Chapter Twenty-Six
Fiona lay on the bed, pencil in hand, and frowned down at the notepad in front of her. She chewed on her bottom lip in concentration.
“So … this ‘x’ is a number?” she asked.
“That’s right, pet,” her mother said.
“And it could be anything?”
Mother chuckled. “Not quite anything, Fiona. We have this equation that tells us something about it.” She pointed to the collection of symbols on the paper: 3x + 15 = 48. “There’s only one number x can be if that equation is true. Your job is to figure out what it is.”
Fiona nodded slowly. “So, it’s like a mystery. The equation has the clues, and ‘x’ is the guy we’re trying to catch.”
Mother’s eyes twinkled. “Now you’ve got it.”
Smiling, Fiona looked back at the paper again. “We’re gonna have to get rid of that 15 if we’re gonna get x by himself. Can I subtract the 15 so I just have the 3x?”
“You can,” Mother agreed. “But you also have to subtract 15 from the other side. The equation is like a teeter-totter: If you take someone off one side, you have to take someone off the other side, as well, or it shan’t be in balance anymore.”
“That makes sense,” Fiona said. A moment of arithmetic later, she had 3x = 33. She paused. “I can do the same thing with multiplication right? Or division?”
Mother nodded.
“Well, that’s easy! x has to be eleven.”
“Very good, Fiona!” Mother said, grinning. “Congratulations. You’ve just learned how to do something most children don’t suss out until they’re twelve or thirteen.”
Fiona made a face. “They must be pretty stupid, then. That wasn’t hard.”
Mother laughed, a musical sound that filled the tiny studio apartment. “No, pet. The stupid ones don’t learn it until some time later. You’re just that smart.” She planted a kiss on Fiona’s forehead, and Fiona giggled.
“Let’s do another one!” she said.
Mother took the notepad and pencil, flipped to a new sheet of paper, and wrote down a new problem. As she was handing it back to Fiona, a knock sounded at the door. A frown creased Mother’s beautiful features. She held a finger to her lips. Fiona nodded, and Mother went over to the door. She gazed out the peep hole for a moment, then came back, her frown deepening.
“My next customer is here early,” Mother said softly, all the joy drained from her voice. “I’m sorry, pet, but we’ll have to return to this later. Into the closet with you, now.”
Pouting, Fiona picked up her pencil and notebook and went over to the closet. Her pillow, blankets, an old telephone and Mister Thomas were all inside waiting for her. She flopped down on the pillow and wrapped her arms around the old stuffed horse. Mother closed the closet doors and went back to the front of the flat, where the knocks on the door were getting louder. Fiona shifted her position so she could see out through the crack between the closet doors.
Mother opened the door, revealing a young man in his late teens. He had a lean, hungry look about him, like the dogs who prowled the Street at night. He wore an old jacket and scuffed-up jeans, but his shoes were too nice for a Street Rat. He looked like somebody trying to look like a Street Rat, and not doing a very good job.
“Egan,” Mother said by way of greeting. Her voice was flat, all business. “You’re almost half an hour early. If you’d prefer to book your appointments earlier, I’ll be happy to oblige, but you’ll not be getting extra time without paying for it.”
Fiona hated this part. She understood what Mother did for a living – how could she not? – and she guessed that there were probably worse ways to make money. But she didn’t like the fact that the men came here. It hadn’t always been this way; Mother had been part of the Guild once, and they had a nice place called a parlor where she went to work. Mother could meet her customers in one room while Fiona stayed with the other women’s kids in the play room, safe and out of sight. But for some reason the Guild had kicked her out – Mother wouldn’t say why – and now they were on their own. Most of the women who got kicked out would work out of special hotel rooms, but Mother said that those hotels were all owned by the vampires. It was very important to Mother that they stay away from the vampires.
Her thoughts were interrupted when another voice came from the hallway.
“Don’t worry, babe. He’ll pay you.” Another young man stepped into view. This one was blonde, sleek and handsome. He moved like the lions at the zoo: all grace and power. This one wasn’t trying to look like a Street Rat; he was the thing that ate Street Rats for breakfast. Fiona started trembling. Oh, this is not good, she thought. Not good, not good, not good.
Mother put out her hand, a warding gesture. “Stop right there, handsome,” she said, her voice harsh. “Let’s get one thing straight: I don’t like surprises. You paid for one hour of my trade, Egan. If your friend here wants to have a go, he’ll have to make an appointment like everyone else.”
“Oh, c’mon, Red,” Egan said cajolingly. “Victor’s all right. He’s my best mate.”
Victor showed a wolfish grin. “And Egan here said you were so amazing that I just had to see for myself.”
“We’ll pay you triple,” Egan offered. “Cash up front.” He pulled out a roll of bills and passed them to Mother. She counted them, then gripped the money in her fist, obviously thinking hard.
“Fine,” she said at last. ”Just this once. You don’t spring me on this again, understand, Egan?”
“Sure thing,” Egan said, nodding eagerly.
“You still only get one hour,” Mother said. She crooked a thumb at her backside. “And if either one of you goes anywhere near the back door, it’s another hundred.”
Victor grinned again and passed over a few bills of his own. “I think we can deal with that,” he said.
Mother grimaced, but she took the money. “I’ll just put this in the lock box,” she said, then nodded to the bed. “Make yourselves comfortable.”
What followed was hard for Fiona to watch, but she couldn’t bring herself to not watch, either. She didn’t like the look of that Victor guy at all, and she felt that she owed it to Mother to keep an eye on him. Mother had told her what to do if she ever got hurt during her work: stay hidden, use the phone in the closet to dial emergency services, and leave the phone off the hook until help arrived. She ran through the plan in her head, silently repeating it like a litany: Stay hidden. Call Emergency. Wait for help.
Fiona pulled the phone a little closer, then looked out again at her mother and the two men. She could feel their emotions from here, the tangled web of thoughts and feelings that resulted when Mother joined with other spookies. Sometimes that bond was something beautiful and special, like a group of musicians playing together. Mother had said that those were the times she actually enjoyed her job. Tonight, though, the music of their thoughts was sour and out of tune, full of jangling discord and competing rhythms. There was pain in the group-mind, and embarrassment, and shame – and running under it all, a wolfish melody that heard that pain, and laughed.
After an hour, Mother pulled herself out of the link. “All right,” she said firmly, doing her best to hide the pain and exhaustion Fiona knew she felt. “That’s it. Your time’s up.”
“I haven’t … finished,” Victor growled, his voice rough with exertion. He stood at the edge of the bed with Mother on her back in front of him. He didn’t show any sign of letting go.
“That’s not my problem, boyo,” Mother snapped. “You can pay for another hour, or you can finish your own damned self.” She made to push herself back on the bed, then went abruptly still. Fiona felt her mother’s shock as she was suddenly rooted to the spot.
Egan, who had been taking a breather and watching them, now sat up with a look of alarm. “What are you doing, Vic?” he asked.
“Getting … my money’s worth,” Victor said tightly. “Bitch wasted too much time talking in the beginning.”
“Vic, she didn’t start the clock until we got started! I watched her! Come on, either pay up or let her go.”
Victor spun on Egan then, letting go of Mother as he rounded on his friend. Mother gasped and scrambled off the bed, out of his way.
“You takin’ her side, Egan?” Victor spat. “You backin’ this stupid flatliner over your best mate?”
Egan stood up and faced Victor squarely, putting a finger to his chest. “You’re outta line, Vic,” he said. “Red’s providing you a service – and one you’ve been having a damned hard time getting for free, I might point out.”
Victor snarled but said nothing.
“You want that service, you pay for it,” Egan said. “Our bet was only good for one hour. You want more than that, you can pay for it yourself!”
“Actually,” Mother said, “you can both get out of my bloody flat!”
Egan and Victor spun to face her. She had crept over to the desk while they were arguing and pulled out her little gun. She kept it trained squarely on Victor, her bright green eyes burning with fierce anger.
Fiona gasped, then grabbed the phone and dialed Emergency Services. She covered the earpiece with her hand so that Victor wouldn’t hear the voice of the dispatcher. Outside the closet, there was a long, dangerous silence.
“Red, no,” Egan whispered. His face had gone white.
“You heard me!” Mother shouted. “Put on your clothes and get out!”
Victor took a step toward her. She pulled back the hammer on the gun, the sound unsettlingly loud in the otherwise-quiet room. He stopped, still a good two meters away from her.
“You’re gonna put that gun down if you know what’s good for you,” Victor said, his voice barely above a whisper.
Mother’s lip curled back from her teeth. “Not one more step,” she warned him. “Get your things and get out. I won’t tell you again.”
For an instant no one moved. Then Victor snarled and shot out his hand toward Mother. In the same instant she pulled the trigger, but an invisible hand pushed the gun barrel to the side. The shot went wide, striking the wall behind Victor. Before she could take aim again, the gun twisted out of her hand and flew across the room, landing in the far corner.
Fiona gasped and covered her mouth, as the same invisible force picked Mother up and slammed her against the wall. Victor was on her a moment later, wrapping his hand around her throat. His other hand balled into a fist and struck her hard, breaking her nose. Mother’s pain echoed through Fiona’s mind even louder than the gunshot.
“You stupid, mundy-loving cunt!” Victor’s eyes were alight with madness, a rage so complete that he was literally frothing at the mouth. “You want pain? You must like it, ‘cause you’re asking for it!” He hit her again, across the mouth.
“Vic, no!” Egan shouted. He ran over and tried to pull Victor off of her. “Let ‘er go, man! You don’t want to do this!”
”Get off of me!” Victor roared. He grabbed Egan in a telekinetic grip and threw him bodily across the room. In that instant of distraction, his grip on Mother weakened. She spat blood in his face, then struck out with a kick to his unprotected groin. Victor staggered back, bent double in his agony. Mother fell to the floor, scrabbled to her feet again, and went for the gun. Egan intercepted her, wrapping her up and holding her arms to her sides.
“Everybody hold it!” he shouted, the panic edging into his voice. “You’re both – just – just stop it!”
“Let me go, Egan!” Mother’s face was covered in blood, already swelling up, but her eyes were still full of green fire. “Let me put down that animal while we still can!”
“I’m not letting you shoot Vic!” Egan said.
“He tried to kill me!”
“I’m not going to let him do that, either!” Egan insisted.
Victor staggered to his feet, bracing himself on the bed. Fiona couldn’t see his face, but she could see his body shaking with rage. Silence fell over the room again, save for the panting of the three adults.
“You saw … what she did?” Victor’s voice sounded half-strangled with pain.
“Fuck, man, you had it coming!” Egan snapped. “What the fuck were you thinking, hitting her like that?”
“He wasn’t thinking,” Mother said, glaring at Victor from across the room. “He’s a bloody beast, Egan. A killer. I saw his mind in the link. One day you’re going to wish you’d let me kill him.”
Egan sighed. “Gods damn it.” He half-dragged, half-carried Mother over to the corner opposite the door to the flat. He turned her toward the wall, putting his body between her and Victor. “Vic, get your shit together and get outta here.”
Victor stared at him a moment, then began to dress.
“I’m so sorry, Red,” Egan murmured.
“Fuck your apologies,” Mother growled.
When he had dressed, Victor went to the door and let himself out. Egan let go of Mother and went to dress himself. He was just pulling on his shoes when the sound of sirens rose in the distance. Victor burst back into the room, fresh rage burning in his eyes.
“You fucking whore, you set us up!”
Before Egan could react, Victor snapped out his arm toward Mother and clenched his fist. There was a loud crack, and Mother’s neck bent at a sickening angle. She fell to the floor and lay still.
“Momma!” Fiona forgot all about the plan. She burst from the closet, ran past an astonished Victor and knelt at her mother’s side. “Momma, no, get up, please…”
“Fuck!” Egan wheeled on Victor. “What the fuck are you doing, man?!”
Victor didn’t respond at once. Fiona bowed over Mother’s body and sobbed.
“I … bitch set us up,” Victor said at last, sounding stunned. “You think the kid saw?”
“Oh, fuck no! Don’t even think it, Vic! I am not letting you kill a fucking kid!”
“Well, what are you gonna do, Egan?” Victor demanded. “Cops are gonna be here any minute! She’s gonna tell ‘em what happened!”
“Not—” Egan stopped, took a breath, and started again, his voice marginally more steady. “Not if she doesn’t remember.”
Fiona looked up then, her eyes widening as she realized what he was talking about. No…
She tried to run. Egan caught her halfway to the door. In sudden terror, she grabbed his jacket and pulled. Energy welled up from somewhere inside her, filling her arms and legs. She flung Egan in a half-circle and then let go, throwing him halfway across the room.
She stopped and stared at her own hands in astonishment.
Comprehension dawned on Victor’s face. He laughed. “Son of a bitch,” he said, sounding impressed. “The kid’s an egoist – and a damned strong one.”
“So I noticed,” Egan muttered.
Victor smiled. “This changes everything.” He gestured, and Fiona rose into the air, gently suspended by a force that held her just under her arms. Another band of force held her mouth shut; she tried to scream, but nothing came out. She thrashed and kicked, but she couldn’t reach anything. Her newfound strength had nothing to act on.
“Let’s go,” Victor said.
They ran, Victor dragging Fiona behind him like a helium balloon. If anyone heard them leaving, they didn’t open their doors to look out. On the Street, people didn’t risk getting involved.
They bypassed the lift tubes and took the stairwell instead. After descending through four flights, they heard a door open below them and the sound of boots tramping up the stairs.
Victor looked over the railing and grimaced. Cops, he said. The telepathic message was obviously intended for Egan, but Victor’s focus was erratic and Fiona picked up on his thoughts. We need a mind fog.
I’m on it, Egan said, though he didn’t sound happy about it. He stopped in the middle of a landing, then pointed to the corner behind him. Victor parked Fiona in the corner, pinning her arms and legs to the wall and locking her jaw shut so she couldn’t make any noise. He took up position in front of her, his eyes on her and his back to the stairs.
Fiona couldn’t move her head, but there was enough space under Victor’s arm for her catch most of what happened next. Two police officers came up the stairs and turned onto the landing at a run. They didn’t see Egan loitering there until they had plowed into him. The three men fell in a heap.
“Hey, watch it!” Egan protested.
The police officers scrabbled to disentangle themselves, but not before Egan succeeded in touching one man’s hand and the other’s face. Their eyes went glassy at the skin-to-skin contact, and Fiona felt the echoes of Egan’s telepathic power as he reshaped the men’s perceptions.
“S-sorry about that, sir,” one of the cops mumbled. He blinked and rubbed his eyes, then stepped past Egan and continued up the stairs. His partner followed him a moment later. Neither of them looked once at Victor or Fiona.
When they had gone, Victor thumped Egan’s shoulder. Good work.
Let’s just get out of here, Egan said, his mental voice sour. He shook off Victor’s hand and continued down the stairs.
They exited at the Street and dragged Fiona for half a block before taking a lift up to the first level. If Victor was getting tired from using his power for so long, he didn’t show any sign of it. They entered a dimly-lit parking garage and took her to an old and battered skimmer. Egan opened one of the back doors and Victor deposited Fiona inside, pinning her against the seat cushions.
