rebecca gaped, astonished. “You did this for me? To be with me?”
Danni nodded glumly. “Jared was supposed to be a … a test drive, I guess. To see if I could do it.” She shrugged one shoulder. “Then I started falling in love with him, and … it was easier, you know? He made me feel so happy, so alive. It was easier to forget about trying to be with you and … just go with what I had.”
Rebecca reached up and touched Danni’s shoulder, then ran her fingertips over Danni’s neck and down the line of her jaw. “I understand,” she said. Then, after a moment, “You still love him.”
“I do,” Danni said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Gods, Becks. I was going to marry him. I still would … but it wouldn’t be fair to Daniel. I know that now.” She reached up and took Rebecca’s hand again. “And what Sasha said before, about how I don’t know who I am when I’m not with him … she was right. Damn it all, but she was right.” She shook her head. “I just don’t know if I’m ready to let my brain get reconstructed by a bunch of Collective shrinks.”
“I know.” Rebecca squeezed her hand. “Do you want me to stay tonight?”
For a moment, it looked as though Danni might say yes – but then she sighed and sat up. “No,” she said. “Ever since I changed, I’ve avoided being alone with myself. I’m starting to think that’s because I didn’t want to look too closely in the mirror. I’ve got some thinking to do—” She smiled wryly. “—and if you’re here, all I’ll be thinking about is you.”
Rebecca returned the smile, and Danni helped her to her feet. “All right, then,” she said. “You do your thinking, and I’ll come back with breakfast tomorrow. Then, if you’re ready, we’ll talk.”
“Sounds good.” Danni embraced her once more, briefly, and walked her to the door. Rebecca knocked, and a moment later Artax opened it. “Good night, Becks.”
“Sweet dreams, Danni.” Rebecca stood on tiptoes and kissed her cheek, then stepped out into the hallway. Then the door swung shut, silencing the link between them. The sudden quiet was still jarring … but this time, Rebecca felt the stirrings of hope.
Maybe, she thought, it’s all going to work out, after all. Maybe everything’s gonna be all right.
Monday, June 24th.
Miriam started awake like a woman being roused out of a nightmare. She bolted upright, gasping for breath, staring around wildly at her surroundings.
Canopy bed. High ceilings. Large windows with heavy shutters. Antique furniture. Master bedroom. Where am I?
Her thoughts were disjointed. She remembered darkness, and terror, and pain. Pain from what? She couldn't remember, but she knew that it had touched every part of her body. That pain was completely gone now, replaced by a ravenous hunger. She felt like she hadn't eaten in a week. Her muscles were filled with a restless energy, a need to move, to get out. And yet…
Something's wrong.
As an egoist, Miriam had an inhuman awareness of her own body. As her disorientation faded, she realized several things in quick succession. The urgent fight-or-flight response that filled her body was the sort of thing that was normally triggered by adrenaline. Her heart should be pounding, her arteries dilating to handle the increased flow. That wasn't happening.
As a matter of fact, her heart wasn't beating at all.
Panic kicked in, and Miriam reacted without thinking. She focused her psychometabolic power and channeled it into her heart, willing the recalcitrant muscle to pump, damn you, pump as if your life depends on it because it literally does—
Her heart clenched and stuttered, seemingly unsure of itself, but at last it settled into a familiar rhythm. The quiet lub-dub was reassuring after the eerie silence of a moment before. Miriam looked down at her skin, which had turned an ashen grey, and watched as color slowly crept into it once more.
Color, but not warmth. Though blood was flowing through her body again, her skin was as cold as plastic. She tried to channel more of her power into producing heat, commanding the trillions of mitochondria in her body to work faster at breaking down fuel into energy.
There was no response.
Miriam sat there in stunned silence. Her body still functioned on the broad scale; her muscles still moved, her eyes could see, her stomach knotted in hunger. At the cellular level, though, everything was wrong. The biochemical processes with which she was so intimately familiar had been replaced by something … else. For an egoist of her power, it was like waking up to find that her brain had been transplanted into an automaton. Everything looked right, but it was only a simulation, a mockery of the real thing.
A mockery of life. Great Maker…
The events of Saturday night came rushing back. What day is it? Not important! She remembered the desperate fight on the subway car, and the even more desperate flight through the tunnels. She had nearly made it, nearly reached safety – and then…
Braddock. She reached up to her neck and found the remains of two puckered scars. Fear and dread rushed through her; she would have shivered, had her body still been able to do so. She knew now what it was that she hungered for.
She looked at the clock on the wall, an ornate assembly of brass and carved wood. Just after three o'clock. She peered behind the window shutters and saw darkness outside, so obviously that was three A.M. That would make it … what? Two hours until sunrise? Three? The solstice had been on Friday, so it would be early; she knew that much. Call it two hours. Two hours to get away from wherever Braddock had taken her, to contact the Hive, to warn them of what had happened to her.
And then … to end this.
She opened one of the double doors and found herself on a balcony surrounding a high-ceilinged reception hall. Other doors lined the walls on all sides, while overhead a skylight showed the waxing moon. An elaborate spiral staircase descended to one corner of the room below. Miriam followed it down, then paused to take stock of her surroundings.
Much like the bedroom, the furnishings in the reception hall spoke of wealth and refinement. Kelewair rugs, polished hardwood floors and fine artwork on the walls all spoke of an owner who was accustomed to wealth and knew how to distinguish the valuable from the merely expensive. A grand piano sat in one corner of the room, a full-sized harp beside it. White marble statues of two women stood on either side of the front doors, their expressions hard and regal. The inscriptions at the base of the statues identified them as Mistress Lilith and Mistress Talia: the daedra lord who had created the vampires, and the queen who now ruled in her place.
Miriam tried the door, but it was locked. She tried to force it, but it resisted even her considerable strength. Frustrated, she took a running start and slammed her shoulder against the door. It didn't budge. Somewhere overhead a warning chime began to sound.
A door opened a few meters down the hallway at the far end of the reception hall. The scent filled her nostrils a moment later. It was sweet and tangy, and it promised a satisfaction like nothing she had ever known. Her stomach knotted again, and she felt herself being drawn toward the scent, its power drawing her like a moth to a flame.
Braddock was waiting at the entrance, a little smirk playing on the corner of his mouth. He nodded at the open door, a silent instruction to enter. Miriam couldn't have stayed outside in any case.
The door led to a lounge, smaller than the reception hall but still large enough to house two long couches and an enormous high-backed chair. Miriam was surprised to see that the room was was not dark and shadowed, but white — white walls, white carpets, white light from the glow panels that covered the ceiling. Even the furniture was upholstered in white leather. In the midst of this blank canvas of a room, the eye was immediately and irresistibly drawn to him.
He sat enthroned in the high-backed chair, dressed in a dark red smoking jacket of crushed velvet. He appeared to be in his early forties, with a strong jaw and sharp, distinguished features. His dark hair was graying at the temples, but with his commanding presence and regal bearing it only made him look more dignified. His eyes were a subtle, faded green, but they drew her gaze and held it with unbreakable strength.
Miriam was dimly aware of other people in the room: six women, all dressed in white, each of a different race or species. Five of them sat at his feet, arrayed around his throne like obedient pets. One of them, a blonde Northlander, was nestled in the chair beside him, one leg draped over his lap. The woman's face was alight with a kind of delirious ecstasy. Blood oozed from two wounds in the side of her neck, its scent filling Miriam's nostrils. Her stomach pleaded with her to take the girl, to taste that blood for herself, but she could do nothing but stare at the man, the man whose eyes held her fast and devoured her will.
He spoke.
“Ah, at last.” He smiled without showing his teeth. “Welcome to my home, Miriam Bakhtavar. I am Malcolm ard'Valos.” He gestured at the woman beside him. “I would be honored if you would join me for a drink.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Miriam stood face to face with the vampire prince of Metamor City. Part of her wanted to attack him, to destroy this crime lord who posed such a threat to her people. As she looked on him, though – as she gazed into those faded green eyes that commanded instant attention and compliance – she knew that she could sooner take her own life than harm him. Some instinct deep inside her spoke to her with absolute conviction: This is the master. His word is law.
“I see you're looking much better,” he said, his voice pleasant and cultured. “You were a bit of a mess when Braddock brought you in.” He ran a finger along the neck of the thrall nestled beside him, mopping up the two thin lines of blood that dribbled from her wounds. She shuddered in ecstasy under his touch, letting out a soft murr of pleasure. He raised the finger to his lips and licked it absently.
Miriam's stomach growled, and she moaned in spite of herself.
“Yes,” Malcolm said thoughtfully. “I imagine you must be hungry now. The Change will do that to you. Fortunately, I have something to help you with that.”
He turned his head, and abruptly Miriam found that she could move again, though that soul-deep instinct still prevented her from taking any action against him. Malcolm, for his part, seemed not to notice the struggle taking place inside her – or, if he noticed, he had no doubts about how it would end. He reached down beside his chair and grasped the end of a chain, then tugged on it twice. From behind the chair, another woman crawled into view. Unlike the thrall at Malcolm's side or the ones at his feet, this one was not dressed in a white cotton shift. She was naked, and the collar around her neck was her only ornamentation.
She must have been beautiful once: a half-Elven woman, perhaps thirty-five, with porcelain-white skin and opalescent hair that shimmered like mother-of-pearl. Her slender body was covered with the scars from dozens of bites. She did not look up as Malcolm guided her to a spot between himself and Miriam.
“This one is for you,” he said. “I must confess it no longer interests me, but it's healthy and its blood is sweet. Take good care of it and it should last another two hundred years, at least.” He held out the end of the chain to Miriam. “Go on, take it. Consider it a present to celebrate your first day In Between.”
Miriam felt sick. She knelt down in front of the thrall and tried to meet her eyes, but the woman shied away and looked at the floor.
Malcolm chuckled. “That's why you need the chain, Miriam.” He gave it a tug, and the woman's head jerked back, bringing her eyes up to meet Miriam's. They were a pale lilac color, which would have been beautiful had she not been so afraid. The woman froze as soon as their eyes met and stared at Miriam as if hypnotized. Miriam could feel her will reaching out to surround the woman, enveloping her, testing her strength. The thrall's defenses were like tissue paper, and she immediately submitted herself to Miriam. With astonishment, Miriam saw the woman's entire mind spread open before her, passively awaiting whatever command she might give her. She was an empty vessel waiting to be filled.
Shaken, Miriam rose to her feet and took the end of the chain from Malcolm.
“Very good,” Malcolm said. “A fledgling vampire can learn a lot from her first thrall: Responsibility, dominance, submission, the importance of the hierarchy. This one is yours to do with as you wish.”
The thrall nuzzled up against Miriam's side, wordlessly brushing her cheek against Miriam's leg. Miriam absently stroked the woman's hair, as if she were comforting a dog – then realized what she was doing and felt disgusted with herself.
“Can I … set her free?” Miriam asked, tentatively.
Malcolm laughed, a low, rich sound full of genuine amusement. “Anything except that,” he said. “This one knows too much about my operations. In any case, it's so domesticated now that I doubt it could survive on its own.”
Miriam looked down at wretched creature beside her. Damn it, he's probably right.
“You may go ahead and taste it, if you like,” Malcolm offered. “Don't worry about the carpet; it's enchanted to repel stains. The sooner you drink from it, the sooner you'll be able make it truly yours.”
The thrall craned her neck, exposing her throat to Miriam. Her hunger screamed at her to be satisfied, but Miriam was used to disciplining her body. She focused her psychometabolic powers and commanded her stomach to be silent. She couldn't actually satisfy her hunger through the use of her abilities, but she could block it out for long periods of time … or, at least, she'd been able to before. She didn't know how long it would last, but her stomach's rumbling did fall silent.
“No, thank you, Mr ard'Valos,” Miriam said. She stood up a bit straighter, but that inner compulsion to submit kept her eyes on the floor. “I … thank you for the generous gift, but I prefer to dine in private.”
Malcolm gave her a knowing smile. “As you wish,” he said. “In that case, I will give you your instructions and let Braddock show you to your new apartment.”
Miriam lowered her head and nodded once. The sooner Malcolm dismissed her, the sooner she could get around to ending this abominable half-existence. “What would you have me do?” she asked.
The vampire prince sat back in his chair, letting the blonde thrall beside him nuzzle up against his shoulder. He stroked her hair absently as he spoke. “I'm concerned about your people, Miriam. I've been watching them over the last couple of centuries, and I don't much like the way things have been going.”
“My people would probably say the same thing about you, sir,” Miriam said.
Malcolm chuckled again. “Probably so,” he admitted. “But let's be honest here, Miriam: Your people are a disruption of the natural order. Mother Lilith created us to feed on humans, to have mastery over them. That's our birthright as the top predators in the food chain. But then your people come along, and all of a sudden we have to worry about our livestock resisting our will – or, worse yet, putting compulsions in our minds when we try to eat.” He grinned, his pointed canines gleaming in the bright light of the room. “That's about as disturbing as if cows evolved opposable thumbs and a taste for human flesh!”
A sick dread settled in the pit of Miriam's stomach. “What do you propose to do about this, Mr ard'Valos?”
He snorted. “All right, you can stop with the 'Mr ard'Valos' business,” he said. “Would you address a king by his last name?”
“I suppose not,” Miriam said. “What would you have me call you then … sir?”
He shrugged. “'Sir' will do in a pinch,” he said. “'Master' is better. You can also call me 'my lord' or 'my liege', if you're of a more old-fashioned bent – which I can imagine you might be, given your age. 'Sire' is a title that properly belongs to Braddock, since he's the one who brought you across, but you can also use it to refer to anyone in his direct bloodline – meaning me, and our Queen above me.”
Miriam nodded once more. “As you wish … my lord.”
“Very good,” Malcolm said. “Now, then, getting back to the question: I was content to leave your people alone, Miriam. Oh, certainly I intended to take some precautions, to develop certain defenses to protect my interests – but the plain fact is that you weren't a big enough problem to bother starting a war over.”
Miriam blinked. “But you just said that we were a disruption to the natural order.”
“And so you are,” Malcolm agreed. “But war is terribly bad for business, Miriam. My organization prospers because we impose order on chaos. Humans have an insatiable appetite for their vices: sex, gambling, drugs. We serve that appetite while keeping the more destructive side under control. Ever wondered why you don't see street crime on the upper levels of the city? Because we don't allow it. It's not the police who keep the criminal element under control, Miriam: it's us.” He shrugged. “When you get into a war, that changes. The ugly events of Street-side start happening higher up. That's when you get shoot-outs at skyports and messy break-ins at fifth-level office buildings. All of a sudden you're spending your time and money on eliminating threats instead of making more money, and that's not good for anyone.”
Miriam looked up, not quite at his eyes but only a little below them. “My lord … if you aren't planning to start a war, then why take me? You must know that my people will be outraged as soon as they find out what you've done.”
“Ah! Yes, that is a concern,” Malcolm said. “But then, given your egoist abilities, I don't really think it's going to be a problem. After all, here you are in front of me, your skin flushed with color, your heart beating. Once you have a good feeding you'll even be able to bring up your body temperature.”
He put a finger to his lips, pursing them in thought. “As a matter of fact, that's your first order: Whatever you're doing with your powers right now, keep doing it at all times – and make sure that you stay well-fed so you can keep your temperature at human norm. You're going to be our eyes and ears inside the Collective, and we can't let you be discovered because you forgot to keep your heart beating. Oh, and obviously you're not allowed to tell anyone about what happened to you, either, or about anything else you might learn about our organization – unless I tell you otherwise.”
He said the words casually, but they fell on her with the weight and power of a wizard's geas. She could not disobey him; the compulsion within her would bind him to his will, as surely as any spell. “As you wish, my lord,” she whispered.
“See, now you're getting the hang of it,” Malcolm said. “You will report to Braddock, unless I call for you in person. Keep him informed of anything the Collective might do that would pose a threat to our operations – especially if they're planning any more attacks like the one against Viscount. And any intelligence the Collective might pick up about what we're doing – be sure to tell Braddock about that, as well.”
Miriam just nodded. In another couple of hours the sun would be up and it wouldn't matter, anyway. “Yes, my lord. Will there be anything else?”
Malcolm smiled. “Probably,” he said. “I don't have any other firm plans for the moment, but I'm sure I'll be calling on you from time to time to do some misinformation for us: a rumor here, a false lead there. Sometimes we might need you to deliver a message, or make a bit of evidence disappear. Mostly, we'll be using you to muddy the waters and keep the Collective off balance. I want them paranoid enough that they don't try anything too risky, but not so paranoid that they launch another preemptive strike.”
“I understand,” Miriam said. She wished that she could go back six months and tell herself about this conversation. After the commands he'd placed on her, though, she couldn't even tell the other Elders.
“Good,” Malcolm said. “Is there anything else I should be worried about? Anything that might expose you? If you can think of anything, tell me.”
Miriam swallowed nervously. She tried to keep silent, tried to tell herself that, no, there was nothing, nothing at all, the plan was perfect—
“Sir, the other telepaths won't be able to touch my mind now,” she blurted. “A vampire's mind is a blank slate; the only way to touch it is through the blood bond.”
Malcolm nodded thoughtfully. “Normally, you're right, of course,” he said. “But there has never been a vampire telepath before, either, so we're in uncharted territory.” He gestured at the woman who still knelt by her feet. “Can you enter a thrall's mind without the blood-bond?”
“Yes, sir,” Miriam said. “But her mind is so weak, I'm not sure that's saying very much.”
He nodded, conceding the point, then gestured at the group of women arrayed at his feet. “Try these, then. They're a bit fresher than that one. See if you can enter their minds without looking at them.”
Obediently, Miriam closed her eyes and reached out to each of the women in turn. None of them had much in the way of mental resistance, and she quickly established psychic contact with all of them. She broke the link and opened her eyes.
“I can do it, sir.”
“Well, there you have it, then!” Malcolm said. “Just make sure you're the first to initiate contact and they'll never be able to tell the difference.”
“What if they try to read me first?”
Malcolm waved his hand dismissively. “You're an Elder. Your mental shields must have been pretty impressive even before this, yes?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, then, all you have to do is convince them that you've gotten better at hiding your mind than they are at reading it. Will that keep them from getting too suspicious, given that you don't look like a vampire?”
She nodded reluctantly. “It should, my lord.”
He grinned. “Excellent. In that case, there's just one small matter left to attend to.” He nudged the thrall off of his lap and rose to his feet, stepping past the pile of women to stand in front of Miriam. He wasn't unusually tall – perhaps 170 centimeters – but he seemed to tower over her just by the sheer force of his presence. “Get on your knees, Miriam.”
If she could have blushed, Miriam's face would have burned with shame. So. It's not enough to turn me. He has to humiliate me, as well. Obediently, she fell to her knees in front of him, waiting for the inevitable.
But Malcolm surprised her. Instead of unzipping his pants, as she had expected, he pushed up the cuff of his smoking jacket and bared his left arm. As she watched, he took a letter opener from his pocket and dragged it across his palm, creating a small incision. Blood welled up from the site of the wound, forming a little pool in his hand.
“Taste it,” he commanded.
Miriam lowered her mouth to his hand and lapped once at the pool of blood. No sooner had she tasted it than a rush of narcotic ecstasy shot through her entire body. It was better than any drug – better than sex – better than anything she had ever experienced. Her control over her hunger shattered, and she began greedily running her tongue over his palm, licking up every last trace of blood. Within seconds the wound closed, but she wanted more, needed more. She felt fangs extend from the roof of her mouth, and she pressed them into his palm.
“No!” Malcolm barked. He pulled his hand away, then slapped her with a vicious backhand, knocking her to the floor. He grabbed her hair and pulled her head back, exposing her throat. Her eyes met his, and any thought of resistance crumpled in the face of his indomitable will.
“The blood gift is bestowed at the master's pleasure, not the childe's,” he said coldly. “Serve me will, and you shall taste that power again. Fail me, and there will be punishment. Do you understand me, Miriam?”
“Yes!” Miriam gasped.
“Yes what?”
She closed her eyes. “Yes, master.”
He released her then, and she fell to the floor like a marionette whose strings had been cut. She couldn't look at him again, couldn't bear to feel the power of that will pressing down on hers.
“I'm done with you for now,” Malcolm said, straightening his cuff and smoothing down the front of his jacket. The anger was still evident in his voice, but he was clearly working hard to regain his composure. “Take your thrall and go. Braddock will show you to your new apartment.”
Miriam grabbed the end of the chain and meekly followed Braddock out of Malcolm's penthouse. The doors opened with a wave of his security badge, as did the doors to the lift across the hall. Braddock pushed the button for the eighty-seventh floor, and Miriam waited in silence as the doors closed and the lift began to move. Her thrall cowered in the corner of the lift car, as far from Braddock as possible.
After a few seconds of silence, Braddock chuckled. “Damn, girl, you've got balls,” he said. “I've never seen anybody try to steal blood from Malcolm before.”
Miriam felt strangely ashamed of herself. “I didn't know,” she said quietly.
“Yeah, I kinda figured that.” He grinned and patted her ass. “Don't worry, girly. We'll make sure we get you up to speed on the finer points of vamp society.”
She stifled the urge to shudder at his touch. Malcolm had been civil, even pleasant, but Braddock disgusted her. She submitted because she knew she had no choice; the same inner voice that had forbade her from striking out against Malcolm also told her she must obey Braddock. Whatever else he might be, he was her sire, and her life – such as it was – was his.
The doors slid open, and Braddock led her down a hallway full of numbered doors, stopping at number 87-83. He pulled an electronic keycard out of his pocket and handed it to Miriam. “Here ya go. This is yours now.”
Tentatively, Miriam slid the card into the reader and opened the door. Inside she found a fairly standard-looking apartment, though the curtains on the windows were quite a bit thicker than usual. She let go of the thrall's leash once they got inside, and the pale woman quickly scurried away from Braddock, disappearing into one of the bedrooms. Miriam found two more bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a large kitchen, in addition to the living room/dining area.
“This seems like a lot of space for two people,” Miriam observed.
Braddock chuckled. “Yeah, well, you'd better plan on picking up a few more thralls soon,” he said. “The one Malcolm gave you may be healthy, but I don't think she's gonna last too long as your only source of food.”
Miriam nodded. “I'll remember that. Thank you, sire.” She paused. “Is everyone in this building a vampire or a thrall?”
“Nah, but everyone from about the eightieth floor up is,” Braddock said. “The thralls take care of the housekeeping, and the security team is top-notch. Oh, yeah — you need to sleep about eight hours a day to keep your strength up. Usually four on either side of twelve noon is about right. You can do it here without having to worry about anybody coming in to stake you.”
“That's good to know.” Please leave. Please leave now, so I can figure out how to help that poor girl. I have to do something for her before the sun comes up…
“Hold on a tick.” Braddock grabbed her chin and turned her eyes to meet his. He stared at her for a long moment before his face broke out in a sly grin. “You little minx! You're planning something, aren'tcha? I can see it in your eyes.”
She swallowed hard. “I swear, I wasn't planning to do anything to hurt you, sire. Not you, or Master Malcolm.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “No, I see you weren't. But you were planning something, that's for damn sure. Tell me what it was.”
She winced and gritted her teeth, trying to force back the words.
Braddock slapped her. “Out with it, bitch! What are you scheming at?!”