“All right, Victor, what did you have in mind?” Egan asked, almost snarling at his partner in crime. “Why not just wipe the kid’s memory and leave her there?”
“The kid’s valuable,” Victor said. “Egoists this strong don’t come around too often, especially outside the crèches. We’ll get a nice reward from the Elders if we bring her in.”
Egan glared at Victor. “You killed her mother, dumbass. You think the Elders are gonna thank you for that?”
Victor grabbed Egan’s shirt. “So we don’t tell them that, do we?” he said, his voice low and dangerous. He locked eyes with Egan for a moment, then released him. “This’ll be easy enough to cover,” he said, continuing in a lighter tone. “A gang of rogue mages goes in for a little action, the bitch gets cheeky, they kill her. We happened to be close enough that you heard her psychic scream, followed it down and found the girl.” He smirked. “Tragically, the mages had mind-wiped her to protect their identities, so we’ll never know who did it.” He spread his hands. “It’s a win-win situation. We get to be heroes, and the girl gets taken in by the Hive. Couldn’t be simpler.”
Egan nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he murmured. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s the only way.” He turned his attention to Fiona, who was still lying immobilized in the back seat. He reached out and brushed the hair out of Fiona’s eyes. Fiona wanted to bite him, or spit in his face, but she couldn’t do either one as long as Victor held her.
Fingertips pressed into her forehead. She felt Egan’s mind start pressing inside her own. She raised a feeble shield to try to block him, but her defenses were as thin as tissue paper. She couldn’t keep him out.
Tears began to flow unbidden down her face.
“Hey, now,” Egan said, his voice gentle. He gave her a sad smile. “Don’t cry, Little Red. It’ll all be better in a minute…”
Sasha opened her eyes and saw Fiona jolt upright as she came out of the memory. Her body dripped with sweat, and she shivered under the air vents mounted above the bed. The shivering turned to trembling, which turned to shaking. Sasha felt the blood draining from her face.
“Fiona?” she whispered.
Fiona looked up at her, her emerald green eyes wide and almost uncomprehending. Sasha felt a fresh wave of horror at the memories they had just unleashed. Telepaths of her caliber were trained from childhood in the use of their powers – not just in how to use them, but in the ethics of what was and was not permissible. The power to alter the mind of another was a deadly serious matter, and the boundaries they were taught were supposed to be utterly sacrosanct. What Egan had done — acting as an accessory to murder, then erasing Fiona’s entire childhood to cover up the crime…
Sasha shuddered in outrage. There were no words for it. Egan’s actions could not have been more abhorrent if he had raped the girl and pissed on her mother’s corpse.
Her mother … oh, Eli… Sasha saw it in Fiona’s eyes when the full realization of her mother’s death finally struck home. It fell on her like an atomic blast, vaporizing the defensive walls that had held her emotions so tightly under control. The deep waters of her mind boiled and spilled forth, a torrent of feelings that rushed over Sasha and carried her along with it. She knelt on the bed at Fiona’s side and wrapped her arms around her. Fiona responded instantly, clutching at her and burying her face in Sasha’s chest. She sobbed, and screamed, and wailed, as the nine-year-old girl inside her vented all of the grief and rage and terror that she had subconsciously carried but had never been able to express. Sasha held her tightly through it all, saying nothing. She just let her love fold itself around Fiona’s heart, grounding her in the quiet, steady proof that she was not alone.
It took nearly an hour, but in the end Fiona exhausted her emotional reserves – or perhaps she simply ran out of energy. She and Sasha lay side by side on the bed, quietly holding each other as Sasha did her best to soothe the raw, aching hurt inside her.
“Egan Hunter,” Fiona sighed, looking up at the ceiling. “All these years and I never guessed.”
Sasha ran a hand over Fiona’s muscular abs. “He’s dead, you know.” Her voice sounded subdued even in her own ears. “Got himself killed on a mission this summer.”
“Yes,” Fiona said. Sasha had half-expected some sense of vindication on Fiona’s part, but the only feeling she got from her was a mild nausea. “He was killed by Victor. I’m afraid that doesn’t quite qualify as justice done.”
“Tell me about it,” Sasha muttered. She let out an exasperated sigh. “Those two sociopaths were part of the Hive for, what, fifteen years? Why in hell didn’t anyone see what they were before now?”
“I suspect they did,” Fiona said wearily. “Neither Victor nor Egan was permitted to join a breeding cell, even though both were near the top of the power curve in their respective disciplines. Both were career MID, and that sort of aggression is a useful skill in an operative – as I have demonstrated myself,” she added ruefully. She shrugged. “The Hive probably thought they could be controlled.”
Sasha grimaced. “And we saw how well that worked with Victor,” she said sourly. She thought about Abbey Preston, the telepathic prodigy whom Victor had disappeared with six months ago. “Damn it, that poor girl! I can’t believe that Elder Bakhtavar just called off the search like that. What was she thinking?”
Fiona placed her hand over Sasha’s and squeezed. “Don’t underestimate her,” she said, her tone surprisingly warm and encouraging. “Elder Bakhtavar’s resources are considerable. Perhaps she suspects a leak within the Hive, and has ended the official search in order to circumvent it.”
“Maybe,” Sasha said glumly. “I just wonder how much effort she’s really going to put into this. I mean, if the Elders never even bothered to figure out what happened to you, how can we trust them to take care of this Abbey?”
“I understand your concern, love,” Fiona said. She smiled sadly. “Now more than ever, actually. If not for what Victor might do to Abbey, I would hunt him down and kill him myself. If Elder Bakhtavar can bring her home safely, I am willing to give her the chance.”
Sasha nodded hesitantly. “And … what if she can’t? Or won’t?”
Fiona looked grim. “Brian asked you not to get involved in the hunt for Victor. Now more than ever, I agree.”
“But—”
“I can’t lose you!” Fiona gripped her shoulders, like a woman clinging desperately to a life preserver. “Please, Sasha! If Miriam can’t get Abbey back, we’ll come up with another plan, but I don’t want you anywhere near that murderer!”
The passion in her voice was so intense that it nearly knocked Sasha off the bed. She raised a shield against the torrent of emotion and managed to dampen it down to a tolerable level. So this is what an uninhibited Fiona looks like, she thought dazedly. This is gonna take some getting used to…
“All right,” she said, lowering her eyes and nodding. “All right, Fi. For your sake, I’ll stay off the front line on this one.” She looked back up and raised her chin. “Just promise you won’t shut me out entirely. If Miriam brings you in, I want to know about it.”
“Of course.” Fiona leaned forward and kissed Sasha gently on the lips. “Don’t worry, love. If there is one Elder left we can still trust to do what is right, it’s Miriam.”
Miriam Bakhtavar stood with her hands on her hips, gazing down at the two thralls before her. They knelt before her naked, their faces burning with shame. Behind them stood Seralina Grayhaven, looking fearsome in her black leather corset, tight-fitting designer jeans and platform boots. Her mother-of-pearl hair was bound back in a ponytail, exposing the elegant lines of her face, and she wore a black choker with a silver medallion. The medallion was embossed with a sigil that would mean nothing to most people, but to the vampires it marked her as Miriam’s seneschal, the servant responsible for ordering the affairs of her house. Leena had chosen the outfit for herself, and while Miriam felt that the corset was a bit immodest, she kept her thoughts to herself. It was an obvious display of Leena’s renewed self-confidence, and Miriam would readily endure any embarrassment to see that proud spark in her eyes again.
Leena paced back and forth behind the two kneeling thralls with the slow, measured stride of a jungle cat. She carried a long flogger, a multi-tailed whip made of soft buffalo hide attached to a wooden handle. She smacked it rhythmically into the palm of her hand in time with her steps. Miriam stood quietly and waited, letting Leena exercise the authority of her position.
“Peter and Sarah,” Leena said. “What am I going to do with you?” The words fell from her lips like poisoned honey.
The two thralls winced in unison.
“There are certain laws our Mistress has set in place to govern this house,” Leena continued. “It is my responsibility to ensure that these laws are followed. I thought that I had made these laws clear to both of you. Was I wrong? Have I failed my Mistress in this most basic of tasks?”
“No, Ms Leena,” Peter and Sarah said together.
“Ah! Then you are aware that you have broken one of our laws? That is good!” Leena said. “Now, can you tell me which law you have broken?”
“Yes, Ms Leena,” said Peter and Sarah.
“And that is?”
Peter and Sarah exchanged a sideways glance. “No sex between teeps and mundies,” they said. They looked up at Miriam imploringly. “But Mistress,” they said, “it wasn’t his – Peter’s – fault! We—”
The whip came down across their naked backs, eliciting a shared yelp. Leena struck with the falls of the leather cords, not the tips, so it merely stung the flesh instead of slicing it open. Still, Miriam felt the echoes of their pain and knew that it was more than sufficient as a tool for discipline. The thralls fell silent, heads bowed.
“The Mistress is here to bear witness,” Leena said sternly. “She is not your advocate. If you wish to defend your actions, you may make your defense to me.”
“Yes, Ms Leena,” they said, subdued.
Leena nodded once. After a moment, she touched the whip lightly to Sarah’s back. “Sarah? Why was Peter not to blame?”
Though Sarah was addressed, they both answered in unison – as they must, given their condition. “We lied to ourself,” the group-mind said. “We – Sarah – told our … told Peter … that Sarah was a latent teep.”
“Why did you do that?” Leena asked, her tone neutral.
They both blushed. “Because we … Sarah was attracted to him, and wanted to be with him. And because we … she … wanted to know what it was like. The gestalt.”
“I see. And Peter? You never thought to question her story? Never sensed the falsehood in her?”
“We … Peter wondered about it,” they said. “But Sarah is so beautiful that we … he…” They trailed off.
“Yes? Out with it, Peter.”
“Peter wanted it to be true,” they said quietly.
Leena let the words hang in the air as she resumed pacing, the steady thunk, thunk, thunk of her boots echoed in double-time by the pounding of the thralls’ hearts. Miriam could feel them waiting for the lash, waiting for Leena to give them the punishment they deserved. They dreaded the pain, but they also longed for it. They knew that they had failed their Mistress, and they silently begged for the punishment to begin so it could end that much sooner. But Miriam knew what they had not yet realized: there would be no end to the punishment for this mistake.
Leena seemed to understand that, too, and anger warred with pity across the elegant lines of her face. At last she spoke again. “So. Sarah lied to Peter so she could experience a gestalt, and Peter let himself believe that lie because he wanted to sleep with Sarah. Does that about cover it?”
The thralls lowered their heads a little closer to the carpet. “Yes, Ms Leena.”
“This, despite the fact that both of you had been warned explicitly about the danger of telepaths having sex with non-telepaths?”
“Yes, Ms Leena.”
Leena let out a short, exasperated sigh. “I could whip you both red for this, but it would be like beating a child for playing near the fire when he’s already fallen in.” She shook her head, then looked searchingly at Miriam.
“Wait here, children,” Miriam said. She gestured to Leena, and together they headed for Miriam’s bedroom on the far side of the apartment. Two of the other thralls were at work in the kitchen; they looked up questioningly as Miriam passed, but Leena gestured for them to be silent.
Leena entered Miriam’s bedroom behind her and pushed the door shut with her back. Instantly her air of authority evaporated, leaving her looking weary and troubled.
“You see why I called you,” Leena said.
Miriam nodded heavily, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “I do.”
Leena knelt at her feet, not quite touching her but close enough that Miriam could feel the warmth of her. “Have you ever dealt with anything like this?”
“Not personally,” Miriam said. “There have been stories, passed down from the early days before the Collective. Honestly, most of them have the feel of urban legend, exaggerated to grotesquery to ensure compliance. Evidently Peter didn’t take them at face value.”
“Still, how could he take a risk like that?” Leena asked. “He’s twenty-five, not some addle-brained teenager! You’d think he’d have learned some impulse control by now.”
“I fear that may be partly my fault,” Miriam sighed. “Peter could have exposed me to the other Elders if he learned what I had become. I had to make him a thrall to protect my position, and the compulsions I needed to ensure his obedience were … extensive.” She grimaced. “You can’t suppress a person’s willpower that heavily without consequence.”
A haunting echo of memory ran behind Leena’s eyes, and the half-Elf shuddered. “Yeah, you’re right,” she murmured. After a moment she shook herself and asked, “So, what do we do, Mistress? I can’t let them leave the apartment like that.”
Miriam imagined the two thralls walking through a supermarket together, moving and speaking in unison. The thought was only amusing for a moment. “Clearly not.” She shook her head. “We may have to separate them. Put one of them in a lead-lined cell to break the telepathic link.”
Leena perked up, looking a shade more optimistic. “Will that put them back in their own heads?”
“No,” Miriam said sadly. “They’ve joined into one personality, and Sarah’s ego doesn’t have the telepathy to find its way home again. The Peter and Sarah we knew are gone forever.”
Leena’s face fell again. “So what’s going to happen when we separate them?”
Miriam shrugged. “Theoretically, each of them will be left with a copy of the new personality. As long as we keep them from rejoining in another gestalt, their personalities will diverge with time, just from being in different bodies and having different experiences.”
“But they’ll both have Peter and Sarah’s memories.” It was more a statement than a question.
“Yes,” Miriam said, “and they’re both likely to have some psychic dissonance from the memories that clash with their respective bodies.” She turned her hands palm-upward and shook her head, a gesture that barely hinted at how helpless she felt. “This is all uncharted territory, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I have to do extensive mental reconstruction on both of them just to keep them sane. And you’ll have your hands full keeping them away from each other, because they’ll instinctively want to re-form their gestalt so they can reconnect with what they’ve lost.” She closed her eyes and let out a frustrated sigh. I’ve failed them, she thought. I promised myself that I would protect these “thralls” like my own children … but I couldn’t protect them from the way my feeding changed them.
Leena shifted closer and lay her chin on Miriam’s lap, wrapping her arms around Miriam’s legs as she did so. Without even thinking about it, Miriam ran her hand over the woman’s head, stroking it affectionately. Leena nuzzled against her in response, reveling in her mistress’s touch.
Is this what I’ve become? A creature that keeps people as pets and food? But even as she thought it, Miriam felt a warm satisfaction at the way Leena submitted to her. There was a rightness to it, a sense of wholesome pleasure as they reaffirmed the hierarchy that bound them together. Miriam’s power over Leena was absolute and unquestioned; she could demand Leena’s life at any time, and Leena would be powerless to refuse her. But it pleased Miriam to allow Leena to live, to treat her with kindness and affection, to entrust her with responsibility and allow her the freedom of self-expression.
That was the key, Miriam realized: She chose to give Leena these things, and within the protective borders of Miriam’s grace Leena had blossomed like a well-tended garden. Years of manipulation by Malcolm had taught Leena to find her purpose in serving others, but then he had tormented her by refusing to allow her to act on that purpose. Miriam had fed Leena’s need to serve in the best way possible: by taking Leena’s natural gift for organizing people and putting it to use in her service. All of the prodigious talents she had exercised as a CEO now came into play in her role as Miriam’s seneschal, but she threw herself into her work with an even greater fervor because she was doing it in service to her mistress. Love, talent and duty had combined into one, and that made Leena fearless.