“I just want to die!” Miriam cried, as the words tore themselves from her throat. “Great Maker, I just want to walk in the sun … one last time…”
She fell to her knees, sobbing.
“Oh, for fuck's sake,” Braddock growled. He kicked her in the stomach, knocking her over. “Are you really that damned noble?” he demanded. “You don't want to spy on your own people, so you'd rather die?” He kicked her again, harder. She felt a rib snap, then felt it shifting inside her as it started to grow back into place. “Or are you just a fucking pussy who's too scared to try the life In Between? Is that it, Miriam? You just a whiny little cunt who wants to quit when it gets hard?”
“I don't know!” Miriam wailed.
“Oh, really? You don't know why you want to die? Well, that's not gonna work.” He got down in her face, pinning her to the floor. “Now you listen to me,” he snarled. “You don't get to punch your own ticket, you understand me? You can bitch and moan all you want, but I forbid you to kill yourself – and don't you go lettin' anyone else try to do it for you. You got that?”
“Yes … sire,” she sobbed, feeling the last shred of hope drain out of her. There was nothing left, no means of escape. They had her, and they weren't going to let her go. Not ever.
“Good,” Braddock said, getting to his feet. “Now take off your clothes, bitch. Malcolm may be all dignified and mannerly, but I sired one sweet piece of ass and I intend to use it.”
Numbly, Miriam got up and began to strip. She had no choice.
“Mistress?”
Consciousness returned slowly to Miriam. She knew she was awake only because of the returning awareness of pain. Pain, and the reek of the various bodily fluids that covered her.
“Mistress, please get up. You need to feed.”
She didn't recognize the voice. It was female, and sounded timid and scared. Miriam hoped the woman she called “Mistress” would answer the girl soon.
Cold. So cold. Why is that? Her thoughts felt jumbled, sluggish, like she was swimming through molasses. She tried to focus — to reengage her senses, or move her limbs, or do anything except lie there uselessly on the floor – but she couldn't seem to muster the energy.
“Gods, look what he's done to you,” the girl said fretfully. A moment later Miriam felt something warm and comforting drape itself over her naked body – a blanket, she supposed. Then gentle hands turned her over and rested her head in someone's lap. Instinctively, Miriam craned her neck and sniffed. She recognized the scent of the half-Elven thrall — her thrall – and at last she realized that the girl had been speaking to her.
One warm hand touched the side of Miriam's face. The smooth skin of a woman's wrist brushed her lips.
“Drink, Mistress,” the girl begged her. “Please, drink.”
Miriam's eyelids fluttered. She could hear the soft thrum of the girl's pulse in her wrist, and her stomach rumbled with a suddenly-remembered hunger. But she still felt so weak, so listless, that she couldn't even summon the motivation to do anything about it.
“Gods,” the girl whispered. She removed her wrist from Miriam's mouth and got up, carefully lowering Miriam's head to the floor. “I'll be right back, Mistress.”
Miriam lay there and tried to remember what had happened to her. Something was very wrong with her body: she knew from the pain that she was badly damaged, and she was not healing as fast as she ought to be. At the same time, her injuries were not bleeding in the way she would have expected. She realized that her heart had stopped beating, and she wondered if that had something to do with it.
A moment later the smell of fresh blood filled the room. The girl put Miriam's head in her lap again, then touched her wrist to Miriam's lips once more. The warm skin was wet with blood, oozing from a small incision. Immediately Miriam lapped it up. A sudden jolt of energy shot through her body, and before she could even think about it she had grabbed the girl's arm in both hands and was sucking on the wound like a child at her mother's breast.
Awareness and memory flooded back to her. Braddock had used her savagely for hours; when she tried to resist him, he beat her or cut on her, expressing his displeasure in fits of almost childish rage. At first she had healed as quickly as he could hurt her, so then he took her blood as well as her dignity. Eventually she fell into torpor, too drained for her undead body to regenerate any further. He must have left after she ceased to be interesting.
Miriam opened her eyes and looked up at the thrall. She smiled down at Miriam, looking relieved. “It's alright, Mistress,” she said, stroking Miriam's hair. “Take as much as you need.”
The girl's blood tasted so sweet. Miriam had tasted blood before when she was still alive, and it had never been anything like this. She supposed that her vampiric sense of taste had been altered to crave what she needed to survive, in the same way that humans craved sugar. That thought disturbed her, and she wondered what other things might have changed without her realizing it.
She forced herself to pull the thrall's arm away from her mouth. She focused her gaze on the girl's lilac eyes, then felt that strange bond of dominance and submission form between them. She had absolute control over this girl's life, as complete and inexorable as the power that Malcolm and Braddock had over Miriam herself. The girl's mind welcomed that control, that dominance, spreading itself wide before her in unconditional surrender. She could ask anything of this girl — anything — and she wouldn't hesitate for a moment to obey her.
Miriam closed her eyes and put up a psychic wall, breaking the link. “What is your name, child?” she asked. Her voice was soft and hoarse.
She felt a ripple of confusion from the girl. “Mistress?”
“Your name,” Miriam said again. “I didn't sense it when I touched your mind.”
“Oh,” the girl said, sounding suddenly uncomfortable. “Well, um … my name's … not really important…”
Miriam took the girl's hand in hers and squeezed it briefly. “It is to me,” she said.
There was a long pause – so long that Miriam wondered if the girl had forgotten her name. Then she spoke, in a timid whisper: “Leena. My … my name was Leena.”
Miriam sat up and turned around to face Leena, wrapping the blanket more tightly around her. She still felt cold and sluggish, but her mind was clear again. She looked down at Leena's arm and saw that the bleeding had stopped, no doubt because of the coagulants in Miriam's saliva.
“You didn't drink enough,” Leena said, sounding worried. “Please, Mistress – don't feel bad about taking more. D-did you want to bite me somewhere else? The neck, maybe? Or down here?” She brushed a hand over the inside of her thigh. “Master Malcolm used to say the blood was sweeter down there.”
Miriam shook her head, bewildered. “Why are you doing this? Why do you want me to bite you?”
“Because you need to. And … if you don't do it soon, you aren't going to be able to stop.” Miriam glanced up at her briefly; Leena's eyes were haunted. “Do it now. Please. While you can still remember that you … that you cared what happened to me.”
Miriam had thought she couldn't feel any colder, but a fresh chill ran down her spine at the half-Elf's words. “It's that bad?” she asked.
Leena nodded. “Sometimes a fledgling gets their first thrall, and they don't want to drink. They starve themselves for days, until the mind snaps and there's nothing left but the beast.” She looked away. “The thralls always die.”
“Great Maker,” Miriam whispered.
Leena looked up at her, then craned her neck to one side. “Try doing it here, Mistress,” she said, pointing to the hollow just above her clavicle. The skin was marked with dozens of overlapping scars. “It's all soft tissue, and there aren't any big arteries. It's the easiest place for a beginner.” She turned around until her back was facing Miriam, then looked back over her shoulder. “Here, you can take me from behind,” she said. “That way you don't have to worry about holding me up.”
Miriam closed her eyes and sighed. It was all so surreal, sitting here with this young woman earnestly giving her lessons on the best way to take her blood. She wanted to get out of the room and hide somewhere, but she knew the hunger inside her wasn't going to go away. She imagined losing control of that hunger, waking up to find Leena's body on the floor, drained of its last drop of blood. She couldn't let that happen – and since Braddock had forbidden her to take her own life, there was only one way to prevent it.
She got to her knees and came up behind Leena, placing her trembling hands on the half-Elf's shoulders. “I've … never done this before,” she said, then felt like a fool. Of course she hadn't done this before.
Leena just gave her a little smile. “It's okay,” she said encouragingly. “Your body knows what to do. Don't worry, I'll be fine.”
Miriam looked at the woman, with her collar and chain and her patchwork of scars, and wondered how on earth she could ever say that she was “fine” … but at the moment it didn't matter. Empty reassurance or not, Leena was freely offering what Miriam desperately needed, and the hunger inside told her that she could wait no longer.
She pressed her mouth to the base of Leena's neck, in the spot the woman had shown her. She closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of her skin, listening as Leena's pulse began to quicken. She felt a surge of desire, and the uncanny sensation of her new fangs extending from the roof of her mouth. Then, with as much care as she could muster, she slowly slid them into Leena's flesh.
Several things happened in quick succession. A set of muscles pulsed somewhere near her sinuses, injecting venom through the fangs and into Leena's body. The half-Elf moaned in ecstasy and went limp in Miriam's arms. Carefully Miriam withdrew her fangs, then covered the two wounds with her mouth. The blood welled up, but slowly, and Miriam found herself sucking at the wounds to draw more of that warm, sweet nectar into her mouth. An instant after that, the Sharing began – and at last, Miriam understood.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Then.
A knock sounded at the door to Leena’s office. She slid a bookmark into the medical journal she was reading, then put on her glasses and turned to the door.
“It’s open,” she called.
Timothy burst in waving a handful of printouts, a jubilant expression on his face. The Whalish man was still in his lab coat and had his safety goggles hanging around his neck. “The new test results just came in!” he said, passing her the stack of paper.
Leena pushed her glasses up onto her forehead and scanned through the printouts. “Gods,” she murmured, suddenly understanding the reason for her partner’s excitement. “Timothy, am I reading this right?”
“The new Cranning assay is ninety-seven percent accurate,” Timothy said, grinning like a fool. “The best arcane assays on the market come in at ninety-nine.”
Leena laughed. “I’ll take a two percent drop in accuracy for a ninety-five percent drop in cost! Gods be praised, Tim, this is going to help so many people!” Impulsively, she hugged him, planting a kiss on his cheek. When she looked back at him again, he was blushing, but his grin had gotten even wider.
“Time to contact the Red Spiral?” he asked.
“Hells, yes!” Leena spread out the papers on her desk and took a closer look at the graphs and data tables. They had finally done it. After two years of work, they had an assay for Cranning Syndrome that was cheap, effective, and required no magic to function. A neurodegenerative disease caused by a defect in human chromosome 14, Cranning Syndrome killed over a million people every year, mostly in developing nations. The disease could be treated successfully if it was caught early enough, but the magic assays that could detect it in the early stages were too expensive for many people to afford. Now that they had an affordable alternative, the International Red Spiral would be able to identify people at risk of developing the disease and provide treatment where it was most needed. Even better, they could identify carriers of Cranning Syndrome and make sure that they didn’t pass the disease on to their children.
“We’re really doing it, Tim,” Leena said. “We said we were going to change the world, and we’re doing it!”
“Your mom would be proud, Lee-Lee,” Tim said. He clapped a hand on her shoulder. “Now get to work, Ms CEO – unless you want me to handle the public relations.”
“Gods forbid!” Leena said, laughing. She reached over and ruffled his dark, curly hair. “I want you to go back to the lab and tell the troops that we’re going live with this immediately. This place is gonna be swarming with reporters within twenty-four hours, and I want to make sure everybody’s presentable.”
Tim chuckled. “Got it. No t-shirts, no ratty jeans, and no scary piercings. Anything else?”
“Yes,” Leena said, dropping her voice into a sensual purr. “Find us a bottle of good Sathmoran whisky. I feel like celebrating tonight.”
Tim’s dark eyes sparkled, and he gave Leena a mock salute. “Aye-aye, ma’am! As you say it, it shall be done!”
As he left, Leena sat down at her computer to begin crafting their first press release. Seraph Diagnostic Solutions was about to become very big news.
Leena stepped into the parlor of Malcolm ard'Valos, blinking at the bright lights that bathed the all-white room. The investment tycoon and the world's third-richest person rose from his thronelike chair as she entered. He smiled, captivating her with his handsome features and compelling eyes.
“Seralina Grayhaven,” ard'Valos said warmly, extending his hand. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.”
She took his hand and shook it firmly. “It's an honor, sir.”