The thought filled Miriam with a fresh surge of affection for the woman. She reached down and gently lifted Leena’s chin, directing her eyes to Miriam’s own. Leena’s mind opened before her as their eyes met, and Miriam poured into her all of the love and pride that Leena had inspired in her. The half-Elf soaked up the wordless praise like a plant soaked up sunlight. The fatigue and worry vanished from her in an instant.
“You have served me well, Seralina,” Miriam said. “This misfortune with Peter and Sarah is no failure of yours. You are my strong right hand, and you have never faltered.”
Leena beamed. “Thank you, Mistress.” Miriam beckoned for her to rise, and she did so. “Mistress, what if we let them stay together? It would be inconvenient in some ways, but it might be a lot more humane than breaking them up.” She shrugged. “We might even find some uses for a pair of psi-bonded thralls, depending on how far their range is. If we can teach them how to multitask…”
“I see what you mean,” Miriam said, nodding. She frowned, thinking hard about the possibilities. Right now Peter and Sarah were doing everything in unison, but if their fused mind could learn to separate tasks into one body or the other, they might be able to turn it to their advantage. For one thing, it would theoretically be an untraceable and instantaneous communication system: anything observed by one thrall would immediately be known by the other, as well. Peter had been a fairly gifted telepath, so the range on their mindlink could prove considerable – assuming that the rules of telepathic range had any meaning at all for members of a true gestalt.
“It’s worth trying,” Miriam said at last. “Can we afford to keep them here full-time?”
“Sure,” Leena said. “I can put them on housekeeping duty until they figure out how to make their bodies act more independently. You have plenty of other thralls now that I can send out for errands. If you can cover up Peter’s absence from the Hive, we can keep them here.”
Miriam nodded. “I’ll think of something.” Her eye drifted over to the phone on her desk, where she saw the message light flashing. “Go ahead and tell Peter and Sarah what I’ve decided. It seems I have other business to attend to.”
Leena bowed. “At once, Mistress.” She let herself out while Miriam crossed to the desk and called up the message.
“Good morning, Miriam,” the voice of Malcolm ard’Valos said from the phone. His voice carried the tone of paternal indulgence he favored in dealings with his subordinates. “I know it’s likely to be rather late before you get this message, but I’d appreciate it if you would pay me a visit before you retire. Call my secretary when you’re on your way; I’ll meet you in the parlor.”
Miriam stared at the phone. Malcolm hadn’t summoned her for a meeting in three months – and now he had called her personally? And just left a message? What could be so important that he wouldn’t arrange it through his secretary – yet so unimportant that he wouldn’t contact her on her mobile?
No, not unimportant, she realized. Just not time-sensitive. Mobile phones can be traced; calls can be monitored. It’s important, but security matters more than speed.
She looked at the clock; it was 10:30 in the morning, an ungodly hour for a vampire to be awake. Despite his casual tone, she knew that she had better get over there right away, before she cut into any more of his sleeping schedule. She called Malcolm’s secretary to announce herself and then hurried up to the penthouse.
Malcolm was already seated in his chair when she arrived at the white parlor. He wore his dark red smoking jacket over a set of silk pajamas, which somehow didn’t make him look any less dignified than when he wore his three-piece suit. He had the newspaper open on his lap and a snifter of brandy on the coffee table. A lit cigar sat on an elegantly-carved holder above an equally elegant ashtray. The scent of smoke was strong in the room, but she could hear the hidden air purifiers working hard to keep up.
He looked up from the paper as the secretary ushered her in. “Ah, Miriam! Excellent.” He smiled, and Miriam felt the now-familiar mélange of loathing, fear, and adoration that the prince always inspired in her.
“My lord,” she said, bowing. “Please forgive my lateness. I only just now received your message.”
“No matter,” Malcolm said easily. “As I said, I expected you to return late. Please, have a seat.”
He gestured to the couch at his left, and Miriam sat as bidden. Malcolm set the paper aside, then took a sip of his brandy and a puff from the cigar before speaking.
“You’re coming along well, Miriam. I admit I had my doubts when you decided to make that castoff, Grayhaven, into your seneschal, but by all accounts you’ve molded her nicely. And you’ve taken, what? Five other thralls after her?”
“Six, my lord,” Miriam said. “Erin Parker joined us in October.” She suppressed a wince at the memory; Erin was a senior honor student at Westfall who worked part-time as Miriam’s office assistant. She hadn’t wanted to enthrall the girl, but she’d made the mistake of stopping in at the office one night while the hunger was on her. Erin wasn’t scheduled to work that evening, but she had stored her gym bag in the office while she went running in the nearby gardens. Erin had come back to the office flushed and sweating, and the smell of her had overwhelmed Miriam’s self-restraint. She’d had enough presence of mind to seduce the girl rather than taking her blood by force, so at least she had spared her the terror and violation of blood-rape – but she had still been forced to bind Erin to herself to guarantee her silence.
Malcolm let out a low whistle. “Seven thralls,” he said, in a tone of pride and quiet amazement. “And they all remain loyal to you? No jealousy or feelings of ill use that might pollute the sharing?”
“None, sir. They are all very satisfied with their position.” All very satisfied, very contented slaves, she thought. Powerless to resist me, and too caught up in their worship of me to try. Great Maker help me, I understand now — this is the temptation that corrupted the gods themselves.
“Excellent,” Malcolm said. If Miriam’s inner turmoil had betrayed itself at all, he gave no sign of it. “It’s very important to keep them that way, Miriam. A well-tended coterie isn’t just a status symbol; it’s the key to your survival. I’ve seen too many vampires driven mad because they allowed resentment or terror to take root in their thralls. Fear sweetens the blood, but the cost of it is too great — the Sharing affects you just as much as it affects them. The only way to safely maintain your power over them is to make certain that they see you as god and master, the giver of all good things.”
Miriam marveled at how easily he said this, as if the act of subjugating another sentient being to one’s will had as little moral significance as the pruning of a hedge. This creature has lived so long with power that he no longer questions his right to use it, she thought.
“The fact that you have been able to maintain such a large coterie at such a young age is proof of your potential,” Malcolm continued. “You’ll go far in the organization; I’ve no doubt of it. I’m very proud of you.”
Miriam felt a thrill of pleasure at such lavish praise, and immediately hated herself for it. “Thank you, sir.”
Malcolm took another sip of his brandy, then paused with the snifter in hand. He held it up and watched how the amber liquid caught the light. He frowned, apparently spotting a smudge on the crystal, because he pulled out a handkerchief and started polishing it. “I wonder,” he said in distracted tone, “if you think you might be able to handle a couple of additions to that coterie of yours.”
Miriam shifted in her seat. Is this why he summoned me? To entrust me with more of his castoffs? “I believe so. It would depend on their personalities, how well they blended with the rest of my house.” And how much they have been reduced to soul-dead wreckage.
“Oh, somehow I doubt that will be a problem here,” Malcolm said. “You’ve already demonstrated your capacity to work with them, and quite effectively.” He smiled, showing the tips of his fangs. “I want the telepaths who took part in the break-in at Viscount.”
Miriam sat up in alarm. Her body did not respond with a cold chill, but she felt it in her spirit just the same. “You … ‘want’ them, my lord?”
“Yes,” Malcolm said matter-of-factly. “Oh, not to kill them, of course. That would be a waste of resources, and I’m not in the habit of being wasteful. No, I want them under your control and answerable to me.” His eyes and voice hardened, just a little. “Their raid has cost me face in my dealings with the other princes. An affront like that cannot be allowed to go unanswered. If I can parade them before the Queen’s court, a pair of domesticated telepaths bound to a member of my house, then that will make up for everything I have lost and more.”
“I … understand, my lord.” Miriam swallowed once, her throat feeling suddenly dry. “Will you need me to bring in the runner, Callie Linder, as well?”
Malcolm looked surprised. “What? No, no,” he said, chuckling. “Ms Linder was just doing her job. The kind of daring she displayed deserves to be rewarded! No, Miriam, my organization needs the runners as much as anyone else. I will not become known as a man who would launch vendettas on the hired help.”
Miriam nodded once. “I understand, sir.”
“Good.” Malcolm pursed his lips, clearly thinking. “How is the Hive coming along in decrypting the files they stole from us?”
“Slowly, but they are making progress,” Miriam admitted. “I have managed to keep most of the information contained here in Metamor, ostensibly for security reasons. Their inability to draw on the other hives for help has slowed them down, but I expect a breakthrough soon in spite of my efforts to contain it.”
“Understandable,” Malcolm said. “Still, the leader of the decryption project – Brian Sommers, I believe you said his name was? He was one of the agents on the ground in the Viscount operation, yes?”
“Yes, my lord,” Miriam said.
“And the other?”
“Fiona hin’Connaill, my lord. Brian’s wife.” Only one of them, but I’m not going to volunteer that.
Malcolm’s predatory smile returned. “Excellent. Then we shall redeem our reputation in the Queen’s court and hinder our enemies in a single stroke.” He rose to his feet in front of her, setting aside the cigar and snifter. “Kneel, Miriam.”
Miriam did so quickly, her body trembling in anticipation. Malcolm bared his arm and brought out his letter opener. She was expecting another small incision on the palm, a token blood-gift – a brief moment of ecstasy to reward her for her faithful service. Her eyes widened when he instead used the blade to open a vein in his wrist. Blood oozed forth and quickly began filling his palm.
“I bestow this gift on you to empower you to fulfill my commands,” he said. “Drink, childe.”
She did so eagerly, taking his hand in hers and sucking up the blood with her lips. Ecstasy exploded across her senses as raw power filled her undead body, supercharging her already-formidable abilities. She felt Malcolm’s mind enfolding hers, imposing his will upon her, and she felt herself submitting to that will and embracing her position of service within the hierarchy. Part of her still despised him, still hated herself and her servile fawning before this man who was not a man – but above those thoughts was the same sense of rightness that she felt when Leena submitted to her. That warm, contented feeling flooded through her as she accepted the gift of her master’s blood, telling her that this was where she belonged, the purpose for which she existed.
The hierarchy of blood was more than a chain of command; it was the foundation of life itself, binding everyone it touched into proper, orderly relationships of master and servant. Her reservations and objections faded into insignificance before that one crucial fact. Why should Malcolm question his right to rule? The power in his blood silenced any doubts she might have had: he was the master, and her only regret was that all mortals could not find the purpose and pleasure of service to him.
The vein closed of its own volition, stopping the flow of blood. Miriam licked up the last traces of it before raising her eyes to gaze on the master. He ran his hand through her hair fondly, as the last vestiges of the blood-ecstasy shuddered through her.
“Go now, my pet,” he said. “Capture Brian Sommers and Fiona hin’Connaill. Break their resistance. Bind them to your will. And when you have succeeded … when they will worship at your feet and beg to give you their blood … then bring them to me, and I will make a spectacle of them before my rivals.” He smiled. “Give me this, and that will be all the vengeance I desire.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Victor knew something was wrong the moment he entered the apartment. His telepathy was only of average strength, and he wasn’t very skilled at picking out individual mental signatures from the mass of humanity, but he had always been able to recognize Abbey. Her mind stood out like a searchlight amid the fainter constellations of the minds around her, arresting in its beauty and impossible to ignore.
And as his perceptions extended to the apartment’s outer walls, he knew immediately that she was not here.
Sudden fear rose up in him – was she unconscious? Or, worse, dead? Has something happened to my child?
Pushing back the urge to panic, Victor swept through the entire flat – touching nothing, opening the doors ahead of him with his telekinesis. There was no body. His next thought was that she might have been kidnapped, but there was no sign of a struggle, either. If someone had taken her, they had covered up any trace of it – possible, but unlikely. Besides, Abbey was powerful enough that it was unlikely that she could be taken anywhere against her will.
The fear began to subside then, giving way to anger. He went back through the apartment again, searching methodically. Not much was out of place, but Victor noticed that a few of Abbey’s favorite shirts were missing, as were her purse and one of their smaller overnight bags.
It was that last bit of information that clinched it. If she had just needed to run out to a store for something, she wouldn’t have taken the overnight bag. If the Hive had found her and she had gone willingly, they probably would have taken more. All the evidence led to one conclusion: Abbey had betrayed him. He had promised her, promised her, that he would find her a telepathic doctor. She had agreed to give him time to do it – and then she had broken faith with him, probably the instant he left. She had taken his child and run away from him…
…back to the Elders.
“No,” he growled, as the anger bubbled over into blinding rage. “NO!”
The room grew hazy, then, as it sometimes did when the fury was on him. He felt the odd floating sensation as he slipped away into the other place, the dark place inside himself where he retreated when the stress became too great. He was vaguely aware that he was still moving, acting, doing … something. His sense of time was distorted in the dark place; when he returned to himself, he was unsure whether it had been only seconds, or minutes, or hours. The apartment looked like it had been struck by a tornado; shattered glasses and plates mingled on the floor with the splintered remains of kitchen chairs. Knives and forks had embedded themselves in the walls. The bedside lamp was a ruin of broken ceramic and twisted metal. Victor himself knelt in the eye of the storm, untouched by the carnage around him.
He usually felt better after returning from the dark place, but this time it had only made him a little tired. He could still feel the cold, sickening pain of betrayal, like a knife twisting in his gut.
He rose to his feet and reached out with his teek, sifting through the wreckage until he found a few of Abbey’s clothes. They flew to his hand and he jammed them into the pocket of his coat. It took a while longer to find his little black book of contacts. He knew a few unlicensed mages who specialized in divination. He’d find the closest one and persuade him to do a locator spell to find Abbey…
…and if the first one couldn’t be persuaded, his body would persuade the next one.
Fiona had finished her dinner and was nursing a cup of coffee when her business phone rang. Brian looked up at her curiously. “Expecting anyone?”
Shaking her head, she crossed to the kitchen counter and retrieved the phone. “hin’Connaill here.”
“Fiona, this is Miriam.”
Fiona felt her eyebrows go up. “Elder Bakhtavar. How can I help you?”
At the table, Rebecca and Brian immediately sat up a bit straighter. Fiona moved closer and pressed the speakerphone button so they could hear Miriam’s voice.
“We’ve had a breakthrough,” the Elder said. “The girl Victor abducted has been found.”
Fiona felt something ease inside her chest, a tension she hadn’t known she was carrying. An honest smile spread over her face. “That is excellent news, Elder.” She paused. “Any word on Victor?”
“No, and that’s why we’re keeping it quiet,” Miriam said. “Right now we have the girl hidden in a remote location. The only people who know about it are you and my own agents, but as soon as he discovers that she’s missing Victor is going to come looking for her. We could keep her hidden from scrying for a little while, but not indefinitely.”
Fiona nodded. “You intend to set a trap for him.”
“Precisely. It will be easy for a man with Victor’s resources to obtain a locator spell to find Abbey, but it won’t tell him who else is with her.” Miriam’s voice hardened. “As long as he lives, Victor will be a threat to the Collective. I intend to force a confrontation on our terms. Victor’s temper is his weak point; it makes him rash, foolish.” Fiona heard an edge of cold pleasure seep into the Elder’s voice. “I want you and Brian there with me to take advantage of that.”
Fiona looked over at Brian. His eyes were distant, and the tightness in them bore witness to his conflicted emotions.