He gestured at one of the couches. “Please, have a seat. Can I interest you in some refreshment? Wine, or tea, perhaps?”
“Tea would be lovely, thank you.” She sat down on the nearest couch and smoothed the fabric of her dress slacks. It was her best outfit, but ard'Valos's exquisitely tailored suit made her feel underdressed.
One of ard'Valos's employees brought in the tea service and poured cups for both of them. When they were alone once more, Leena quirked an eyebrow at the man before her. “So. To what do I owe this invitation, Mr ard'Valos?”
He chuckled. “Well, as you're no doubt aware, you've been in the news quite a bit lately, Ms Grayhaven. Seraph Diagnostic Solutions is being hailed all over the Empire as a pioneer in the field of medical technology. Now, as it happens, finding young pioneers and fostering their development is something of a specialty of mine. It seemed to me that it would behoove both of us if we were to sit down and talk about the possibilities for Seraph's future.”
He opened his briefcase and handed her a folder. Inside was a detailed plan for a business partnership between Seraph and one of ard'Valos's holding companies. He spent the next hour walking her through the details of the proposal, but the basic concept was simple: He would buy out Leena and Timothy's ownership of the company for the sum of ten million marks, each. They would stay on board as the president and head of research and development, respectively; they would be paid in salary and stock options, but ard'Valos would retain the controlling interest in the company. Manufacturing of Seraph's assay kits would be taken over by one of his other medical technology firms, which was better equipped for mass production, while Seraph would continue on primarily as an R&D firm.
It was a very attractive package, one that would set Leena and Timothy for life. But as ard'Valos finished his presentation, one thing still nagged at Leena.
“These financial projections don't look right to me,” she said, pointing at a table of estimated production and revenue over the next twenty years. “Look here: in five years you have our production increasing thirty-fold, but the increase in revenue is almost two hundred-fold.”
ard'Valos peered at the table for a moment, then nodded. “Ahh, yes. There were a couple of reasons for that. One is simple economy of scale: We can manufacture your assay kits for a much smaller per-unit cost because of our larger facilities.”
“Yes, I can see that,” Leena said, pointing at another table that showed the breakdown of gross revenue, expenses and net profits. “But the overhead isn't going down nearly that much.”
“True,” ard'Valos agreed. “The revenue projections assume an average sale price of 100 marks for the assay kit.”
Leena's eyes widened. “We were only planning to sell the kits for twenty,” she protested. “It shouldn't cost more than thirteen to make them – probably no more than ten, with the kind of production facilities you're talking about!”
“Yes, but the arcane assay kits currently being used for Cranning Syndrome sell for an average of four hundred marks,” ard'Valos said. “We'll still be undercutting the market by a huge margin.”
Leena sat back in her seat and tried to keep the anger out of her voice. “Mr ard'Valos. A large percentage of the world's sufferers of Cranning Syndrome cannot afford the current assay kits. Even twenty marks is a substantial investment for these people. Setting the price at one hundred would put it completely outside their means.”
He smiled and raised a finger. “I anticipated this objection,” he said, “and I have a counterpoint.” He pulled out another folder and passed it to her. “We're prepared to enter an exclusive partnership with the Church of Eternal Brotherhood to make these assay kits available at cost in developing nations. With the added efficiency of working through a single large distributor, we could meet the needs of all the major Cranning-afflicted regions – and still triple our per-unit profits on sales within the Empire and Quenardya.”
Leena frowned and took a closer look at the figures. They seemed to add up, but… “Mr ard'Valos, I've got to be honest: I'm not really comfortable with tying the Cranning test to a single religious organization. I respect your right to your beliefs, sir, but I'm not a member of the CEB. I don't think I like the idea that people might have to listen to their proselytizing before they can be tested for the disease.”
ard'Valos's face darkened. “Ms Grayhaven, you wound me!” he said. “You would suggest that my faith would withhold medicine to compel people to convert?”
Even that mild admonishment was enough to make Leena want to cringe, but she raised her chin and held her ground. “You have to admit that it will be a temptation for them. Every evangelistic religion uses charity as a tool for conversion. I'd prefer to work with a secular institution like the International Red Spiral, and let the religious charities partner with them if they want to help.”
ard'Valos grimaced. “I have my own issues with the Red Spiral, I'm afraid. That organization has always been Akkala's pet project. If you don't like working with religious charities, how can you trust a charity being run by a fallen goddess?”
Leena shrugged. “She doesn't seem all that interested in getting people to worship her these days.”
“Perhaps not, but I still can't envision a working partnership between her organization and mine.”
“Why?” Leena asked. “Because her followers used to hunt vampires for a living? Your kind have been protected for three hundred years. It's a little late to be holding grudges, don't you think?”
The room fell into sudden, deathly silence. Malcolm ard'Valos stared at her fixedly, his lips thinning as he pressed them tightly together. Leena could feel him trying to exert his will over her, but she kept her emotions under control and looked back at him steadily.
“I'm not a fool, Mr ard'Valos,” she said softly. “I never go into a meeting without knowing who I'm dealing with, and the truth about you is not as well-hidden as you'd like to believe.”
He paused a moment before speaking. “You would do well to keep that to yourself.” His voice was barely above a whisper, but the hint of menace was unmistakable.
Leena got to her feet. “I'm sorry, Mr ard'Valos, but I'm afraid this isn't going to work. In my experience, threats rarely make for good business partnerships.”
She turned to go, but was stopped by a hand on her shoulder. She spun around, intending to slap him, but he just held the folders out to her with a grave expression.
“Forgive me, Ms Grayhaven,” he said. “You caught me off guard, and I forgot my manners. Please, take the proposals and discuss them with your partner. There may be room for some flexibility in the particulars, provided that you don't wait too long to get back to me.” He raised his eyebrows slightly. “You aren't likely to get a better offer than this from anyone else. I hope you'll think on it before you give me a final answer.”
She said nothing, but she took the folders with her before walking out. Once she was inside the lift, she collapsed against the wall and took several long, heavy breaths. She reached inside her shirt and pulled out the amulet that she had purchased to protect herself against the vampire's domination gaze. The enchantment was supposed to be first-rate, made right here in Metamor City, and even then it almost hadn't been strong enough.
No, she told herself. I don't care if he's offering me the world itself on a silver platter. Malcolm ard'Valos will get nothing from me.
“What do you mean, they're pulling out?!”
“Just what it sounds like,” Timothy said, sounding disgusted. “Word got around that you snubbed Malcolm ard'Valos, and now the investors are spooked. He's warning all his buddies that you're an egomaniac who wants to save the world, but only if you get the credit for it. Says you're gonna run the company right into the ground”
“And they bought that?”
“He's Malcolm fucking ard'Valos, Lee-Lee. He could say the sky is green and they'd believe it.”
She buried her head in her hands. Dammit, dammit, dammit. “How much money do we have left?”
“We can keep the doors open for another two months. We might stretch that to six if we close the lab and just keep the office staff.”
“No,” Leena said firmly. “These people gave up their careers to join us. I'm not leaving them out in the cold.”
Tim crossed his arms. “Then you'd better find us a new backer fast, Leena. 'Cause it's getting pretty damned cold in here already.”
Ring. Ring.
Leena picked up the phone. “Hello?” Her voice sounded dead, even to her own ears.
“Hello, Ms Grayhaven. It's been a long time.”
“What the fuck do you want, ard'Valos?”
The vampire tsked. “Such language! Is that any way to talk to your new partner?”
“New – oh my god. He didn't.”
“He did,” ard'Valos said, sounding pleased. “Mr Timothy Mitropolous sold his fifty percent share in Seraph Diagnostic Solutions to me last night. He is now a salaried member of my staff.”
“He can't sell unless I agree to it!” Leena protested.
“Unless you are determined to be of unsound mind, or otherwise incompetent to continue your duties as CEO,” ard'Valos said. “Which, in Mr Mitropolous's judgment, you are. Now, you could contest this matter in court…”
In spite of herself, Leena snorted. Yeah, right. Like I can afford a lawyer to go up against Malcolm ard'Valos.
“…or,” he continued, “we can discuss the disposition of our shared company. Obviously neither of us has a controlling interest, so we can either come to some sort of agreement on Seraph's future direction, or we can sell the company's assets at auction and go our separate ways.”
Leena's eyes fell on the ledger on her desk. Assets? she thought bitterly. We don't have enough left to cover the mortgage on the goddamned laboratory. The loss ard'Valos would sustain by dissolving the company would mean nothing to him, especially with their chief researcher already in his employment. For Leena, though, she'd be lucky to get out with the clothes on her back.
She sighed. “What sort of 'agreement' did you have in mind?”
Leena looked down at the contract in front of her with a soul-sick dread. “This isn't the deal we discussed last year.”
“No, it's not,” ard'Valos said gravely. “I'm afraid the net worth of Seraph Diagnostic Solutions has declined rather dramatically since then. Most of what I'd set aside for your compensation package will be needed just to make the company financially solvent again.”
“Of course.” She scanned down through the clauses and sub-clauses, taking it in. “You're bringing in a new chief executive.”
“Yes, a caretaker,” the vampire said. “Mr Mitropolous fears that your business acumen is somewhat lacking, and sadly recent events seem to confirm that assessment. Please understand, I'm not firing you. You'll still receive a salary and a very generous benefits package. I'm just shifting you over to a new position so we can train you in our corporate culture.”
She looked down at the paper again. “And what does an … executive assistant do, Mr ard'Valos?”
He smiled, his teeth glistening in the too-bright light of his parlor. “The job has a wide variety of potential responsibilities. You'll find that it's in your best interests to remain flexible.”
A chill ran down her spine. “How flexible?”
The vampire cocked his head and looked at her, considering. “Your coloration is really quite extraordinary, Ms Grayhaven. You're not Silvaan, are you?”
She raised her chin and looked back at him. She knew what was coming, but she would not be ashamed of her heritage. “No. My mother was human; my father is a Moon Elf.”
He let out a low whistle. “A Moon Elf half-breed. You don't see too many of those anymore.”
“We were never what you might call common,” Leena said coolly. “The Moon Elves have always been more discriminating than their brothers to the south.”
ard'Valos chuckled. “So I have heard.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “I've also heard that their blood is as sweet as ice wine. I'd like very much to find out if that's true.”
There it was. Like a fool, she'd insulted a vampire prince, and now he wanted his revenge. He'd already taken her company, her life's work, her partner, even her reputation, and still it wasn't enough. He had to take her body, as well.
She stared at the contract for what felt like a long time.
“If I do this,” she said, “I want your word that my employees will be protected. Guaranteed positions and salary for the next ten years. Full severance for any who opt out. And no turning any of them into your blood puppets. You want your revenge on me, fine – but you don't take it out on my people.”
Malcolm ard'Valos smiled. “Done,” he said. “Mr Mitropolous already asked for much the same thing as a condition of his employment. I'll show you the agreement I signed with him; if there's anything else you feel a need to add, name it and we'll include it on an addendum.”
She nodded once. “Then let's get it over with. Get your lawyer in here with that agreement. Then I'll sign your goddamned contract.”
Now.
Miriam withdrew from the telepathic bond of the Sharing, too sickened to see any more. She suspected that Leena's protective amulet had survived about as long as it took for her to sign Malcolm's contract. As for what happened after that … well, the details weren't as important as the result.
“Please don't be sad, Mistress,” Leena said, caressing her cheek and wiping away her tears. Miriam wasn't sure how much blood she had taken, but she was fully healed now, and the half-Elf woman didn't seem noticeably worse.
“I'm sorry, Leena,” Miriam said, looking away. “I just … what Malcolm did to you…”
“Oh, no, Mistress, it's all right,” Leena said. She touched Miriam's cheek again and gently guided her eyes back to her own. “Master Malcolm was stern, and sometimes he seems cruel, but it was really all for the best.”