“We need to discuss this as a family, Elder Bakhtavar,” Fiona said. “May I return your call when we have made a decision?”
“Of course, child,” Miriam said. “But please call back as soon as you can. We don’t know how long we have before Victor discovers that Abbey is missing … and there is no one in this Hive better suited to stopping him.”
Fiona thought that was probably hyperbole, but she let it pass without comment. There was certainly no one more motivated to stop Victor, given what he had done to Del and Trace. And my mother, Fiona thought, with a sudden stab of grief and anger — though she was sure that Miriam was unaware of that particular connection.
“Sasha is working late tonight, but I can reach her by phone,” she said. “Brian and Rebecca are here. We should have a decision presently.”
“Very good. Thank you, Fiona.”
Fiona rang off, then set the phone on the table. She returned to her seat and looked at Brian and Rebecca in turn.
“I think you should help her,” ‘Becca said seriously. “The Elder’s right: we need to catch Victor before anyone else gets hurt.”
Fiona looked at her sharply. “Is that a precognitive statement?”
‘Becca shook her head vigorously. “Uh-uh. I only esped Victor once, and you saw what happened. I’m never trying that again.”
Fiona suppressed a wince. The memory of the nightmarish painting was all too vivid in her mind.
“Do you think you could esp Abbey?” Brian asked. “Maybe you could get a sense of what’s going to happen to her.”
“I can try.”
Rebecca’s eyes went distant, then glowed yellow as she tapped into her power. She remained frozen for twenty-three seconds – Fiona counted – and then came out of the trance.
“It’s all fuzzy,” she said, sounding frustrated. “She’s definitely on the run from Victor, and he’s definitely coming after her – but what happens after that could go a lot of different ways.” She shook her head. “Sorry, guys, but most of this depends on people making decisions that they haven’t made yet. Beyond that, it’s all a jumble.”
“It’s all right.” Brian took her hand and gave it a comforting squeeze. “At least that tells us that we have a chance to help choose what happens.”
Fiona looked at him closely. His expression was still troubled, but she could see him slipping into his role as the military man, taking up the burden of leadership once more. “What is your assessment, Captain?”
Calling Brian by his rank pushed him a little further in the transition from family man to warrior, as she had known it would. “Elder Bakhtavar won’t be able to keep Abbey’s recovery hidden for long. She’s right; this is the best opportunity we’ll have to go after Victor.” He looked over at Rebecca. “My biggest concern is guarding the home front. I don’t like the idea of leaving you and the baby home alone.”
Rebecca shrugged uncomfortably. “Thanks, but …. I think this is bigger than us.” She gave him a half-hearted smile. “And, hey — if the trap works, Victor won’t know we’re involved until it’s too late.”
“It is a calculated risk,” Fiona admitted, “but we stand a better chance of success if we bring all our forces to bear at once.” She looked up at Brian, and for a moment she allowed him to see the pain she carried inside her. “And on a personal level, I need to be involved in this.”
Brian closed his eyes and nodded. “I know.” He was silent a moment, then let out a long, heavy sigh. “I didn’t want to see our family pulled into this fight … but you’ve been in it longer than any of us realized. Longer than Abbey, even.” When he looked up at her, Fiona could see the decision in his eyes. “Victor is going to pay for what he did to your mother. We still need to get Sasha’s blessing, but if she agrees, we’re in.”
Fiona placed her hand over Brian’s and squeezed it once, lightly. He read the thanks in her eyes without her having to say a word. She reached for the phone.
Miriam’s phone rang less than twenty minutes after she hung up. She glanced at the caller ID, then answered. “Fiona?”
“Elder Bakhtavar,” Fiona said by way of greeting. “I just spoke to Sasha. She has some reservations about the plan, but she has agreed to trust your judgment. We are with you.”
Miriam closed her eyes. “Excellent,” she said, keeping her voice clear and steady. “Meet me in one hour at the Hutchins Tower subway terminal. From there I shall take you to the place where the child is being kept.”
“Understood,” Fiona said. “Any other instructions, Elder?”
Miriam hesitated, thinking about all the things she wished she could say but couldn’t. “Come prepared for a fight,” she said at last. “We don’t know what resources Victor has acquired. Be prepared for anything. Anything, Fiona.”
There was a brief silence on the other end of the line. “…Yes,” Fiona said at last, her voice serious and distant. “Of course, Elder. In one hour, then.”
“One hour,” Miriam agreed.
The phone went silent. Miriam set it down and stared at it.
The ecstasy of Malcolm’s blood-gift had been short-lived. She could still feel the power he had instilled in her — the magic in his undead blood ironically making her feel more alive – but within a few hours her manic feelings of devotion to him had faded, leaving her in a more rational and altogether more depressing state of mind.
As much as she had adapted to her existence “In Between”, Malcolm’s order to capture and bind Fiona and Brian had reminded her of the horror of her situation. The prince had asked little of her these last few months, and Braddock’s interest in her seemed limited to using her as a trophy and occasional sex toy. That was tedious and sometimes painful, but at least it affected only Miriam herself. Now, though, Malcolm had lulled the Hive into a false sense of security, and he had given Miriam the first orders that would directly harm her people.
And Miriam, for all that she hated him, was powerless to refuse.
Still, she was not ready to give up hope entirely. Malcolm’s orders had been explicit, but he had overlooked a handful of details. Tiny ones, to be sure, but there they were, just the same. She spared no hope for herself – she was well and truly damned, and nothing she could do now would allow her to escape it. But she believed that there might be a chance, just the barest chance, that Fiona and Brian could be saved, and perhaps Leena and the other thralls, as well.
She got to her feet and went to find Leena. She had orders to give, instructions that her seneschal would need to follow if her mission should fail.
Please, Great Maker, grant me that much, she prayed. I have failed so many people already. Let me do the same for Malcolm. Blessed Goddess, let me fail again … just one last time.
With a small note of satisfaction, Danni clicked the SEND button and transmitted her last set of test results to its corresponding physician. “Finally,” she muttered, gazing with relief at her empty Inbox. Even for a Monday, today had been a bitch; she’d come back from the weekend and found five hells’ worth of work waiting for her. It had taken three hours of overtime, but now, at last, she could get out of here. And start the whole thing again tomorrow, she thought dryly. It’s a good thing I like my job.
The desk phone rang as she was shutting down her computer. She almost let it just go to voicemail, but she saw the caller ID and recognized that it was coming from the front desk. That usually meant an outside call, so she picked up the phone. “Whatcha got for me, Meg? I was just about to clock out.”
“Hey, Danni,” Meg said. The receptionist kept her voice low, as if trying to avoid being overheard. “I’ve got a girl down here asking for Daniel. I think she’s pregnant, and she’s acting really … twitchy.”
Danni frowned. Rebecca’s daughter Lila had been born weeks ago, and Sasha wasn’t showing yet. Besides, Sasha worked here. “Did she say who she was?”
“Wouldn’t tell me,” Meg said, sounding frustrated. “Said she wouldn’t talk to anyone until she talks to Daniel first.” She paused. “Danni, this kid’s maybe fifteen or sixteen years old. This thing has got abuse written all over it.”
Danni felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. “…I’ll be right down,” she said, her voice suddenly hoarse. “Don’t let her leave, Meg.”
“Don’t think she wants to, but I’ll tell her you’re on your way.”
Danni returned the phone to its cradle and headed for the lift, resisting the urge to run. As she rode the car down to the lobby, she put up her mental shields and composed her features in a neutral, pleasant expression, trying to imitate the control that came so easily to Fiona. On the inside, though, her thoughts were spinning.
She came to me. She finally got smart and left him, and she came to me. If I can bring her back into the Hive…
“Prophet help me,” she whispered. “Don’t let me screw this up.”
The lift doors opened, and she strode out into the lobby with careful, deliberate steps. Sure enough, there was Abbey, dressed in several layers of shabby clothing with a purse and a small overnight bag on the chair beside her. She was trying to look casual and failing miserably at it. Pregnancy had thickened the baby fat on her heart-shaped face. Her hair had been dyed and cut short, and it hung limp and matted on either side of her face. Her large, expressive eyes, once bright with the optimism and enthusiasm of youth, now looked haunted and careworn. She looked up at Danni as she approached, and Danni saw in those eyes the wisdom that was born in hardship and pain. Those weren’t a child’s eyes anymore.
Danni expected to feel Abbey’s mind touch hers, but the girl just stared at her intently. Danni knelt in front of her chair and smiled.
“Hello there,” she said softly, in what she hoped was a friendly tone of voice. “I’m Danni Sharabi, Daniel’s … other half, I guess,” she said with a chuckle.
Abbey leaned in close and looked her in the eyes, her face deadly serious. Reaching out, she placed her hands on either side of Danni’s face. Danni resisted the urge to pull away.
“I can’t hear you,” Abbey said, her voice grave and barely above a whisper. “You’ve closed off your thoughts.” She paused, considering. “I could make you open up, but it’s better if you do it yourself.”
Danni swallowed. “Sorry,” she whispered. “I was trying not to let slip to anyone who you were.” She lowered her mental shields, and Abbey was inside her head an instant later.
Thank you, Abbey said through the link. The receptionist told me that you were an androgyne now, but I had to be sure it was really you. She frowned. There are two of you in here now. I didn’t know the Curse did that.
Neither did I, Danni said dryly. It’s true, Daniel and I are two different people now, but we both remember you. She reached up and put her hand over one of Abbey’s. I’ll help you however I can. Just tell me what you need.
Abbey lowered her hands from Danni’s face and sat back in the seat. She regarded Danni for a moment in silence. I thought I was going to have to beg you for help, she said, keeping the words safely inside the link. Instead you beg to help me. Why?
Danni looked away, blushing. It’s the right thing to do.
She felt the stirring of Abbey’s mind inside hers and suppressed a shiver. You feel guilty, Abbey said flatly. You think that saving me is your penance for… Her eyes widened, then turned hard. So that’s what he was hiding from me. I had a feeling Victor was a murderer, but I couldn’t be sure until now.
Danni stared up at her in astonishment. He hid something from you? How?
Abbey shook her head slightly. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Right now the only thing that matters is keeping Darla safe.
Darla? Danni asked, gesturing at Abbey’s belly.
Abbey nodded. You should know what’s going on. Then she opened the link wider, and a flood of memories poured into Danni.
It happened in an instant, but the force of it drove Danni back onto her ass. Faster an eyeblink, she knew everything Abbey had suffered – the months of isolation; the slow estrangement from the man she had once loved; the panic attacks Darla experienced after her precognitive visions; the terrifying moments earlier today when she had thought that Victor was about to kill her. Tears came to Danni’s eyes, and she choked back a sob.
My god, Danni said, her mental voice flooded with anguish and compassion. Abbey, I’m so sorry.
My choices were my own, Abbey said sharply. It wasn’t your fault, or Daniel’s. Victor would have done what he did with or without your help. She leaned in close, holding Danni’s gaze. I am not your path to absolution, Danni Sharabi. Not with Eli, and not with the Hive. Your sins have nothing to do with me.
Danni squeezed her eyes shut, but she couldn’t hide from the touch of Abbey’s mind – or from the truth of her words. Abbey was right; helping her wouldn’t bring back Del and Trace, or excuse Daniel’s complicity in helping the vampires. And thinking that she could present Abbey to the Hive, like some sort of prize…
She winced. I’m sorry, she said. You’re right; I was being stupid. She set her jaw and looked up at Abbey again. But I still want to help you. Because it is the right thing to do.
A half-smile played across Abbey’s face for a moment. She nodded once. Darla needs a telepathic doctor, and I need a safe place to sleep where Victor can’t find me. I think he still has contacts inside the Hive, so there can’t be any record that I’m here. A ripple of fear ran through her thoughts. And I don’t want anyone to know who I am until I’m sure that the Elders aren’t going to hurt Darla.
Danni nodded, understanding Abbey’s reasoning. If the Hive thought that Victor’s insanity was genetic, they might mark Darla as a threat. She didn’t believe they would actually kill the unborn child, but she wasn’t going to waste time arguing the point with Abbey. They needed to get her out of the lobby soon, before someone recognized her. There’s a way, she said, rising to her feet. Come with me and follow my lead.
Danni walked over to the reception desk with Abbey in tow. “Hey, Meg! Got a patient for you to check in.”
Meg flashed a smile at Abbey, then turned back to Danni. “Sure thing! What’s the name?”
“Jenny Bloggs.”
Meg’s expression didn’t change, but Danni felt the wave of worry and compassion that radiated from her. “Got it,” she said, her voice deliberately light. “Urgent care, obstetrics?”
“Exactly.”
Abbey shot a sideways glance at Danni. She reached down and took the girl’s hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze.
Meg typed in a few notes on the computer. “Is there a particular doctor you’d like her to see?”
Danni thought about it for a moment. “Who’s on call for prenatal psychiatry?”
Meg’s eyebrows shot up. “I think there’s only, like, three of those in the entire city.” Her fingers danced across the keyboard for a few seconds, and she nodded to herself. “Victoria Carlisle?” she suggested. “She normally works at Soulshore General, but she’s on the late shift tonight. I could put in a request for her to come down here when she gets a chance.”
“Please do,” Danni said. “The residents can take care of Jenny until Dr Carlisle gets here.” And it gives me time to check with Sasha and make sure this doc can be trusted.
Abbey squeezed her hand, confirming that she’d heard Danni’s thoughts. Danni smiled briefly down at her, then signed the paperwork that Meg handed to her.
“You can take her right up to the desk in OB-Gyn,” Meg said. “Drauling is the resident on duty. She’ll meet you there.”
“Thanks, Meg.” Danni gestured for Abbey to follow, and together they filed into the nearest lift.
“Who’s Jenny Bloggs?” Abbey asked, once the doors had closed.
“It’s a code word,” Danni said. “We use it for abused women who want to remain anonymous. If a man comes to the hospital looking for his wife or girlfriend, the Jenny Bloggs name tells everybody on staff to play dumb.” She smiled apologetically. “It’s not a permanent solution, I’m afraid. Nobody’s going to kick you out, but if you stay for more than twenty-four hours we have to report your case to Protective Services.” She paused. “Unless you ask the Hive for sanctuary. Either way, whoever you go to for help is going to want to know who you are.”
Abbey looked up at their reflections on the ceiling of the lift car. “So I have to decide whether to trust the government, or trust the Hive.”
“Pretty much.”
The girl sighed, a weary sound that had none of the melodrama Danni would have expected from someone her age. “All right. I need some time to think about this.”
“No problem. In the meantime, you’ll be safe here.”
The doors slid open, and Danni led Abbey to the obstetrics wing. Waiting by the desk was a young resident dressed in sea-green scrubs. Danni gazed with appreciation at her long black hair, dark eyes, and flawless fair skin. Her face had the elegant, patrician lines typical of House Drauling, but her smile was kind and gentle as they approached.
“Jenny Bloggs?” she asked, turning to Abbey. The girl nodded, and the resident offered her hand. “My name is Morgan. I’ll be helping you get settled in.”
Abbey looked questioningly at Danni. “It’s okay,” Danni murmured, putting a hand on her shoulder and giving it a squeeze. “I’m going to go find Sasha and see what she can tell me about Dr Carlisle. I’ll check in on you later after you’re settled in.”