Miriam gaped at her. “For the best?!”
“Yes! I was arrogant and prideful,” Leena said matter-of-factly. “I wanted to help people, but my motives weren't pure because I wanted the glory for myself. Master Malcolm taught me to accept my true station in life.” Her eyes took on a manic gleam, like a woman in spiritual rapture. “My purpose is to serve someone greater than me – to give all that I am so that they can be lifted up! I … haven't been able to fulfill that purpose for a long time now,” she said, blushing. “Master Malcolm was displeased with me. But don't you see? In giving me to you, he's giving me the chance to fulfill my purpose again!”
Miriam didn't know what to say. Leena ran her hands fondly over Miriam's skin. “I saw your true self, Mistress,” she said. “In the Sharing, when you saw into me? I saw into you, too. That's how it works.” She smiled brilliantly. “You are good, and kind, and you care for the people who are entrusted to you. I know you will never hurt me.” She took Miriam's hands in her own and kissed them reverently. “I will be the best thrall you could ever ask for, Mistress. And maybe…” She looked up, her expression suddenly hopeful. “Maybe someday I'll even prove myself worthy to receive your blood gift.”
Miriam had thought that her heart couldn't break any further. She was wrong. “You … have an extraordinary heart, Seralina Grayhaven,” she said, choking back tears. “And I will do everything in my power to restore the part of yourself that Malcolm took from you.”
Leena looked abashed. “Mistress, you mustn't say such things! I was wrong, I was—”
“You were magnificent,” Miriam said firmly. “Malcolm is not your master any longer. If you belong to me, then believe my words, not Malcolm's. Do you understand?”
Leena trembled. “No, Mistress … but, understanding is not required. Only obedience.”
Miriam sighed. “All right. I can see this is going to take some time. For now, remember this: you are a good and noble soul, and not all of what was taken from you was bad. My job is to remind you of the good in you. Your job is to embrace it. Can you do that for me?”
Hesitantly, Leena nodded. “Yes, Mistress. For you, I would do anything.”
“Good.” Miriam grabbed the edge of the bed and pulled herself to her feet. “Then let's clean off this filth, and then you can help make me presentable for polite society. I've been out of contact with the Elders for two days, and I suspect Malcolm will be displeased if I allow them to become suspicious.”
Sasha entered Danni's cell and found that Rebecca was already there. She and Danni were sitting facing each other – Rebecca on the chair, Danni on the edge of the bed. Their hands were linked, and they stared into each other's eyes with the utter stillness of a deep gestalt. Sasha reached out and touched them gently with her mind. Their unified consciousness touched her back, giving her the telepathic equivalent of a warm embrace. Then they disentangled themselves, drawing their minds back into their own heads, and turned to face her.
“Hey, Sash!” Rebecca said, smiling.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Sasha said. “I wanted to let you know that the hospital approved your transfer, Danni. You can start work whenever you feel up to it. I also talked to the psi-therapists, and they're willing to do the memory reconstruction for you if that's what you want.”
Danni nodded thoughtfully. “Thanks, Sasha. Before I commit to anything, though … I was hoping you could help me talk it over with someone.”
Sasha shrugged. “Of course. Who do you need me to get for you?”
Danni pointed at her own head. “Daniel.”
That surprised Sasha, but only for a moment. She grinned. “You know what they say about talking to yourself, don'tcha?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Danni said, waving her hand in a get-on-with-it gesture. “Can you do it or not?”
“Set up a mindlink between two halves of an androgyne? Never tried it before, but I don't see why it wouldn't work. Let's give it a shot.”
She sat down on the bed beside them, slipping her small hand into Danni's larger one. She looked up into Danni's serious blue eyes and smiled encouragingly. “I have no idea what this is gonna feel like for you, but try to relax and just let it happen, okay?”
Danni nodded. Rebecca sat back and watched, her gentle, expressive face alight with interest.
Sasha closed her eyes and reached out to Danni's mind. Danni opened up to her readily, and Sasha reached past the surface and into the deeper memories shared by her and Daniel. She sensed the second personality that lingered there — not quite conscious, but dreaming as it floated amid the records of his life. She reached out and touched it, opening her mind and offering it access to her own brain-space. Daniel stirred and awoke, using portions of her brain and Danni's to collect his thoughts and return to full awareness.
Hey, Sash, he said, giving her a mental wave. This is a pretty arc idea that 'Becca came up with, isn't it?
Definitely, Sasha agreed. Seems to be working, though. Give me a sec to pull Danni in here…
With the link to Daniel firmly established, Sasha reached back up to Danni's conscious mind and drew her in as well. In a full gestalt, their personalities would have coalesced and united into one, but that wasn't what they needed at this point. Instead, Sasha constructed a psychic plane, a virtual meeting space where they could communicate without losing the distinction between Self and Other. The space she built was simple – a field of endless black with a “floor” of glowing white – but there was no need to get fancy for this, and she needed to leave enough of her own brain's processing power available that Daniel could think for himself.
Once the plane was in place, Sasha gave a mental tug to Daniel and Danni, and both of them manifested beside her. They appeared like avatars in a VR simulation, forming astral bodies that reflected the way they saw themselves. Daniel was dressed in his skyball uniform from Empire University, his hair shorter and perfectly styled. His gym shorts and close-fitting tank top left little of his gorgeous physique to the imagination. Danni wore a striking red cocktail dress with silk stockings and heels, her hair falling in glossy black waves on either side of a heart-breakingly beautiful face. Two pairs of brilliant blue eyes gazed at each other across an apparent space of maybe two meters.
“Wow,” Daniel said.
“Wow, yourself,” Danni answered.
Sasha smirked. “Well, it's good to know that neither of you have any self-image problems,” she said.
The “twins” laughed at that, both of them starting and stopping in the exact instant.
“Okay, now that was just creepy,” Sasha said.
“What did you expect?” Danni asked.
“We're both two halves of the same whole,” Daniel said.
“Yeah, about that…” said Danni.
“I know, sis.” Daniel stepped forward and put his hand on her shoulder. “You didn't know any better. I forgive you.”
She nodded, reaching up to cover his hand with her own. “And I forgive you for dragging me into this crazy-arc rehab place. I just wish we could have talked sooner.”
“We've never been much for self-reflection,” Daniel admitted.
“Other than feeling sorry for ourselves,” Danni said.
“Oh, yes. We've got a lot of practice at that.”
“Practically got it down to an art form.”
“We could teach a class—”
“Advanced Pity Techniques”
''—and How To Screw Up Your Life In Six Easy Steps!”
“Did it take us that many?”
“Dunno. I've lost count.”
They both smiled. Danni's faded first. “What do you think about this psychic reconstruction thing?”
Daniel grimaced. “I'm not crazy about the idea of letting someone mess with your mind anymore. Do you think it's really the best way to help us?”
“Dunno,” Danni admitted. “But it's the only way we've thought of, and I'd rather be doing something than sit around here waiting for Artax to come up with something better.” She reached down below her breasts and, unexpectedly, flipped open a hidden panel, exposing a hollow chamber where her insides should be. Daniel and Sasha both took a step back, and Sasha saw her own shock mirrored on Daniel's face.
“I make a pretty picture, Daniel — but I'm empty,” Danni said gravely. “There's almost nothing on the inside that's really me.” She flipped the panel shut again. It melded into the rest of her body, leaving no hint that it had ever been there. She stepped forward and took his hands in hers.
“I want to be able to be a sister to you,” she said. “Not just this … this shell of a person living off your memories. If we do this – if we join Brian's cell – then our body’s going to have to be female for a long time.” She reached up and touched his cheek. “I need you close enough to me that you don’t feel trapped by that. But I can’t stand next to you if I don’t have a sense of myself to stand on. Does that make sense?”
Daniel sighed and nodded. He put his hands on her shoulders and leaned forward, touching his forehead against hers. “Yeah, I get it,” he said. “All right, let's do it. If it helps you feel like a real person, it'll be worth it.” He paused. “Do me a favor, though?”
She leaned back and looked into his eyes. “What's that?”
He smiled. “Make sure you let me in on the gestalts. You were bonding with Rebecca earlier, and I missed that.”
She blushed. “Sorry. I keep forgetting that I have to let you out for stuff like that.” She shrugged. “Actually, I'm not even really sure how to let you out, unless Sasha's there to do the work for me.”
“I'll practice with you,” Sasha said. “You shouldn't really need me to do it once you see how it works.”
Danni nodded, and smiled back at Daniel. “This is pretty nice, too, actually,” she said, wrapping him in a hug. “We should see if this whole meeting-of-the-minds thing will work in VR.” She winked. “If nothing else, maybe it'll give you a chance to be yourself for a while during those long months of pregnancy and nursing.”
Daniel blanched, and Danni laughed. “One step at a time, here, okay?” he said. “I'm still getting used to the idea of you having sex with men.”
Danni grinned wickedly. “What's the matter, bro? Does it make you feel all funny inside, imagining a nice, hard cock sliding up inside our hot, wet mmphy—”
Daniel clamped a hand over her mouth. Danni giggled like a madwoman, her blue eyes sparkling.
“You are evil, you know that?” Daniel said.
She chewed on his hand playfully until he let her go. “Takes one to know one,” she said.
“Brat.”
“Doofus.”
They laughed in unison again.
“Have I mentioned how creepy that is?” Sasha asked.
Daniel and Danni embraced again, holding each other tightly. “Maybe you'd better take the reins for a while,” Danni said. “Just in case there's any trace of … well, whatever it was that was throwing me off balance when Jared was around.”
“Yeah, probably a good idea,” Daniel sighed. “I'm sorry it didn't work out with him. I know you loved him.”
“Still do,” Danni admitted. “But I love you and Becks, too. And now that you're here, I don't know how I ever thought I was gonna live without you.” She smiled ruefully. “We only get one chance at this whole 'life' thing, y'know? You want to walk through one door, you've gotta close another.”
Daniel nodded. “Well, I know one door I want to walk through. Ready to get out of here, sis?”
Danni kissed him once on the cheek, then stepped back from him. “You bet,” she said. She straightened and gave him a mock salute. “All operations normal, Mister Sharabi. You may take the conn.”
He grinned and saluted back to her. “Thank you, Miss Sharabi. I have the conn.”
Danni faded into the darkness, slipping out of the link and into the back of their shared mind. Sasha dissolved the psychic plane, then she and Daniel disengaged as well.
Sasha opened her eyes and saw Daniel sitting on the bed, looking distinctly uncomfortable in Danni's baby-doll t-shirt and tight-fitting jeans. Rebecca was trying hard not to laugh.
Daniel grimaced. “I really wish she would warn me before she does that.”
Eastside General Hospital – Psychiatric Ward.
As they entered the waiting room, Daniel was surprised to find another familiar face waiting for him.
“Fiona! Come to share some of that Sathmoran luck with me?”
Fiona smirked. “In light of my recent experiences, I doubt that genetic luck has anything to do with being Sathmoran,” she said dryly. “No, I’m here for … a personal matter of my own.”
The sudden seriousness in her voice made Daniel’s eyebrows go up. “Yeah?”
She nodded once. “I fear I haven’t been looking as closely in the mirror as I ought to,” she said, softly and with unusual humility. “There are old wounds that need to be addressed.”
Daniel put his hand on her elbow, which was about as much intimacy as she usually allowed. “Well, hey, sounds like we’re sort of in the same boat,” he said gently. “If you ever need someone to talk to about it, you know where to find me.” He grinned. “Probably in the padded cell next to yours.”
She snorted at that. Then she surprised him by reaching up to cover his hand with her own. “I’ll be grateful for the company,” she said. Then, with a smirk, she added, “It will be interesting to see which of us is first to resolve our respective problems.”
“It’s always about competition with you, isn’t it?”
Fiona chuckled and spread her hands, as if to say, Guilty as charged. She extended her hands toward Daniel, palms up, and he clasped arms with her in the ancient gesture of friendship. Their minds touched each other at the same time, with a warmth and camaraderie that Daniel hadn’t felt from Fiona for far too long. For the first time in years, they were on the same playing field, facing the same goal, and victory for one of them was victory for them both. He hadn’t realized how much he had missed that feeling until that moment.
The door at the back of the waiting room opened and a doctor emerged, smiling at them expectantly. “Daniel? Fiona? We’re ready for you.”
Daniel exchanged a look with Fiona. “Now comes the hard part.”
She nodded in silent agreement. After embracing taking a moment to embrace Rebecca and Sasha, they walked toward the door together.
“How do I look?”
Leena adjusted the collar of Miriam’s blouse and brushed a lock of hair into place. “Like a beautiful, living woman, Mistress,” she said, smiling. “Your own doctor wouldn’t know the difference.”
Miriam had removed Leena’s chain and given her some of the clothes that they had found in the drawers and closets of the apartment. The pink t-shirt and jean shorts the girl now wore didn’t really suit her, but there would be time for shopping later. Braddock had called with her first orders: to reestablish contact with her fellow Elders and dispel any suspicions about her disappearance.
She reached out for the Hive’s psychic network and connected to it easily. Several nearby teeps signaled their relief at her safety; they had heard about a subway accident and feared that she had been on board, despite official reports that there had been no casualties. Miriam recognized the cover story for what it was and played along, telling them that she had been injured in the crash but had now made a full recovery. Yes, she had stayed in hiding until her regenerative powers had healed her. No, she didn’t think the train had been a deliberate assassination attempt, but she had laid low to avoid taking any chances.
They accepted the story without hesitation, obediently passing on her request to meet with the other Elders. The response came back within minutes: they would meet her tonight at her office on the Westfall campus. Everyone was a little nervous after the accident, and Westfall was probably the most closely-defended site in the Collective.
Miriam thanked them for their promptness and broke the link. Leena had cocked her head and was looking at her curiously.
“Are you all right, Mistress?” Leena asked. “You seemed to go away for a minute there.”
“I’m fine, dear, thank you,” Miriam said. “Has the sun set now?”
Leena nodded. “Just a few minutes ago, Mistress.”
“Very well.” Miriam put on her suit jacket and retrieved her purse, which one of Braddock’s thralls had dropped off earlier that afternoon. She pulled out a credit card and handed it to Leena. “I’m going out for a few hours. Get on the WorldNet; order yourself some food and more suitable clothes. I’ll have your ID card returned so you can run errands for me, but until then we’ll have to make do with what we can have delivered.”
Leena’s eyes widened. “Y-you’re going to send me outside? Alone?”
Miriam shrugged one shoulder. “Of course. You are my most important assistant, Seralina Grayhaven. You shall be my eyes and ears in daylight, going where I cannot.”
Leena began to tremble. “I haven’t left the tower in so long … I don’t know if I can—”
Miriam took Leena by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. Immediately the half-Elf went still, her mind opening up to Miriam in total submission. Miriam put a telepathic push behind her words so Leena would accept them.
“You can do this,” Miriam said. “You are strong, and intelligent, and capable. I have complete faith in you and your abilities. Be brave, Seralina. You shall not fail me.”
Miriam broke the link, and Leena stood a bit straighter. She nodded once. “As you say, Mistress,” she said, sounding more confident. “I won’t fail you.”
“Good. You have your orders; carry on.”
Leena bowed deeply and went out to the living room to access the WorldNet terminal. Miriam fussed with the cuffs of her jacket a moment longer, wishing that she could still use a mirror. I’ll have to invest in a digital camera, she thought.
It felt strange to be making such plans, but she was in this for the long term. She would play Malcolm’s game for now, until she could find some way to subvert the orders her new masters had given her. If Braddock could be killed, it would break the chain of influence they held over her, and she would be free. In the meantime she would learn the inner workings of Malcolm’s organization, and try to help Leena however she could.
Like it or not, though, her master’s orders came first, and first on the list was maintaining the deception. Taking one deep, useless breath to steady herself, she left the apartment and headed for her rendezvous with the Elders.
Now comes the hard part, she thought. May the Great Maker forgive me.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Monday, December 2nd, 1995 Cristos Reckoning.
Danger.
The thought came to Abbey in her dreams, a primal fear that whispered incessantly in the corners of her mind.
Danger … danger … danger…
It was not a word, as such – only instinct and emotion, like the thoughts of an animal that smells smoke but cannot yet see the fire.
Not safe here. Not safe. Get away. Get away now. Danger!
Abbey awoke in a start, her body covered in cold sweat – again. She would have sat bolt upright in bed, if her pregnant belly hadn’t been weighing her down. She rolled over on her side, hanging her head over the edge of the bed. Her stomach heaved, but nothing came up.
The wordless fear still clutched at her mind, but now that she was awake she recognized the source. Placing a hand on her stomach, she summoned all the comfort and reassurance she could muster and sent them into the mind of Darla, her unborn daughter.
It’s okay, honey. It’s going to be all right.
Darla accepted the comfort and stopped her litany of terror, but she also sent back disagreement – a wordless equivalent to I don’t believe you. You’re wrong.
Why am I wrong? Abbey asked. Then, more hesitantly, she added, What have you seen?
An anxious jumble of half-formed thoughts assaulted her. None of them made any sense. Abbey sighed and rubbed her temples; she had suspected it wouldn’t work, but she had to keep trying.
Abbey had some ESP, but it was weak. She could sense shades, the mental echoes of people who had recently died, but she couldn’t see the future. Like many espers, her power was completely passive, unlike her strong telepathic abilities. Victor had even weaker ESP than Abbey; he could sense air molecules well enough to use his telekinesis on them, but he never had visions as far as Abbey could tell. Darla was a different story; even at six months’ gestation, she seemed to have the gift of the second sight, in addition to a strong aptitude for telepathy. She’d been carrying on these wordless conversations with Abbey for nearly two months now.
Unfortunately, her esper talents weren’t much help because she didn’t have the context for whatever it was that she was seeing. Her reasoning abilities weren’t fully developed yet, and wouldn’t be for years. She was seeing something — that much was obvious – but she hadn’t yet developed the ability to examine what she saw and pick out the parts that were relevant. In time she would learn how to pass on her visions directly to Abbey, but that was a trick that required a fair amount of cognitive power in its own right. The end result was that Darla was easily frustrated and prone to emotional outbursts, like a stroke victim who was no longer able to put into words the things she needed to communicate.
Abbey soothed her as best she could. Never mind, she said. Sleep now, Darla.
Darla stubbornly rallied one last thought before drifting off. Get away soon. Not safe…
As her daughter’s mind fell quiet, Abbey got up and padded over to the bathroom. She splashed some cold water on her face and looked at her bloodshot eyes in the mirror.
I’m only sixteen, she thought bitterly. Why do I feel so old?
“Everything all right?”
Victor’s reflection appeared in the mirror behind her. It was a mark of how frazzled she was that she hadn’t even noticed the buzz of mental static that heralded his approach.
“No,” she said flatly, taking the towel and drying her face. “It happened again, Victor. That’s the third time this week.”
He glowered. “Damn these worthless doctors. You’d think they could give you something to help you sleep.”
Abbey let out an exasperated sigh. “I told you, it’s not safe for the baby. And anyway, they aren’t nightmares. Something’s wrong with Darla. She’s terrified and I don’t know why.”
Victor put his hands on her shoulders and rubbed them. “Are you sure she’s not just having nightmares? Even mundane children can have bad dreams. Maybe our little genius just has an overactive imagination.”
Abbey shook her head. “No. I can tell the difference between dreams and … and visions. Darla knows something. She just doesn’t know how to tell me.”
Victor sighed. “All right. I’ll find you another doctor. Maybe he can figure out what’s wrong with her.”
Abbey turned around and looked up at him imploringly. “She needs a Collective doctor, Vic. These mundies don’t know anything about telepathic pregnancies. What do you think they’re going to do, get her a shrink?”
Victor’s face shuttered, his body instantly going tense. He took his hands off her shoulders and turned away. “We’ve already been over this. I’m not going to let the Elders get their hands on my daughter.”
Abbey grabbed for his mind as he left. As usual, she couldn’t get a firm hold, and she stomped her foot in irritation.. “She’s my daughter too, damn it! And if we don’t get her some real help, she’s going to be so traumatized by the time she’s born that we’ll be lucky if she isn’t catatonic. What’s that going to accomplish, except proving to the Elders that they were right all along?!”
Victor made no response; he just stood there with his back to her, halfway from the bathroom to the bedroom door. Maybe I’m finally getting through to him, Abbey thought.
“Look,” she said, deliberately softening her both her tone and her body language. “I know we wanted to try living on our own. but it … it hasn’t exactly worked out the way we planned. The Hive wasn’t perfect, but at least we didn’t have to live in these filthy apartments where even the mundies don’t want to live.” She took a few steps forward and put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “I just want to make sure we’re doing what’s best for Darla. Maybe it’s time to go home.”
”NO!” Victor wheeled on her like a caged animal. Before she could react, a telekinetic grip had seized her and flung her back against the wall. She cried out at the impact, and the invisible force tightened around her neck, cutting off her air. He held her half a meter off the floor, which put her more or less at his own eye level. He got up in her face, his eyes flashing with a madman’s fury.
“I’m sick of your whining!” Victor shouted. “Spoiled little brat! I rescued you. Taught you. Got you out from under the Elders’ control. Is this how you repay me?” He slapped her, hard. “You ungrateful whore! Do you know what they’d do with you if they had you? They’d take your daughter away from you the instant they could cut her out of you. Then they’d give you to some wrinkled old Elder you’ve never met and let him fuck you ‘til your belly swells with his child. They’d do it to you again, and again, and again – you’d be nothing but a brood mare for the next batch of slaves in service to the exalted Collective! Is that what you want, you stupid bitch?! IS IT?!”
Abbey tried to answer, but she couldn’t get a breath in or out past Victor’s unseen grip. Desperately, she waved her hands at him, then gestured at her neck.
Abruptly, Victor seemed to realize what he was doing. He blinked and shook his head, and when he looked at her again the mad gleam in his eyes had faded. Now looking worried, he lowered her to the floor and released his grip on her neck. Abbey slid down the wall, coughing and gasping for air.
“Oh, no,” Victor murmured. “No, no, no. I didn’t – I wasn’t…” He reached out toward her. She flinched away, wrapping her arms around her belly. “Baby, no, I’m sorry,” he said, crouching down on the floor next to her. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. You just got me so angry, I – I couldn’t think straight.”
She sobbed once, then choked back her frightened tears. She couldn’t look at him. He reached out and ran his hand over her hair, and even that made her skin crawl.
“I’m sorry, baby,” he said again, his tone earnest. “You know I’ve got this temper … I hate it, but it’s helped keep me alive. Keep us both alive. I … I shouldn’t have said those things – but when you talked about going back to the Elders, about taking my – our child away from me…” He shook his head. “You shouldn’t say things like that, Abbey. You know what can happen when people make me angry.”
So this is my fault? Abbey shuddered. She wanted to scream at him, wanted to run away and hide, wanted to be anywhere but in that room with him. She settled for keeping herself as still and as quiet as possible, desperate not to say or do anything that might set him off again.
Victor sighed, then got to his feet. “Listen … we’re not the only teeps ever to leave the Collective. Let me see if I can find a telepathic doctor who can take care of this quietly —there’s got to be at least one of them in this city who isn’t one of the Elder’s pawns. If I can’t find one in … let’s say a week … then we can go to the doc you want to see. Who knows, maybe the problem will go away by then. Is that all right, baby?”