“Okay.” Abbey managed a small but grateful smile. “Thank you, Danni.”
Danni smiled back. “Any time.” She turned to Morgan. “Make sure she gets whatever she needs. And can you have someone call me when Dr Carlisle gets here?”
“Of course,” Morgan said. Her voice was gentle, but Danni could see in her eyes the same determination that she herself felt. No one would hurt Abbey again if they had anything to say about it.
Danni headed back to the lift, as Morgan led Abbey into the obstetrics wing. She needed to find Sasha, and fast. The hospital’s asylum procedures worked well enough against abusive husbands, but Victor was a sociopath and a hardened killer. Danni hoped that they could keep Abbey’s presence here a secret, but if they couldn’t … well, arranging for a little extra muscle couldn’t hurt.
Sasha didn’t sense Danni coming until the woman was three feet behind her. That was her first clue that something was wrong; while Danni kept some thoughts to herself, she never put up her psi-shields unless there was a damned good reason.
Her second clue was the expression on the androgyne’s face.
“What’s happened?” Sasha asked, as Danni slipped into her shared office and shut the door. The other psych residents had already gone home for the day, so they were alone for the moment.
“We’ve got a Jenny Bloggs down in OB-Gyn,” Danni said, her expression grave.
Sasha sat up, frowning. She was as sympathetic to the plight of abused women as anyone, but it wasn’t exactly her field of expertise. “Okay…”
“Her unborn child is having visions,” Danni said. “She might be going mad from them.”
Sasha sank back into her chair again. “Eli save her,” she murmured. “The mother’s a teep, I take it?”
“And not all that trusting of the Collective,” Danni said. “They’re bringing in Dr Carlisle from Soulshore to look at her later tonight. Jenny needs some assurance that they aren’t going to cut the baby out of her if they decide she’s crazy.”
Sasha shuddered in revulsion at the thought. “God, Danni, you know we would never do that! First of all, it’s illegal to abort a fetus once its soul is mature enough to be detectable. Second of all, you’re talking about a baby that’s actually conscious! If that’s not murder, it’s damned close to it!”
“I know,” Danni said, seating herself on the edge of Sasha’s desk. “But moral concerns aside … since when do mundane laws mean a damn to the Collective?”
Sasha opened her mouth to protest, then shut it again. Danni was right; she was thinking like a foundling again. Even after all these years of living in the Collective, there were some aspects of its psychology that could never really be grasped if you hadn’t been born into it. The Hive refused to terminate pregnancies because children were the future of the Collective, not because it cared about Imperial laws.
“Carlisle is a Hive loyalist through and through,” she said at last. “Children are sacred to her. She’ll do everything she can to make sure the baby is born healthy and sane – but even if she can’t, she won’t recommend termination.”
Danni nodded, satisfied. “Good. Would you mind paying Jenny a visit and telling her? I think she’ll want to hear it first-hand so she knows you’re telling the truth.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Sasha promised. “You have any idea who she is?”
Danni winced. “I do, but she made me promise not to tell.” She shrugged uncomfortably. “Trust issues, like I said.” She hesitated, then added, “If you can pull in any of your old psi-op buddies for extra security, it might be a good idea. The guy she’s on the run from is a stone-cold killer. I don’t think he’d hesitate to break in here and kill her if he found out where she was staying.”
Her words tugged at a familiar wound in Sasha’s heart; the girl sounded all too similar to Abbey Preston, the girl Victor had seduced. Sasha was glad Fiona had told her that Abbey was safe with Elder Bakhtavar; she didn’t approve of using the girl as bait for Victor, but it was probably the surest way to lure him in.
She sighed. “Psi-ops might be pushing it, particularly if you want to keep this low-profile. I’ll see what I can do, though.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it.” Danni cocked her head and looked at her curiously. “You okay, Sash? You seemed to go somewhere else there for a minute.”
“I’m fine.” Sasha rubbed her eyes wearily. “I guess I’m just transferring my feelings about the whole situation with Victor, and that girl he took with him when he left. I hope they get that bastard tonight so we can at least put one of these cases behind us.”
Danni suddenly went very still. “‘Get’ him? Somebody’s trying to get Victor?”
Sasha nodded. She wasn’t allowed to tell anyone that they’d recovered Abbey Preston, but she could at least tell Danni this much. “Elder Miriam Bakhtavar set a trap for him. She brought in Fiona and Brian to help take him down.”
Sasha felt the change in Danni’s aura a moment before she saw the effects. The androgyne’s body shifted, as it had when she and Rebecca had rescued her in Overlook Park five months ago. Danni faded into the background and Daniel surged forward to the front of their shared mind. For modesty’s sake he stayed with a lean, androgynous form that would still fit inside Danni’s clothes, but the hard, hungry look in his eyes was thoroughly masculine.
“Where’s this going down?” Daniel asked.
Sasha hesitated. “Daniel, you’re not field-rated—”
“Fuck that,” Daniel spat. “Victor betrayed us and murdered two of my friends. I’ve got a score to settle with that son of a bitch.” He put his hands on his hips, an aggressive gesture that looked odd on the slender, feminine body. “Besides, I’m one of the few students who was ever good enough to beat him in a sparring match. I couldn’t take him on by myself, but as part of a team? Hells, yes.” He leaned in and fixed his eyes on hers. “Where, Sasha?”
She closed her eyes and sighed. Fiona had said that she needed to take part in the trap because she needed closure. Maybe the same was true for Daniel – and she had to admit, his combat skills probably would be useful.
“They’re meeting at the subway station at Hutchins Tower,” she said quietly. “If you’re going, you’d better hurry. They’re supposed to meet in about … fifty minutes,” she said, checking the clock.
Daniel followed her gaze, then frowned. “Can I borrow the skimmer? I need to pick up some gear from home, and don’t think I’ll make it if I have to take the bus.”
Sasha wanted to say no, to keep Daniel out of harm’s way for Rebecca’s sake, but she knew he would never forgive her for it. Wearily, she pulled out her keys and tossed them to Daniel. “For what it’s worth … good hunting,” she said.
Daniel showed her a feral grin as he headed for the door. “Take good care of Jenny,” he said. “Tell her I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“I will,” Sasha promised. And Eli go with you, Daniel, she added silently as she watched him go. I only hope you know what you’re doing.
Victor paced back and forth impatiently in the tiny room as the wizard on the floor sat hunched over a copper basin of water. The bedraggled old man wasn't even looking at the thing any more, just muttering to himself with his eyes rolled back in his head. The room smelled like piss and stale sweat. Discarded syringes from the man's Spellfire habit littered the floor.
“How much longer, Isaac?” Victor demanded, his temper wearing thin.
The wizard gave a little gasp, blinking hard. With difficulty, he focused on Victor.
“She is at a h-hospital,” Isaac said, his voice low and quavering. “In secret. She has a f-friend there who hides her.”
Victor crossed his arms. “Which hospital? There must be dozens in this city.”
Isaac frowned. “Didn't s-see a name,” he said slowly. “Dark gray tiles in the lobby … a fountain…” He raised a shaking hand and pointed it toward the southeast corner of the room. “Th-that way.”
Victor growled. “Damn it, Isaac, I got you what you wanted. You're going to have to do better than that!”
Isaac threw up his hands helplessly. The muscle tremors left by years of Spellfire abuse exaggerated the gesture, making him flop around like a retarded child. “It's not a perfect s-science, Victor,” he slurred. “That way, f-fountain, gray tiles. Up high – th-third level, I think.”
Victor took a threatening step toward Isaac, and the man fell over on his back, covering his head. Victor checked himself, letting out a disgusted noise as he eyed the addict in front of him. “You're pathetic,” he muttered, then turned to leave. Isaac did not respond.
Outside, Victor took a deep breath of the comparatively clean air, then headed southeast. He would have preferred more specific directions, but Isaac had given him enough to work with. Before the night was out, he'd find Abbey and his child.
And if he couldn't have them, no one else would, either.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Brian cast a wary eye around him as he and Fiona rode the escalator down to the subway station beneath Hutchins Tower. It was well after rush hour, and Monday night wasn't a party night for most people, so the station was lightly populated. They walked to a spot near the center of the plaza, stopping between a trash can and a set of benches. He scanned the faces of the passengers exiting through the turnstiles, but he didn't see any sign of Miriam.
He glanced at Fiona. Anything?
Her nostrils flared, and her brow furrowed in a moment of intense concentration. After half a second, though, she smoothed her features and shook her head, her expression bland. “Nothing,” she murmured.
Brian frowned, but before he could say anything he sensed the touch of a familiar mind. Thank you for coming.
Brian almost jumped out of his skin. He spun around and saw Miriam approaching, already less than three meters away. She wore a long hooded cloak of nondescript grey – a common enough sight in Metamor, particularly in cold weather. Brian hadn't heard her mind at all until she touched him, and he was sure they must have walked right past her. Damn, he thought in amazement. That is a really good mind shield.
He hadn't meant to transmit that thought, but Miriam gave him a small smile nonetheless. You don't get to be my age without learning a few things, she said, her psychic voice tinged with dry amusement. The emotion was short-lived, though, and her smile faded almost as soon as it had come. Did you bring weapons?
A few, Brian said. But we don't exactly keep an arsenal at home. I have my gun and a couple of combat knives — but honestly, I don't think they're going to do much good against Victor. I hope you've got more of a plan than you told us over the phone.
I do, Miriam said. I'll explain once we get there; I don't want to risk anyone overhearing us. The safehouse is psi-shielded to keep the girl hidden, so we can speak freely once we get there.
Brian nodded. “Where are we headed?” he asked, switching to verbal speech as he raised his psi-shields. If Miriam was concerned about telepathic eavesdroppers, talking was safer than transmitting.
Miriam gestured toward the east. “Connelly Tower,” she said, as she too reined in her thoughts. “There's a factory at Street level that we own through a shell corporation. We'll take the commuter tunnel that connects the two towers.”
Brian took a slow breath and let it out. “All right. Let's do it, then.” He headed toward the sign for the commuter tunnels, then stopped when he realized that Miriam and Fiona hadn't joined him. He looked back and saw the two women gazing at each other, their expressions grave. For a long moment neither of them said anything, neither in speech nor through telepathy, but Brian could sense the spark of a connection between them. He walked back toward them, but he still had to strain to hear it when Miriam finally spoke.
“This is the hardest thing I have ever asked you to do,” she said. “Can I trust that you will see it through to the end, no matter what?”
Stiffly, Fiona nodded once. “I will,” she said, her voice rough with suppressed emotion. “I swear it.”
Brian was astonished to hear the pain in her voice – not astonished that there was pain, but that her ability to disguise it was slipping. Digging up those old memories must have had more of an impact than she lets on.
He put a comforting hand on her shoulder, and the moment between the two women was broken. Fiona lowered her head and brushed at her eyes — Fiona was crying?
“We really do need to get moving,” Brian said.
“Wait for me!”
Brian turned and stared as Daniel Sharabi leapt down the last few steps of the escalator and came jogging toward them. It was clear he was dressed for a fight. He wore close-fitting soft cotton pants, a black turtleneck, a leather jacket, and army boots, with nothing bulky or dangling that might trip him up or slow him down. His long hair was bound into a ponytail and tucked up under a plain knitted cap so no one could get a handle on it. But it was the look of steely determination in his eyes that truly showed that Daniel was not kidding around.
“Daniel,” Fiona said, her voice sharp. “What are you doing here?”
“Taking care of some unfinished business,” Daniel said. “Sasha told me you're going after Victor. I'm here to help.”
Of all of them, Miriam seemed to be the most taken aback. “Do you even have a weapon?” she asked.
Daniel bowed his head in a gesture of respect, then spread his hands. “I was one of Victor's best students, Elder Bakhtavar. My whole body is a weapon.” He gestured toward the small of his back. “I don't own a gun – not that it would do any good against Victor anyway – but I did bring three knives and my tonfa sticks. I've been well-trained with all of them.”
“This is out of the question,” Fiona growled. “Go home, Daniel. It is too dangerous—”
“All right, that's enough!” Daniel stepped in close to her and looked down at her deceptively small frame, pointing a finger squarely between her breasts. “You want to say I've got crappy powers, fine! I'll be the first to agree with you. You want to say I'm too weak to be a father? I don't like it, but I'll go along with that, too. But I earned top marks in combat arts all through school — and I did it without cheating like you do.”
Fiona's lip curled at this, but she said nothing. Daniel lowered his head to look her in the eye. “While you were out stealing secrets and taking down drug lords, I spent the last five years as Victor's sparring partner. I know how he moves, how he fights. I can't counter his teek, but I know how to keep him off-balance so he can't use it. So don't you dare tell me to go home and hide like some idiot child. I can do this – and if you'll use that logical mind that everyone's always talking about, you'll realize you need me.”
Fiona grimaced and looked away.
Brian opened his mouth, then closed it again. He was torn between the truth of Daniel's words and his desire to keep his friend out of the fight. For all his skill in the samnak, Daniel had managed to avoid becoming a killer. Brian wanted to preserve that bit of innocence inside him, to spare him the inner turmoil that came with taking a life. Killing, even for the best of reasons, always took something from you, and you could never really understand what that something was until it was gone.
Still, Daniel was his own man. Brian didn't have the right to make his choices for him. And, like it or not, they would need the help.
Fiona met Brian's eyes, apparently having come to the same conclusion. “Very well,” she said. She stepped past him and Brian and headed for the entrance to the commuter tunnel.
Daniel looked over at Brian, his surprise evident. “Wow. That was laconic even for her.”
“She's had a rough day,” Brian said. He turned to Miriam. “Elder? After you…”
Miriam glanced at Daniel, then nodded and followed after Fiona. Daniel fell in alongside Brian as they took up the rear.
“You know, a little support back there might have been nice, Bry,” he said lightly.
Brian shrugged. “You didn't need my help. You had logic on your side. If I'd spoken up, Fiona would have taken it as an order from her commanding officer, and then she wouldn't have had to admit she was wrong.”
Daniel snorted. “'Very well.' That's one gracious admission, there.”
“It's Fiona. Take what you can get,” Brian said dryly. He glanced sideways at Daniel, then added, “How does Danni feel about this?”
Daniel closed his eyes briefly. “She's supportive. She knows why I have to do this, but she prefers not to get involved herself. I think the different hormones cut down on her aggression level.” He winked at Brian. “Most of the time, anyway.”
“Daniel,” Brian said slowly, “I really don't want to know…”
Is everyone in position? Sasha asked.
A wave of confirmations came back through the link. Sasha allowed herself to relax a little. Okay, good. If any of you see anything suspicious, let me know right away. If this guy shows up, I want him tagged and on the floor before he can even touch a weapon.
Don’t worry, Lieutenant — we’ll handle it, one of the guards said. If he tries to start anything, he’s going to regret it.
Sasha closed her eyes and wished, not for the first time, that she were dealing with MID operatives instead of hospital guards. Collective-run hospitals stocked as much firepower as they could get away with — a precautionary measure, in case the vampire syndicate ever decided to go after a convalescing telepath. Unfortunately, all of the Hive’s best warriors went into MID service, so security teams like this one were composed of second-stringers … or worse. Don’t get cocky, she admonished them. We don’t know who this guy is, so assume the worst and deal with him accordingly. I don’t want anyone getting hurt because they got sloppy.