Abbey nodded vigorously. Promise anything, she thought. Say whatever he wants. Just as long as he goes away. Just as long as he doesn’t hurt me again.
“All right. All right.” Victor looked at his hands a moment, then wiped them on his pants. “I’m going to meet with some of my contacts, see if they know an OB-GYN who treats telepaths. I’ll be back in a few hours, okay?”
“Okay,” Abbey whispered. She closed her eyes and waited for him to leave. After hesitating for another long moment, he did so.
Ten minutes after he left, Abbey gathered the strength to get up and move again. She immediately started packing.
Abbey had been naive – dangerously naive – but she wasn’t stupid. She still couldn’t read Victor’s mind, but it didn’t take telepathy to see that his rage controlled him. She’d seen glimpses of that rage before, but always directed at other people. Foolishly, she’d thought that his love for her made her immune. She knew better now.
Oh, yes, he’d said he was sorry. Maybe he even believed it himself. But even if that were so, the part of Victor that was sorry wasn’t the part in control. If he did this once, he’d do it again – to her or, gods forbid, to Darla – and next time he might not stop before it was too late. Then it wouldn’t matter how sorry he was.
She filled a small bag with essentials – not that she owned all that much that wasn’t essential – and put on several layers of clothes. Then she grabbed the little black book that held Victor’s contacts and started looking through the listings.
Victor had pointed out one reality all too well: she couldn’t go back to the Hive alone. His warnings about the Elders cutting her child out of her seemed entirely too plausible – and given Victor’s own mental instability, they might not wait until the child was old enough to survive the procedure. She’d been in the crèche long enough to know how much the Collective feared insanity in its members. A telepath as powerful as Darla had the potential to influence a lot of others; if they suspected that Victor’s madness might be passed down, they might decide Abbey’s daughter was more risk than she was worth. Abbey needed an ally, badly, and there was only one person in Victor’s book who had the necessary connections and also seemed trustworthy.
The work number in the book was out of date, but a call to the receptionist gave her the information she needed. Taking her purse on one arm and her bag on the other, she set out to find Daniel Sharabi.
“You sure you wanna do this, Becks?”
Rebecca smiled tentatively at Danni. “Sure. I mean, don’t you? You helped plan all of this.”
“I know, I know. I guess I’m just nervous. Trace is so…” She spread her hands on either side of her face as she opened her mouth in a silent wow. “I mean, what if he doesn’t want to?”
Rebecca grinned. “From what I hear, that’s not likely,” she said. “And anyway, have you looked in the mirror lately? You’re pretty hot stuff yourself these days.”
Danni blushed and fiddled with the collar of her blouse. “Okay. Okay, let’s do it.”
Summoning up all the courage they could muster, Danni and Rebecca left their dorm room and snuck down the hallway with their shoes in their hands, alert for the sound of approaching footsteps. They crept past the lift and the guard station in front of it, then entered the stairwell at the end of the hall. They snuck down to the next floor, where the boys’ dorms were located, and made their way to Trace’s room.
At the door, Danni paused and took ‘Becca’s hand. Is he in there?
Rebecca closed her eyes and nodded. I’ll call him. Just a sec.
Danni fidgeted while the seconds ticked by, very much aware that they were not supposed to be here. But it was ‘Becca’s sixteenth birthday, darn it, and this was how she wanted to celebrate. She wasn’t about to abandon her best friend in the whole world, even if she was almost as scared as she was excited.
The door opened a little and Trace looked down at them. He was wearing only his boxers, and his taut, muscular chest and abs looked like polished ebony in the dim light of the hall. He sported a knowing grin. “Now, how can I help you two lovely ladies?” He spoke audibly, in a low and sultry tone that suggested that he knew exactly how he could “help” them. It was risky, talking out loud, but it let him use that damned sexy voice of his. Danni felt her stomach give a little flip-flop just at the sound of it. Here goes everything, she thought.
Danni and ‘Becca struck a sultry pose, trying to mimic the women in the adult magazines. Danni put a finger to her lips, then reached out and lightly touched Trace’s chest, initiating a telepathic link. Hey, Trace, she purred. It’s ‘Becca’s birthday today, and we’re gonna have a little party to celebrate. She wrapped her arm suggestively around Rebecca. Becks got up on tiptoe and nibbled playfully on Danni’s ear. Wanna join us?
Several emotions flickered swiftly through Trace’s mind. Surprise, Danni noted, was not among them. Somehow that total self-confidence made her want him even more.
Well, that sounds like a lovely idea, Trace said, switching to telepathy. Where is this … little party … supposed to happen?
Rebecca grinned. Danni found an empty office a few floors down. We’ve been getting it … decorated for the occasion.
Trace smirked. So that’s the “little problem” Del’s been helping you with! He’s been so nervous the last few days I thought his tail was going to get stuck between his legs.
Yeah, Del’s been great, Danni said, sending her thoughts a little faster than usual. Look, are you coming? I don’t wanna get caught down here.
Trace’s eyes twinkled. Just let me put something on. He looked down at Rebecca’s slinky dress and Danni’s designer jeans and low-cut blouse. I think I’m a little underdressed for this party. He stepped back from Danni’s finger, breaking the link, and shut the door.
“Ohh, baby,” Rebecca murmured. “You’re gonna be more underdressed than that when we’re done with you.”
Danni shushed her with a look. She wasn’t sure why she was so on edge – well, other than the fear of getting caught – but her emotions seemed to be tangling themselves in ever more complicated knots. She and Rebecca had been fantasizing about Trace for months, but now that they were actually going to do something about it…
Ready, Trace said, opening the door and slipping out into the hall. He was dressed in a scarlet-red button-down shirt and khakis, and had a backpack slung over one shoulder. Lead the way, Danni.
Danni did so, taking them down to the basement of the Westfall campus. They wove their way through stacks of boxes and crates, some of them covered by decades' worth of dust, until at last they came to a steel door propped open with a piece of plywood.
Don't let the door latch, Danni warned them as she slipped through into the stairwell beyond. It'll lock automatically, and it took forever for Del to get it open last time.
Trace nodded assent and put the piece of wood carefully back into place as he joined the two girls on the landing. The stairs were narrow and steep, lit only by small blue electroluminescent panels along the walls. Watch your step, Danni said.
What do ya think these stairs are here for? 'Becca wondered. We already have escape exits, and they aren't hidden in the corner of the basement. If you tried to run down these stairs you'd probably kill yourself!
Danni shrugged. Probably some kind of maintenance shaft, for electronics or plumbing or whatever. She pointed to the locked access panels that lined the walls. These towers are so big they must have dozens of little hidden passages like this.
Pretty brave of you to come exploring down here by yourself, Trace said. What if you'd gotten hurt?
Danni turned around and stuck her tongue out at him. I can take care of myself, she said. Psychic healing, remember?
Trace chuckled and raised a hand, conceding the point. All right. So where is this little hideaway?
Danni stopped at the next landing and pushed open another door, which had likewise been propped open. Right this way, she said, gesturing grandly at the room beyond.
It was only a vacant office space – the faint smell of drywall dust still hung in the air, and the walls were unpainted – but the floor-to-ceiling windows offered a great view of the city beyond. Danni directed them to a cluster of sleeping bags, pillows and bean-bag chairs near the windows. A few feet away sat a small cooler and a portable stereo.
“Pretty nice!” Trace said, flopping back into one of the bean-bags.
“Isn't it, though?” 'Becca agreed. She sprawled out on the sleeping bags and tucked a pillow under her chest – which had the added benefit of displaying her cleavage for Trace's approval. Danni took a sidelong look at him and decided that he approved quite a lot.
Danni went over to the stereo and started it playing, something soft and sultry that Rebecca had picked out. She opened the cooler and pulled out three of their hard-won bottles of beer.
“Here ya go, Becks,” she said, handing her a bottle. “Your first taste of the world of grown-ups. Happy birthday!”
Trace took the second bottle and smirked as he twisted off the cap. “Del got this for you?”
Danni nodded as she opened her own bottle. “Yeah. Have you had it before?”
Trace's eyes twinkled as he took a sip. He looked down at Rebecca, his expression curious and expectant.
Rebecca looked at him, then over at Danni. “Well, here it goes,” she murmured, then raised the bottle to her lips and drank. Immediately her face puckered, and she nearly spat it out. Danni giggled as 'Becca forced it down.
“Gods!” 'Becca said, her voice tight with disgust. “People drink this?!”
Trace boomed a laugh. “Yes, but not usually for their first beer! Rukilia Pale Ale is a little intense for beginners. Too much hops.”
Rebecca took another slight sip, as if to convince herself that it wasn't as bad as she first thought. She didn't look convinced. “I don't think you could pay me to drink this,” she said.
Danni took a sip of her beer and grimaced. “I think I agree with you,” she said, setting it down.
Trace grinned and took a long swig from his bottle. “More for me, then.”
“Glad somebody's going to get some use out of it,” Danni said sourly. “Blast it, I bet Del did that on purpose!”
“You'll have to have a talk with him about that,” 'Becca said.
“No, I—”
Danni froze. Her eyes widened and her jaw snapped shut.
“Danni?” 'Becca asked, sounding puzzled. “What is it?”
Danni shook her head, trying to clear it. She'd been about to say No, I can't, because Del's dead — but why would she have thought that? Del was upstairs right now, probably asleep in his room. She'd seen him just a few hours ago. He wasn't dead.
So why did that feel like a lie?
Trace's strong, gentle hands touched her shoulders from behind. She leaned back into him without thinking about it.
“What's the matter, Danni?”
She took a deep breath and shook her head. “Nothing. Sorry … just spaced out for a minute there.” She stepped away from Trace, out from under his hands. “I'm gonna try a cab. Anybody else want a cab?”
She grabbed the little bag next to the cooler, pulling out a lighter and a pack of cannabis cigarettes. She pulled one out with cold, trembling fingers and held up the pack in front of her. “See? This is supposed to be the good stuff. Supposed to mellow you out. Anybody? Becks?” Oh god, I'm babbling. Why am I babbling?
Rebecca was on her feet now, too, the plan forgotten. She and Trace were slowly coming toward her now, sadness and concern in their eyes.
“Danni…” Rebecca said, hesitantly.
“What? I'm fine!” Danni insisted, hating the way her voice quavered as she spoke. “I'm just a little nervous, that's all. Just need something to relax.” She thrust the pack of cabs toward Becca. “This was your idea, too! Sex, drugs and booze, right? Good Girl 'Becca's one little night to rebel! I'm just along for the ride. DON'T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT!”
“This isn't you, Danni,” Trace said quietly.
“How do you know?” Danni demanded, her eyes filling with frantic tears. “How do you know it isn't me? Maybe I wanna get high and let you bang me 'til I can't see straight! Maybe I wanna watch you do it to Rebecca, to see the look on her face when you fill her up inside! How do you know that's not what I want?!”
Trace caught her hands in his, gently trapping them and taking away the cigarettes. “Because you know it,” he said softly.
Rebecca put a hand on Danni's arm. “It's okay, D. Really it is. You're just not ready.”
Danni sniffed. “But I want to be ready!” she protested, half-heartedly. “I don't know what's wrong with me. Trace, when I saw you come out without your shirt, I thought I was gonna cream my pants right there. But now I'm freaking out and I don't even know why.”
“Hey, come here, girl.” Trace opened his arms, offering a hug. Danni accepted, pressing herself up against the soft red fabric of his shirt.
“You don't have to explain anything,” Trace said. “The right time is when you say it is. And it's okay to change your mind.”
She sniffed again. “I don't suppose I could ask for a rain check?”
He chuckled. “Sure. I'll be here when you're ready.”
No, you won't. The thought struck Danni out of nowhere. Her eyes snapped open. Trace's chest was still red, but the shirt was gone, and it was blood that covered him now, bright red blood that was too red to be real. It crawled off his skin and on to her, covering her hands, marking her, staining her—
Guilty!