She received a second wave of acknowledgements, more sullen than the first. Sasha pushed the link to the back of her mind and turned her attention back to the hallway in front of her. She had just passed into the OB-Gyn ward, where a familiar dark-haired woman was leaning up against the wall outside one of the urgent care rooms. She had a clipboard in one hand and was rubbing the bridge of her nose with the other.
“Hey, Morgan,” Sasha said, smiling sympathetically as she approached. “Long shift?”
Morgan made a disgusted sound. “Twenty-two hours and counting. I will be ecstatic when this residency is over.”
Sasha wrinkled her nose and looked around at the nondescript walls. “This isn’t even your beat, is it? I thought you were in clinical pathology.”
“I am,” Morgan said dryly. “But a woman came in here last week with umbilical cord prolapse and a case of Stafford’s Fever. Half of the residents in this wing were infected while they tried to save the child.” She shrugged. “I did a rotation through here during my internship, so they asked me to help.” A sigh. “Not that I’m of much use for something like this.”
Sasha poked her head around the door frame and looked into the room. A pregnant teenager sat propped up on one of the beds near the back, flanked by windows on either side. She seemed to be asleep, but her face did not look peaceful. A fetal heart monitor was hooked up next to the usual equipment that measured the girl’s own heart rate and blood pressure.
“Danni said the baby is having visions?”
Morgan chuffed a quiet laugh. “That’s what the girl says. For all I know, she may be the one who’s mad. You’d know more about it than I would, honestly — I’ve been here nearly five years and I still don’t think I understand your people.” She shook her head. “I gave her a mild sedative – not enough to do her any good, but with any luck it will help calm the child.”
Sasha nodded, reaching up to finger her yew tree crucifix. She whispered a prayer for the girl and her baby before turning back to Morgan. “You look terrible,” Sasha said, putting a gentle hand on the taller woman’s arm. “Why don’t you go get some rest? I’ll stay with her and call you if anything changes.”
Morgan gave her a grateful smile and handed over the clipboard. “Thanks, Sasha. I also have two post-partums in room twelve, but they shouldn’t give you any trouble. It’s not that there’s really that much to do; they just don’t have the people to cover the shifts right now.”
“Perfect time for you to grab some shut-eye, then,” Sasha said, returning the smile. “Go find a desk to hide under for a couple hours. I can handle this.”
“I owe you one,” Morgan said, looking back over her shoulder as she left. “I’ll be in Timson’s office if you need me.”
Sasha waved in acknowledgment, then looked down at the clipboard. Morgan’s thin, precise printing listed each of the patients under her care, their room assignments and reason for being there, any medications and the times when they had been administered, and anything else that Morgan had thought relevant to their treatment. After looking in on the two post-partum women and verifying that they were asleep, Sasha went back to Room 14 and sat down next to Jenny Bloggs.
The girl seemed to be reasonably healthy – a little overweight, but that was hardly unusual with pregnancy. The fresh bruises around her neck, though, were proof enough of her need for asylum. Sasha couldn’t tell what had been used to choke the girl; it didn’t look like the man had used his bare hands, but forensic analysis wasn’t her specialty. Whatever the weapon had been, Sasha suspected that the girl was damned lucky to be alive.
Fresh empathy stabbed at her, and Sasha thought of Abbey Preston, huddled in a safehouse somewhere while Miriam used her as bait to lure in Victor. It was a risky gamble, one that Sasha hoped would pay off. Granted, having Miriam, Fiona, Brian and Daniel to protect her was probably better than having the entire staff of Eastside’s security force, but Sasha suspected that Victor hin’Kavos was a hell of a lot more dangerous than whoever “Jenny” was running from.
She bowed her head and closed her eyes. “Keep them safe, Father,” she murmured, touching her crucifix again. “Let your angels set a guard around them. Bring them safely home.”
She fell silent, then, not sure what else to say. After a moment, another voice spoke from the bed beside her.
“Does He ever answer you?”
Sasha looked up into a pair of serious brown eyes. The girl’s eyelids were heavy, but she regarded Sasha with a look of thoughtful curiosity.
“Sometimes,” Sasha said. “Not always the way you expect, though. Eli’s voice is quiet. Sometimes you don’t know it was Him until you look back on it later.”
The girl seemed to consider that. “So how do you know it’s really Him? Maybe things just happen, and you tell yourself stories later to make sense of it.” Her eyes grew distant, troubled. “You can make yourself believe all sorts of things if you want them bad enough.”
Sasha gave her a sad smile. “Like believing that the man you loved is a good person, when you really should’ve known better?”
Jenny focused on her again, the pain etched deeply on her face. “Yes,” she whispered.
Sasha took her hand and squeezed it. The girl had her psi-shields up, but Sasha offered her what comfort and reassurance she could. It was obvious that “Jenny” had been deeply hurt and betrayed, maybe more than once. Sasha felt a quiet certainty take root inside her: This is why I’m here tonight.
“People fail us, Jenny,” she said gently. “Eli doesn’t. I’m not going to say what happened to you was Eli’s will, but I do believe He meant for you to come here. He doesn’t always spare us from the evil that people do to us … but He can redeem the pain, if we’ll let Him. He can use it to do something good – to make us better people.”
The girl’s face screwed up, holding back tears. “How can you know that?”
“Because it’s what he does.” Sasha took off her crucifix and held it up for Jenny to see. “My Lord Yahshua died on a tree like this one. The Suielman soldiers hung him there like a criminal until he gave up his spirit. He was buried in a tomb owned by a politician – one who might have spoken out and saved him, if he hadn’t been too afraid to do it.” She slipped the silver chain around her neck again. “The story should have ended there … but three days later, Eli raised Yahshua to life again. No other god has ever done anything like it.” She smiled, hoping that the girl could understand the importance of what she was saying. “But that’s how Eli works, Jenny. He takes the hopeless causes and He brings life and victory, where before there was only death.”
Tears welled up in the girl’s eyes. “But why didn’t He fix it before it was hopeless?” She pointed at the yew tree. “Why didn’t He just … rescue Yahshua, instead of making him go through all that pain?”
Looking in the girl’s eyes, Sasha knew that it wasn’t the Lord’s pain that she was asking about. There were a dozen answers she could have given, but she chose one that seemed the most relevant to Jenny's real question. “I think … because He knew going through that pain would help Yahshua help others,” she said, her voice steady and thoughtful. “When the Lord suffered, it connected him to all of us who have ever suffered in this life. It gave him the experience to identify with us, to know what we’re going through.” She squeezed the girl’s hand again. “Pain is a powerful teacher. It can make us more compassionate to the people around us, if we let it. If we don’t wall ourselves off from our emotions for fear of dealing with it.”
Sasha thought of Fiona, feeling a rush of pride at how her lover had finally overcome the barriers inside her. She had a long way to go yet, but Fiona was on the road to healing, and Sasha knew that she would be more charitable now to those who had suffered the sort of pain she had suffered. Her eagerness to help Abbey had been proof enough of that. Yes, Fiona wanted revenge on Victor for killing her mother, but she was driven at least as much by her need to protect another girl from falling prey to Victor’s psychotic rage.
The girl nodded slowly, understanding dawning on her face. “You have to know the disease before you can cure it,” she said.
“That’s it,” Sasha agreed quietly. “And the only way to understand pain is to live it.”
Jenny’s eyes drifted to the far end of the room, then back to Sasha. “Do you think … that’s what Eli’s doing with me?” she asked, hesitantly. “That He’s making me somebody who can help other people?”
Sasha smiled. “That’s partly up to you,” she said. “But if that’s what you want … yes, I think He’ll do it.”
The girl closed her eyes and leaned back again, the tension slipping from her shoulders. “Then maybe it will all be worth it,” she whispered.
A few minutes later, Jenny drifted off to sleep, looking much more peaceful than she had before. Sasha took the silver yew tree between her fingers once more, bowed her head, and prayed.
The commuter tunnel was dimly lit and smelled of urine and industrial solvents. Rats scurried out of sight as the four psis approached, vanishing through cracks in the curving brick walls. The fluorescent lights buzzed, adding a steady undercurrent to contrast with the sound of their footsteps. Bringing up the rear, Brian cast frequent glances over his shoulder. The echoes in the tunnel played tricks on him: several times he thought he heard someone else coming up behind them, but when he looked back he saw only an empty passage. His telepathic senses were similarly blank, revealing no other sentient minds in their vicinity.
It was, he thought, one of the loneliest places he had ever been. A hundred years ago the commuter tunnels had been major arteries for foot traffic in Metamor City, especially in the winter months when a heavy snowfall could block the surface streets for days. As the upper levels of the city were constructed, though, the middle class migrated away from ground level, and the tunnels fell into less frequent use. Nowadays they mostly served to move factory workers between their job sites and the subway stations. During off-hours, they served as a transit system for the things that hunted at Street level, the beasts and hunters who lacked even the vampires’ thin veneer of civilized restraint.
Brian reached down and patted his gun for reassurance. He hoped that Miriam had some solid wards in place at the safehouse; this far down, no one was going to hear it if something decided to attack them.
For what it was worth, the Elder didn’t seem to be worried. She walked ahead of them at a steady, determined pace, not sparing a glance at the holes in the walls or the shifting shadows around them. I don’t suppose there’s much that she’s afraid of, he thought. I wonder how often she’s had to actually use all that power she has.
I wonder how often she’s been forced to kill.
Fiona cast a look over her shoulder at him, fixing him with unreadable eyes. He doubted that she’d actually heard his thoughts, but she’d obviously picked up on the emotions behind them. With an effort, he pushed the melancholy to the back of his mind, bringing his focus back to the present moment. Whatever his reservations about killing a fellow psi, he couldn’t afford to indulge them. Victor needed to be put down; like it or not, they were the ones in the position to do it. There would be time for regrets and self-examination later … if they survived.
Fiona slowed her steps for a moment, falling into line beside Daniel. She murmured something to him and he pulled out his tonfa sticks, passing one of them to her. She examined it closely as they walked, running her fingers over the polished surface of the wood.
Miriam led them through a heavy steel door and up a flight of steps so old that they might once have led into open air. Now the massive edifice of Connelly Tower surrounded them on all sides, the faded yellow bricks giving way to the soft grey of reinforced concrete. Another steel door waited at the top of the stairs, this one keyed to a security panel. Miriam waved a keycard over the sensor, then entered a pass-code on the touch screen. The door clicked, and she held it open for the rest of them. Brian noticed that she left the door unlocked behind them.
The security door opened onto a small lobby with a pair of lift tubes. A sign on the wall listed the names and suite numbers of the businesses that occupied the tower’s first level. Beyond the lobby, an interior corridor ran to the left and right; it was three meters wide, with ceilings at least twice that height. Narrow tire tracks could be seen here and there on the concrete floors, probably from forklifts or other small industrial vehicles.
“This way,” the Elder said, leading them down the hallway to the right.
Daniel cast a dubious look at their surroundings. They had gone maybe fifty meters when he spoke up. “Elder Bakhtavar … are you sure that Victor’s going to follow us in here?”
Miriam glanced back at him with a small frown. “Why would he not?”
“Well, just look at this place,” Daniel said, gesturing at a security panel on the wall. “All the doors are linked to these card readers, and I’m not seeing a lot of exits. Even if he can get an access card, Brian could just override it, and Victor knows that.” He shook his head. “It’s too obvious of a trap. Vic’s not gonna fall for it.”
Brian frowned. “Daniel’s right. This place is defender’s ground all the way. Coming after us here would go against everything Victor ever taught us.”
Miriam smiled thinly and gave them a slow nod, conceding the point. “Normally you’d be right, of course. But Victor’s rage is stronger than his judgment; make him angry enough and you can blind him to the obvious. He pinned all of his hopes on Abbey Preston. Now that she has left him, we believe that he will be irrational enough to follow the trail we’ve laid for him.”
Daniel nodded thoughtfully. “Okay, I can buy that. But he’s not a moron. If this is gonna work, we can’t give him a chance to stop and think.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Miriam said, stopping at one of the interior doors and swiping her card to open it. “Come. We’ll lay our trap for him here.”
The door opened to reveal a vast loading bay, the end point in the assembly line for whatever factory filled this section of the tower. A large conveyor belt entered the room on the far left side, ending at a broad, elevated platform. On the far right was an enormous hangar door, large enough to admit three skimmer trucks or one good-sized cargo tender. Large wooden crates filled most of the remaining space, turning the floor into a mazelike pattern of narrow walkways with only limited visibility.
The crates were about two meters on each side and stacked in columns, three to six crates high. Brian had no idea what the crates contained, but it was obviously something heavy or they would have used cardboard instead of wood. Even a teek as strong as Victor would have a hard time moving these things. Overhead, a gantry crane ran on a long track that zig-zagged across the loading bay, supported by a network of steel girders that hung from the ceiling. The heavy loading hook attached to the crane would allow the crates to be lifted from the end of the conveyor belt, placed in stacks, and then loaded onto the cargo vehicles when they arrived.
Brian’s military training quickly saw the value of the location. As strong as his telekinesis was, even Victor couldn’t fly. The boxes would hem him in, block the lines of sight that his power required, and form a set of stable platforms from which they could attack him. Victor’s PK shield was damned good at stopping bullets from a single pistol, but a simultaneous attack from four or five different directions should overwhelm his defenses and bring him down.
Brian lingered in the entrance as he took stock of the room and its features. Daniel stood beside him, apparently doing the same. Miriam had gone on a few paces ahead of them, but stopped and waited when she realized what they were doing. Fiona stood between them and the Elder, with perhaps a meter of space on either side. Brian glanced at her briefly as he scanned the room … then he stopped and looked again, more closely.
Fiona was carefully looking at nothing in particular, her eyes on a spot a little to Miriam’s right. To a casual observer she would have seemed perfectly calm, her thoughts and emotions locked behind iron walls of self-control. But Brian had been living with Fi for years, and he saw the tension in her limbs; the careful balance in her footing; the whiteness of her knuckles as she gripped the tonfa in both hands; the subtle flaring of her nostrils as she scented the air. Something had her keyed up, and she was doing her damnedest not to give it away.
A knot of tension began to form in Brian’s stomach. He turned to Miriam. “This is a good spot, but we’d better get into position. Are your people already here? I can’t sense anyone but us.”
“They’re in one of the offices on the other side,” Miriam said. “We’ve lined it with lead shielding and cold iron to block scrying.” She nodded toward the narrow walkway in front of them. “It’s right this way.”
Brian nodded, and they began moving forward again. “And that’s where you’re keeping the girl?”
“That’s right,” Miriam said. “She’s a little shaken, of course, but she’s handling it well.”
Daniel stopped in his tracks. “Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. You’re talking about Abbey? The girl Victor took with him?”
“Of course,” Brian said, frowning. “Who else would we use to lure him down here?”
“But Abbey’s not here!” Daniel said. “She’s back at the hospital. She just left Victor earlier today and came looking for me. We’re giving her asylum.” He looked at Miriam, confusion written large across his face. “Why would you tell them she’s—”
Before he could finish the sentence, Fiona brought down the tonfa over her upraised knee, splitting it in half with a loud crack. She had twisted the baton just so as she struck it, exploiting some unseen flaw that ran diagonally through the grain of the wood. In the blink of an eye she had turned the blunt-ended weapon into a pair of jagged spikes of roughly equal length.
She tossed one of the pieces to Daniel. Grasping the other piece with an overhand grip, she lunged at Miriam, aiming it straight for the woman’s heart.
The entire process had taken less than a second – but, as fast as Fiona was, Miriam was faster. She flickered out of the way, a whisper of motion too fast for the eye to follow. Brian blinked, and the Elder was standing atop one of the nearby crates.
“You couldn’t have kept your mouths shut for thirty more seconds?” Fiona muttered.
Miriam’s face had changed, her brow wrinkling into an inhuman, predatory expression. Her eyes glowed yellow-green in the dim light of the loading bay, and when she bared her teeth at them, Brian saw a set of long, gleaming fangs. Oh, gods. Not her. Not Miriam!
With visible difficulty, Miriam forced her face to return to its usual look. “I’m … very sorry, children,” she said, her voice rough with suppressed emotion. “But the master says that you must pay for your part in the raid on Viscount Security.”
Other figures emerged from hiding places throughout the loading bay, their eyes shining and filled with hungry anticipation. Brian looked out at the corridor and saw more vamps converging from both directions, blocking off all avenues of escape.
“Surrender, and I will accept you as thralls in my house, under my protection.” Miriam’s voice was firm but gentle. “It will be … degrading, but it will stop the cycle of violence. Your families will be safe.” Her eyes glistened with sadness and regret. “And I promise to treat you more kindly than I was treated.”
Brian shot a quick glare at Fiona. “You knew?” he hissed.
“Smelled wrong,” Fiona murmured, still looking up at Miriam. “Pheromones were off.”
“Why didn’t you do something sooner?”
She glanced at him then, the pain obvious in her eyes. “I thought she had the girl.”
Daniel backed into position beside Brian and Fiona, forming a loose circle with their backs facing each other. “Victor’s not coming, is he.” It was more a statement than a question.
“Doesn’t look like it,” Brian agreed.
“Enough of this,” Miriam snapped. “Choose, quickly! Will you surrender to me or not?”
Fiona set her jaw and raised her makeshift stake in a combat stance. “We’d rather die,” she said.
Miriam just nodded sadly. She gestured, and the vampires began to close in.
“Crap,” Daniel said.
The prenatal psychiatrist came and went, leaving the mysterious “Jenny Bloggs” with an amulet imbued with a sleep enchantment. It would allow both Jenny and her baby to rest without risk of overdosing the child. Dr Carlisle promised to return tomorrow for a more extended appointment, but for now, at least, Jenny was sleeping peacefully.
Sasha was just coming back from checking on the other patients in the ward when her phone rang. She checked the caller ID before flipping it open. “Hey, Becks. Did the kid wake you up again?”
Any concerns she might have had about Rebecca's sleep cycle was immediately banished by the fear in her lover's voice. “Sasha, you've got to get out of there! Something really bad is coming!”
A chill ran through Sasha, but she pushed it back and made herself shift into mission mode. If something was a big enough threat that it was tripping Rebecca's ESP from halfway across the city, she didn't have any time to waste on panicking. “What can you tell me?” she asked, all business.
“Not a lot,” Rebecca admitted. “It's one person – a man, I think – but really mad, and really dangerous. He's coming for that girl you're protecting.”
Sasha looked over at the sleeping Jenny, frowning. “How close is he?”
“Close,” Rebecca said, sounding frustrated at her power's lack of precision. “Like … I don't know! A few hundred meters, maybe? Oh, gods, Sasha, he knows where you are! Get everyone out of there!”
“Copy that,” Sasha said, and hung up. She ran over to Jenny and pulled off the sleep amulet. While she waited for the girl to wake up, she went and found Morgan, who was now using Timson's office to catch up on some paperwork.
“We've got to clear this ward,” Sasha said. “I just got a warning from our esper that Jenny's boyfriend is on the way.”
Morgan raised an eyebrow. “Can't security deal with that?”
“Based on what Becks told me, apparently not. “Do you have room for these women in the Pathology ward?”
“Yes…” Morgan said cautiously. “But that's against regs—”
“Fuck the regs!” Sasha snapped. Then, more gently, “Morgan, please, I know you're not a spooky, but for Eli's sake trust me on this! Get them out of here while we still can!”
This time the mundane woman obviously heard the desperation in Sasha's voice. She was up and moving with only an instant's hesitation.
On her way back to Jenny's room Sasha reopened the thought-link tying her to the security team downstairs. All agents, report in, she commanded.
A chorus of telepathic voices came back. Most of them reported that their stations were quiet, nothing out of the ordinary. Two of them didn't respond at all.
Anyone heard from Connor or Stevens? Sasha asked.
A wave of negatives came back.
All agents to defensive positions, she said. Far Eyes report one Alpha coming in hot, range less than half a klick. Keep your eyes open and coordinate so he doesn't outflank you.
A ripple of confusion came from some of the guards. Far Eyes? one of them asked. Alpha?
Sasha ground her teeth and made a note to teach military parlance to all members of the Hive. An esper and an aggressor, respectively, she said, her annoyance leaking through into her mental “voice.” I'm moving the target to the crisis room in SL 2. Turn on your headsets so I can call you when we get there.
Jenny was sitting up in bed and radiating worry when Sasha came back to the room. “He's here, isn't he.”
“Looks that way,” Sasha said. “No contact yet, but we're gonna get you out of here just in case. There's a crisis room on the second sublevel where you'll be safe until we catch this guy.”
Jenny nodded and pushed herself unsteadily to her feet. She paused there for a moment, one hand on the bedside table – apparently the sleep charm had some lingering effects. Sasha took the girl's arm to steady her and led her toward the lift, wondering how Jenny's assailant would choose to show himself.
The answer came less than a minute after they entered the lift. A sound like distant thunder rose up from the depths of the tower. The lights went out, replaced by a dim red emergency lamp mounted on the ceiling. The lift car shuddered, then jerked to a halt. Jenny and Sasha tumbled to the floor, both of them instinctively shielding the girl's belly against the fall. Sasha landed hard on her back with Jenny partly on top of her. The wind came out of her in a rush.
“Sorry,” Jenny whispered. “Are you all right?”
Sasha paused to take a mental inventory. She would have a few bruises from that one, but that seemed to be the worst of it. She hadn't felt the crack of breaking ribs or the pop of a shoulder coming out of joint.
“I'm … all right,” she gasped, coughing. “You? The baby?”
Jenny nodded once, her facial expressions mostly unreadable in the dim light. “I think she's still asleep.”
“That charm must be good for a little while longer, I guess,” Sasha said.
They clambered to their feet, bracing against each other and the wall of the car. Sasha brushed herself off and went to the control panel underneath the floor buttons.
“What's going on?” Jenny asked.
“Lost power to the lift,” Sasha said. “He probably found the circuit breaker and shut it down to try to keep us from leaving.” As she spoke, she opened a link back to her security teams and told them to send guards to the other circuit control stations. If their attacker tried to do anything else to mess with the power, they'd be ready for him.
The responses that she got back from her team were confusing. Connor and Stevens were still silent, and now so were Hudson and Cutler. The others were all chattering at once, all reporting power outages at their assigned posts. Their fear and anxiety clouded the link, making it hard to pick out their messages among the background noise. The wireless network that ran their comm headsets was down, as well, so she couldn't even fall back on voice communication. As the seconds ticked by, though, one fact became clear.
“It's not just the lift,” Sasha whispered, horrified. “It's the whole hospital.”
“What? How?” Jenny asked. “Aren't hospitals supposed to be protected against things like that?”
Sasha nodded, thinking hard. “The hospital's fed by a main conduit that runs all the way down to the reactor under the tower. To cut the power to everything at once, he'd have to shut down that conduit. But that's not something that just anybody could do! You'd need all kinds of security clearances to even learn how, and you'd have to be even higher up before you could access the hospital's schematics.” She shook her head, disbelieving. “We were in MID for three years before Victor taught us how to—”
A surge of tangled emotions spilled out from behind Jenny's shields, and Sasha cut herself off in mid-sentence. No coherent thoughts had crept past Jenny's defenses, but the sense of recognition was unmistakable – and so was the fear.
Sasha stared at her, all the pieces falling into place in an instant. “Jenny,” she said, slowly and softly, “who is it, exactly, that's after you?”
Jenny looked away, radiating feelings of shame and soul-sick dread.
Sasha reached out her mind and brushed against the girl with a gentle tendril of thought, an invitation to share. “Jenny, I can't protect you if I don't know what I'm up against.”
The teenager bit her lip, obviously thinking hard. Then, before Sasha could react, she reached out and grabbed Sasha's mind with her own, opening a channel so broad and strong that it made Sasha's links to the security guards look like the trickle of a garden hose.
Thoughts and memories poured into Sasha in a torrent. In less than a second, Jenny Bloggs – or, rather, Abbey Preston – confessed to Sasha all of the mistakes, lies and stupid decisions that had brought her to this place. She saw how Victor had turned from savior to monster before Abbey's eyes, and the assault that had compelled her to return to the Collective. She understood the fear that Abbey felt for Darla, her daughter, and her terror at the thought that the Elders might kill her baby to keep Victor's genes from being passed on.
Most frightening of all, though, was the change in Victor's mind. Abbey didn't know what had happened, and Sasha couldn't begin to imagine – but somehow he had fragmented his thoughts so that Abbey couldn't read them.
Which meant that either he was irretrievably insane, or that he'd gotten his hands on some kind of technology that the Hive had never seen before.
And either way, he was here, coming for Abbey.
Sasha looked into Abbey's eyes, and the fear in them mirrored her own.
“We've got to get out of here now,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Daniel had heard former psi-ops talk about the peculiar feeling they sometimes got during their missions, when the odds were hopeless and they knew they were going to die. It was a sort of preternatural calm, a heightened sense of clarity and awareness that came with the knowledge that the situation truly couldn't get any worse. When Revonos was already sharpening his scythe behind you, you could put any thoughts of your own survival out of your head and focus on what really mattered: completing the mission.
It was the rarest of sensations, and one that most people experienced no more than once in their lives — usually briefly. From what Daniel had been told by those lucky few who survived the experience, it was both exhilarating and strangely peaceful.
What Daniel felt now was utterly unlike what the veterans had promised him: a raw, animal terror that clawed at his insides and screamed for him to run. Only his years of training and self-discipline kept him from obeying that panicked voice inside him. Then again, this wasn't one of those cases where you had nothing to lose: they were fighting vampires, and that meant that there were possibilities much worse than death.
One of those possibilities perched atop the nearby crates, locked in single combat with Fiona. She and Miriam Bakhtavar moved more quickly than the eye could see, a swirling dance of claw and stake that spiraled up and down the heights of the massive warehouse. The Elder's cloak billowed and floated as she moved, making her seem more like a wraith than a creature of flesh and bone. Fiona fought like a thing possessed, her wild red hair pulling free of its restraints and whirling about her like a lion's mane.
Daniel only caught glimpses of the egoists' duel, several more immediate concerns looming close at hand. He and Brian stood side-by-side at the doorway, making a bottleneck that cut down on the number of vamps that could attack them at once. They were all far slower than Miriam, and probably a lot weaker as well. Most of them clearly came from weaker blood-stock than Miriam herself, probably four or five generations removed from the prince who commanded them. Still, even the weakest was as strong as a strong man, and they outnumbered Daniel and Brian seven to one.
“We can't stay here!” Daniel panted, after Brian threw back the latest wave of attackers with a blast of lightning from a nearby power conduit.
Brian glanced up at the two egoists, then back at the vamps, who were already picking themselves up. “We can't leave her, either!”
“Who? Fiona or Miriam?”
Brian's face twisted – grief, flickering into anger, then gone. “Either one.”
Daniel nodded, then wiped the sweat out of his eyes and readjusted his stance. “You got a plan?”
“More of an idea.” Brian's eyes slid over to him. “Can't do it without you.”
The vamps started closing in again, most of them angling toward Daniel and away from Brian. “I'll take it,” Daniel said.
“Right, then. Just hold on tight.”
They were almost on him now. As Daniel set himself to dodge one vamp and take the second one down at the knees, he just had time to wonder: Hold on tight to what?
The answer came in the form of the large iron loading hook from the gantry crane – and the ponderous heavy crate hanging from it. It swung down bare centimeters from Daniel's head and plowed into the onrushing vamps like a bowling ball through tenpins. The crate tore free from the hook on impact and tumbled across the floor, scattering heavy machine parts that landed like sledgehammers on the unfortunate vamps.
The now-empty hook swung around in a turn that was too sharp to be natural, then slowed as it approached Brian's outstretched hand. He grabbed hold of the hook as it came past, and Daniel wrapped his hands around the braided steel cable. The metal trembled under his hands as Brian propelled them up into the rafters, setting them down atop the narrow tracks of the gantry.
The beam was only two decimeters wide, but Daniel found his footing swiftly. Brian, less sure on his feet, straddled the track and held on with both legs and one hand.
“You gonna be all right up here?” Daniel asked, still breathing hard from the exertion.
Brian nodded once, scanning the floor below them with a tactician's critical eye. “From here I can even the odds,” he said. “Just keep them off of me.”
For once, the vampires' desire to take them alive worked to their advantage. Daniel and Brian would have been sitting ducks up here for anyone with a gun, but the vamps were armed only with nets, chains, and shock sticks, as well as their own teeth and claws. If they wanted Daniel and Brian, they'd have to come up here and get them.
It only took a moment for the vamps to spot Daniel and Brian on their new perch, but three precious minutes passed before they found their way through the maze of crates and located the access ladder at one end of the gantry. During that time Brian turned the entire warehouse against them. Catwalks pulled free from their supports and fell on them, pinning them under hundreds of kilos of steel. Chains came alive in the vampires’ hands, wrapping around their legs and binding their arms behind them. Levers and gears broke free from machinery, turning into makeshift spears and whirling saw blades. By the time the first vampires reached the bottom rungs of the ladder, Brian had cut their numbers down by half.
Daniel fought down the churning fear inside him and focused on the moment. Two of the vampires were scrambling up the ladder, lizard-quick, one following close behind the other. Daniel thought about throwing something at them, but the angles were bad and the only things he had at his disposal were his knives, his one surviving tonfa, and one of the rough stakes Fiona had made from the other. He could reach down and try to stab at them, but he knew the speed of the vamps’ reflexes and he didn’t want them pulling him off the gantry while he was off-balance. Instead he hung back just out of arm’s reach, his body centered atop the narrow track.