—and now she could see the bullet hole where Trace's eye used to be, and there was Del on the floor with his blood-soaked fur, and it was wrong, it was all wrong–
”NOOO!”
Danni shrieked, her whole body going rigid. She stared around wildly, taking in the soft white room, the hospital bed, the lines of whirring equipment. She ripped the spelljack off her head and threw it to the floor, her hands shaking.
Memories came flooding back, as the psy-therapist released the block that had regressed her to age sixteen. They'd been doing these sessions for months, slowly building up her simulated childhood, but this? This was definitely not in the brochure.
The door opened and the psy-therapist, Dr Julian, came inside. Her eyes were wide and her expression troubled. “Danni, are you all right?”
“What the fuck was that?” Danni demanded.
“Do you remember where you ar—”
“Yes, I'm all here,” Danni snapped. “What. The fuck. Was that?”
Dr Julian gestured helplessly. “Some kind of … leakage around the mind block. A piece of your current memories got into the simulation and contaminated it.”
“No fucking shit.”
“Please understand, this is extremely rare,” the doctor said, her tone pleading. “The emotions attached to a memory have to be … incredibly intense and personal for it to break through like that. There was nothing in your profile to suggest that you and Mr. Umbara had ever been … intimate, in that way.”
Danni scoffed. “Daniel and Trace weren't lovers, doc. Gods, Trace was probably the most hetero man who ever lived!” She crossed her arms. “He was my friend, and he was murdered! Less than six months ago! Didn't it occur to you that that might cause some intense feelings?”
“Grief for a friend can be intense, yes,” Dr Julian admitted. “And we thought we'd accounted for that. But the level of pain you're experiencing is far beyond the norm. It's as if you actually witnessed Mr Umbara's death, up close and personal. But you weren't anywhere near the skyport that day, were you?”
Danni swallowed and looked away. “No,” she murmured. Please, Eli, don't let her read my mind…
Fortunately, Dr Julian appeared to be caught up in her own defense. “And you don't have any sort of ESP, so you couldn't have witnessed it that way.” She shrugged helplessly. “The only thing I can think of is that you're carrying around some kind of repressed guilt for something you did to Mr Umbara, something you never got a chance to make right. Can you think of anything like that? Anything that might be keeping you from having closure about his death?”
Danni shook her head, not trusting her voice. Don't think, don't think, don't think…
Dr Julian sighed. “Well, if anything comes to you, let me know. Or tell a priest about it, or something.” She touched Danni's hand, her eyes sincerely apologetic. “I'm sorry. If we had known, we would never have included Mr Umbara in the simulation.”
Danni glared at her. “You know, 'unexpected grief' aside, that's a pretty fucked-up thing to do to somebody. What, losing a friend isn't painful enough? You want me to lose a lover, too?”
“It wasn't my idea,” Dr Julian said wearily, rubbing her eyes. “Your previous choices in the simulations indicated that you found Mr Umbara attractive. Your Daniel persona doesn't have the life experiences to provide context for your new bisexuality, so we needed to give you the opportunity to explore that. Daniel's first sexual encounter with Ms Brower was a useful template for the situation.”
“All right, fine, but why Trace? Why not Brian?”
The doctor shrugged. “Your teenaged mind wasn't attracted to Brian. If we'd tried to force you into a simulation your mind wouldn't accept, the results could have been disastrous—”
Danni raised an eyebrow.
“—all right, more disastrous,” Julian said, blushing. “The whole point of this treatment is to let you be you, whoever you turn out to be. Your rational mind, here and now, says that you should be attracted to Brian because that benefits you in the long run. But teenager hormones don't mix well with that kind of pragmatism.”
Danni sighed. “Don't I know it. Pragmatism has never been my strong suit.”
Dr Julian gave her a sympathetic smile. “We're done for today,” she said. “I need to confer with my team and determine the best way to go forward from here. Your teenage sexuality is going to have to be fleshed out, but we'll try to come up with something that isn't traumatic.” She grimaced. “Or no more traumatic than young love normally is.”
Danni nodded heavily, getting to her feet. “That's all right, doc. I think it's going to be a while before I'm ready to let you back in my head, anyway.”
She grabbed her purse from a nearby chair and headed for the door. I hope, she thought, that Fiona's therapy is going better than mine.
“You’re getting close, love,” Sasha said.
Fiona didn’t open her eyes, but she let out an exasperated sigh. “It doesn’t feel like it.”
“No, really,” Sasha said encouragingly. “The new visualization approach is working really well."
Fiona had to concede that, at least. She had always seen her mind as a vast ocean, churning emotions and memories held back by walls of control. Sasha had suggested a new metaphor might be in order. They now envisioned her memories as a path through a forest, which seemed to be more productive for getting to the roots of her mental block.
"We’ve restored your childhood memories up to about age nine," Sasha continued. "When you came to Westfall you couldn’t have been more than ten. That’s a huge improvement over six months ago.”
Fiona suppressed a grimace. Getting her memories back had been a mixed blessing. Before, she had been able to imagine whatever past might have suited her; her parents could be whoever she wanted them to be. She now knew that her mother had been an unlicensed prostitute, a latent teep so weak that she’d been able to service mundies and spookies alike. While she was grateful for some of the memories – her mother teaching her to read, or singing her to sleep, or taking her to the park on her rare days off – others were less welcome, like the repeated memories of hiding in the closet while Mother entertained her “clients.”
Worst of all, nothing that she remembered had been able to help Fiona actually find her mother. Was she dead? Had she given Fiona up to the Hive for her own protection? Had she just abandoned her? No – I cannot believe that.
She felt Sasha’s hand on her shoulder. “I don’t believe that, either,” she said softly. “She did everything she could to make a life for you. A mom like that doesn’t just cut and run.”
Fiona looked up at her, a pang of longing clutching at her chest. “To remember everything but the most important thing…” She shook her head slightly.
“You’re almost there,” Sasha insisted. “You’re ready to unravel this, I can feel it. Come on, let’s give it one more try.”
Fiona closed her eyes and nodded. “Very well.” She lay back on the hospital bed and listened as Sasha began to speak in a gentle, measured tone, using a combination of her voice and her powers to lull Fiona into a hypnotic state.
“Imagine the path of your life, stretching back deep into the woods of your past,” Sasha said. “Think about the markers you’ve put down on that path. Can you see the markers?”
“Yes,” Fiona said softly.
“Good. I want you to back to the marker for your ninth birthday. Picture it in your mind. Can you see it?”
“Yes.”
“What happened on your ninth birthday?”
Fiona smiled faintly. “We went to the beach.”
“Who went to the beach with you?” Sasha asked, though Fiona knew that she knew the answer.
“My mother.”
“And what are you two doing?”
Fiona’s smile grew a shade wider as the memory blossomed in her mind. “We’re walking down the beach and singing.”
“Okay. Very good. Now, I want you to keep holding on to your mother's hand and walk down the path with her as far as you can.”
Fiona relaxed and did as Sasha instructed, stepping out of the memory at the beach and continuing down the forest path in her mind. In her mind's eye, her body was still that of the nine-year-old girl from the beach, but she wasn't frightened. Her mother was with her.
Soon the underbrush grew thick and the light grew dim. She couldn't see her mother beside her anymore, but she held tightly to the image of Mother's hand in her own, the sound of Mother's footsteps on the leaves behind her, the scent of Mother's perfume in her nose.
The path twisted, turned, ran through a snarl of bushes, and finally stopped at a fallen tree. The old oak tree's dead and tangled limbs stuck out in all directions, forming a maze of sharp and splintered wood. Fiona looked around and saw fragments of memories all around her, reflected in the leaves scattered by the fallen tree. She tried to go around it, but the brush was dense here and seemed impassable.
“I'm stuck,” she said quietly. “I don't know how to get past the tree.”
Sasha's voice appeared in her mind. Can you jump over the tree?
“It's too high.”
Can you move the tree?
Fiona looked down at her tiny child-body. “It's too big to lift.”
Then you're going to have to go through it, Sasha said. If you can get past the branches, you'll be able to climb over the tree.
Fiona looked up at the tangled mess of branches. “I don't know how.”
At this, she felt a tug on her hand. Her mother's image stepped into view, faint and glowing in the dim light. She looked back at Fiona, her long red hair glistening like rubies from the light inside of her. She smiled encouragingly.
Your mother knows the way, Sasha said. Follow her. Hold on to the memory of her. Let it guide you to the other things you've lost.
Fiona looked at the tree, doubtful. Her mother squeezed her hand. “It's all right, Fiona,” her mother said. Her lilting Sathmoran accent was as warm and comforting as an old, familiar blanket. “Stay close to me and nothing will harm you.”
Trust was not something that came easily to Fiona, but as she looked into her mother's dazzling green eyes, she knew that she was safe with her. She followed her into the maze of branches.
It was slow and difficult going, and the broken ends of the branches stabbed at her as she passed through. Still she held on to Mother's hand, following in her footsteps.
They came to the trunk of the tree and began to climb. In one spot it was too far to the next branch for Fiona's little body to reach it, but her mother reached down and lifted her up until she was crouched beside her at the top of the trunk.
“We're nearly there, pet,” Mother said. “Follow me closely, now — I'll catch you if you should fall.”
Fiona nodded, and she and Mother went down together, using the larger branches as stepping-stones to reach the ground. Twice her feet slipped on the moss-covered wood, but Mother grabbed her and held her close. In some distant part of her mind, Fiona knew that this was not her real mother, only a collection of feelings and memories, but she felt those slender arms around her and they made her feel safe. After a moment, they continued their descent.
Finding their way out of the thicket of branches seemed to be easier than finding their way in. Before long Fiona stood with her mother on the far side of the barrier. Looking back from this angle she could see the stump of the tree, far back in the woods. The top of the stump was smooth and straight, a sharp wedge at a 45-degree angle to the ground.
The tree hadn't fallen. Someone had cut it down.
Frightened, Fiona turned to continue up the path. Something bad had happened here. She did not want to linger.
Her mother did not move. Fiona looked back, puzzled.
“Mother?” she asked, her voice sounding very small and vulnerable even to her own ears. “Aren't you coming?”
Her mother smiled sadly. “Love of my heart,” she said, opening her arms to Fiona. “I'm sorry, but this is as far as I go.”
Tentatively, Fiona came back to her. Her mother wrapped her in her arms again, and Fiona looked up at her questioningly. Mother brushed a lock of frizzy red hair out of Fiona's eyes.
“Would you know the truth?” she asked gently. “Would you see what was taken from you? What you have feared to remember for all these years?”
Fiona swallowed the lump in her throat, then nodded.
Her mother gestured at the tree. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, slowly, with a great creaking of wood and the rustling of branches, the tree righted itself. Like a video recording being run backwards, it returned to its place atop the stump, gathering fallen branches and leaves as it came. The sharp slash through the trunk mended itself. Leaves turned from brown to green. Shed strips of bark found their places once more.
“How are you doing this?” Fiona whispered in awe.
“I'm not doing this, pet,” Mother said, her voice full of pride. “You are.”
In less than a minute the tree stood intact and healthy once again. In the place where it had fallen, the path of her memories was black and ugly — a rotten, festering patch of earth, overgrown with fungi and infested with wretched, crawling things.
Mother went over to stand beside the patch, then turned and beckoned to Fiona. “Come and see, Fiona.”
Fiona took a step back. “It looks terrible,” she said. Her voice still sounded small.
“The truth is not always beautiful,” Mother said. “But as the Good Book says, it will set you free.” She held out her hand. “Walk with me, pet – one last time.”
Fiona took a deep breath. Summoning all her courage, she stepped forward and took her mother's hand. Together they stepped through into the memory.