He struck as soon as the first vampire’s head appeared, snapping a front kick between the creature's eyes. The vamp saw it coming and dodged to the left – straight into the low round kick Daniel used as a follow-up. The force of the blow caught the vamp off-balance and sent him tumbling off the ladder. He struck his companion on the way down, but the second vamp held on and kept climbing, moving more slowly and keeping a firm grip on the rungs. Daniel struck at one of its hands with his tonfa as it came within reach, shattering the small bones with a savage overhand blow. The vamp howled and its grip slackened – the bones would knit back together within minutes, but until then its supernatural strength had nothing to push against but a mass of splintered fragments. The vamp shifted its weight over to its other hand to compensate, and Daniel stomped down on it with his heel. The crack of the bones was joined by another shriek, and the vampire tumbled down to join his comrade on the floor ten meters below.
“Daniel!” Brian's voice made Daniel's head whip around. He saw the trouble immediately: three of the vamps had climbed up one of the ladders at the far end of the room and were swinging across the rafters like chimpanzees, heading for the opposite end of the gantry. Daniel cursed under his breath and moved to meet them as quickly as he dared, stepping lightly over Brian on the way.
Silently, Daniel thanked Eli for the years of practice Victor had given him in fighting on the balance beams at the samnak. He'd thought that particular training regimen was ridiculous at first, but over time he'd seen the value of it: Once you got used to fighting on a piece of wood a decimeter wide, you'd be able to keep your balance under just about any circumstances imaginable.
The vampires, being accustomed to the rough-and-tumble fighting of the Street, were unprepared for the finesse the battle required. They were also used to being nearly indestructible, and that made them reckless. Daniel baited them with simple feints and took them down with sweeping attacks that emphasized leverage over brute force. When the vamps tried to use their strength advantage, he turned it against them; when they relied on speed, he danced out of the way until they overbalanced themselves, then knocked them off before they could recover. When more vamps came up the ladder on the near side, he darted back in that direction and met them in turn. It was like a maddened game of Lord of the Castle, and each time the vamps tumbled down Brian used his powers to put one or two more out of contention.
Daniel was taken by surprise when he tripped up the latest vamp, turned, and found the far end of the track empty. Brian buried Daniel's latest victim under a mass of twisted catwalk, then looked up at Daniel, the sweat pouring down his face.
“That's the last of them,” he gasped. “Couldn't dust all of 'em, but they're out of it for now.”
Which leaves just one. Daniel followed the unspoken thought, looking down at Fiona and Miriam as they continued their deadly dance across the tops of the crates. It was like watching a one-on-one skyball game played out at ten times normal speed, with the egoists' superhuman muscles standing in for the jump pads. Both of them were so fast that Daniel couldn't even see which blows were being blocked and which ones hit home. Every thirty seconds or so Miriam would withdraw out of melee range and try to stare down Fiona, but each time she would be distracted by an entangling chain, a gear traveling at bullet-speed, or a scrap of whirling metal. Then Fiona was on her again, and the hand-to-hand fight continued.
“Gotta keep her off-balance,” Brian explained. He still sounded winded. “If she gets a chance to use her telepathy, we can't block her.”
Daniel nodded, suppressing a chill that ran down his spine. “Should I go down and try to help?”
“Don't be a fool,” Brian said, without heat. “She'd tear you open in three seconds.” He shook his head, looking lost. “I don't know what to do,” he added, his voice faint. “She can't retreat, Miriam can't get tired, and I can't call for help through the damned shielding.”
“And if you leave to get help, Miriam'll just mind-blast her,” Daniel said. He took a deep breath. “Okay, so it's gotta be me.”
“Be careful,” Brian hissed. “She wants us alive as revenge for Viscount, but I doubt her master said anything about you.”
Daniel nodded. That could be good or bad for him, depending on how deep Miriam's programming had sunk in. He grabbed the big loading hook from its resting place at Brian's side and prepared to swing for the exit, hoping that he could roll with the landing and avoid breaking anything.
As his muscles tensed to leap, though, he heard Fiona cry out. Looking down, he saw that the two women had stopped on a tall stack of crates almost directly below him. Miriam had finally caught Fiona in a grapple, and just as quickly she sank her fangs into Fi's neck.
“Fiona!” Brian shouted, his voice cracking with desperate fear.
Fiona went limp in Miriam's arms, the vampire's narcotic venom sending a rush of pleasure through her body. Miriam too had fallen into a haze of ecstasy, making little growls of delight as she lapped and slurped at the open wounds.
Now, at last, Daniel felt that crystalline moment of clarity that the psi-ops had talked about. Miriam's back was turned to him, her head barely three meters below the gantry. She stood near the edge of the crate, her feet only centimeters from open air. Time slowed as instincts honed by years of practice judged the distance, weighed the force of his jump, visualized how his hands would move. He took the hook and cable in his hands and formed them into a loop about three decimeters wide.
Then, championship skyball player Daniel Sharabi leapt down on his target, screaming a battle cry as he fell.
Miriam looked up from Fiona's neck in sudden alarm, just as Daniel drove the loop of cable around her head like a slam dunk in reverse. While Miriam was on solid footing at the crate's edge, Daniel fell past her through open space. The cable went tight around Miriam's neck as Daniel fell, and the Elder was pulled off of Fiona and into midair. The cable swung back away from the crates like a giant pendulum, the tension in the line translating Daniel's fall into horizontal motion. Daniel held on for dear life as the pendulum swung through the low point in its arc, then up, up, until it came to a stop on the other side. He hovered there for an instant, Miriam dangling helplessly above him, and then the pendulum swung back the way they had come – where Fiona was waiting with stake in hand.
Egoist-enhanced strength lashed out, burying the broken tonfa to the hilt in Miriam's heart. The vampire instantly went limp, like a marionette whose strings had been cut.
An instant later, Daniel slammed feet-first into the side of the crate.
A loud crack and a flash of white-hot pain told Daniel that his heels had broken on impact. He held on, somehow, as Brian let out the cable and lowered him gently to the ground. Daniel held up his legs and let Brian set him down on his ass, sparing his feet any further agonies. With as much focus as he could muster, Daniel tapped his healing power and channeled it into his legs. Cool, soothing energy replaced the blinding pain, and he painstakingly knitted his bones back together.
By the time he finished, Brian was at his side and ready to help him up.
“Thanks,” Daniel said, brushing himself off.
Unexpectedly, Brian wrapped his arms around Daniel in a tight hug. “Thank you,” he said hoarsely.
An awkward moment later, Brian released him, and Daniel looked around. “What happened to the other vamps?”
“Fogged out,” Brian said, sounding relieved. “Guess they didn't think it was worth it after their leader went down.”
Daniel nodded. A vampire could turn into fog more or less at will, but reincorporating afterward was a slow process that left the creature drained and vulnerable to attack. Because of that, vamps usually saved it for emergencies. “Still, we'd better make ourselves scarce,” he said. “Just in case ard'Valos had a backup plan.”
A stab of raw anguish rippled through the air, so strong that even Daniel's pathetic psi-senses could detect it. He turned and saw Fiona kneeling on the ground, with Miriam Bakhtavar's body cradled in her arms. The fallen Elder looked peaceful in death, though the trickle of blood running down the side of her mouth was a sober reminder of what she had become – and would become again, if the stake were removed from her heart. Fiona buried her face in the woman's long, dark hair, her whole body shaking with silent sobs. She didn't seem to notice the blood still oozing from the wounds in her neck.
Daniel knelt beside her and placed a healing hand over the bite marks. They were small and the incisions were clean; they knitted closed with only a moment's effort.
Fiona looked up at him then. The fire was gone from her eyes, leaving an expression of naked heartache. The honesty and vulnerability in that expression were like nothing Daniel had ever seen from her.
“Daniel, please,” she said, her voice coming out hoarse and choked with emotion. “My strength is … almost gone. Help me carry her. I can't leave her here. Not like this.”
Daniel nodded gravely. “Of course, Fi. Of course.”
He helped Fiona to her feet, and together they carried her fallen hero out of the warehouse, into the tunnels, and toward the safety of home.
Sasha shoved with all the force her 43 kilos could manage. The big lever finally turned, there was a hiss of released air, and the outer lift doors slid open about a decimeter.
“Okay,” she said, gesturing at the doors. “You get that one and I'll get this one.”
Together, she and Abbey pushed the doors open the rest of the way. The stopped car was about a meter below the level of the outer doors, but fortunately there was a ladder built the side of the shaft. Abbey moved slowly and awkwardly, but she was able to climb up and out of the car without assistance – which was a good thing, because Sasha was pretty sure she didn't have enough mass to haul the pregnant girl out of there by main strength.
“Quietly now,” Sasha murmured, as they headed down the hallway. “Victor will expect us to take the closest emergency exit to get out, so we'll go across to the far end of the building and take the stairs from there. Keep your shields up and don't talk unless you have to. Our only advantage is that he doesn't know exactly where we are, so let's keep it that way.”
Abbey nodded, her eyes wide. Sasha turned and led her onward. She wished mightily that she could talk to her people in the hospital security team, but she didn't dare open a telepathic link when it might give away their position. Like it or not, she and Abbey were on their own here, unless somebody managed to get the comm systems back online. Considering who they were dealing with, though, Sasha wouldn't have been surprised if the servers for the wireless network were a pile of melted slag by now. Victor had always emphasized the need to take out your enemy's eyes and ears; once you had them disorganized and confused, your job was ten times easier.
The halls of the hospital weren't completely dark, but the battery-powered emergency lamps provided only spotty illumination, making the darkness between them seem doubly threatening. Abbey's labored breathing was an ongoing counterpoint to the pounding of Sasha's own heart. She heard muffled gunshots from the floors below them, distant shouts, and the occasional boom of large, heavy objects hitting walls or ceilings. She kept Abbey moving, as quickly and quietly as possible, until the sounds of battle faded into the distance.
Unlike the hallways, the emergency stairwell was completely dark. Sasha frowned in momentary confusion; if anything, the stairwells had more emergency lights than the floors themselves. Then she stepped into the stairwell and heard the crunch of glass underfoot, and the reason for the blackout became obvious.
“Should we go back?” Abbey whispered.
“No,” Sasha murmured, keeping her voice low but shaking her head emphatically. “That's what he wants. He's trying to use our fear to hem us in, force us to take the path he's picked for us. Just hold on to the rail and take it nice and easy – and watch out for the glass.”
The descent was agonizingly slow. Sasha went in front, sweeping glass out of Abbey's path as quietly as possible. Sasha cursed the fact that she hadn't taken the time to have Abbey put on her shoes – but then, she hadn't known who she was dealing with at that point, either. Her instincts screamed at her to run away, as far and as fast as possible, but there was no way they could outrun Victor in Abbey's present condition. Stealth was their friend far more than speed. She consoled herself with the knowledge that time wasn't on Victor's side; taking the hospital's power grid off-line would alert emergency services and the higher-ups in the Hive itself. Help would come, if they could stay out of his sights long enough for it to get here.
They reached the fourth-level exit landing after only three flights, but Sasha signaled for them to keep going. Victor would expect them to take the fastest, easiest way out of the building; that exit would be watched, sealed, or trapped, possibly all three. No, Sasha would take Abbey down to the third skyway level, through the hospital sublevels and into the office complex below. Victor might have been able to get into the hospital unnoticed, but the offices below it weren't Hive-owned, and Sasha doubted that he could have gotten away with sabotaging their stairwells without someone catching wind of it and calling the cops. Keep doing the unexpected. Keep him guessing. That's the only way you're going to get out of this.
The door into the hospital's sublevel zone was locked, but Sasha had the key – which was the ordinary brass mechanical kind and not an electronic passcard, thank Eli. They continued past the first sublevel in silence, but when they reached the second landing Abbey came up short.
“SL 2,” she whispered.
Sasha was already sweeping glass off of the next flight of steps. She shone the light from her phone back up at Abbey, who was standing transfixed in front of the locked door that led out of the stairwell into the second sublevel.
“What's wrong?” Sasha murmured, trying to keep the frustration out of her voice. It wouldn't accomplish anything to get angry at the girl.
“Sublevel two,” Abbey said, her eyes wide. “That's where the crisis room is. Where you said you were taking me.”
“That was the old plan, Abbey! Now I'm just trying to get you out of here.”
“I know!” Abbey hissed. “But you told those other guards you were taking me here.”
“So?”
The answer came to Sasha a split-second after she asked the question. A second after that, an earth-shaking boom rattled through the tower. It sounded like it had come from somewhere on the same floor.
Abbey said it anyway. “So what if Victor left one of the guards alive long enough to tell him that?”
“Move!” Sasha snapped, dashing down the stairs. She kicked as much of the broken glass out of the way as possible, but there was no time to be thorough.
“Oh gods,” Abbey breathed, her rising panic showing in the soft whimper of her voice. “Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods…”
Six steps down, Abbey's bare foot landed on a stray sliver of glass that Sasha had missed. To her credit, the girl didn't cry out, either verbally or psychically; only a brief hiss of indrawn breath told Sasha what had happened.
Unfortunately, the fear and adrenaline had burned through the last of the sleep enchantment on her unborn child – and while Abbey had put up enough shields to hide her pain from Sasha, little Darla felt it almost as much as Abbey. Faced with inexplicable pain and the echoes of her mother's fear, Darla responded the way any infant would.
The psychic scream tore through Sasha's shields, stabbing white-hot pain through her temples and making her legs give way beneath her. She caught herself on the handrail, but Abbey wasn't so lucky. She tumbled down to the next landing, her arms curled instinctively around her belly to protect the baby. Unfortunately, that meant that she wasn't shielding her head. The back of her skull cracked up against the railing as she fell – not hard enough to fracture anything, but definitely enough to stun.
Sasha rose to her feet, throwing all her strength into rebuilding her psychic shields. Darla's second scream was weaker than the first, and it still nearly blinded her with the force of its raw anguish. Good god, does that kid have power! Sasha tried to send her a wave of peace and reassurance, but the child was terrified and inconsolable – and she was broadcasting their location to every teep in a three-klick radius.
“Abbey, get up!” Sasha shouted, abandoning any hope of stealth. She put the force of her mind behind the words, and Abbey's eyes fluttered twice, then opened.
“Sasha?” Abbey asked, sounding dazed.
“GET UP, DAMN IT!” Another crash sounded above them, closer than the first. The sublevels were divided into self-contained secure sections, and Victor apparently wasn't interested in being subtle about getting through them. Sasha reached down and pulled on the girl's arms, trying to drag her to her feet. Since Abbey outweighed her by at least twenty kilos, that was more easily said than done.
Darla gave a third cry, then fell silent, apparently exhausting her tiny body's energy reserves. A moment later, Abbey's eyes cleared, as she apparently remembered why Sasha was pulling on her. She got her uninjured foot under her and finally started helping Sasha to get her upright. She wrapped one arm around Sasha's shoulders and hobbled with her to the door to SL3.
“No time to run any farther,” Sasha said, putting in the key and twisting it to open the door. “Gotta get our backs to a wall — try to hold him off – something…” As plans went, this one sucked, but it was all they had left. Maybe help would arrive in time.
Sasha spotted a heavy security door ahead, the lights on the control pad glowing green. Apparently the battery backups were working fine here. SL3 was where the hospital kept its supply of psi drugs, the performance-enhancing combat meds that only active MID agents were supposed to have. The Collective had been making its own supply in secret for years now, for those unofficial missions that were sometimes necessary to defend Collective interests. Caches of the drugs were hidden all over the Empire, usually in psi-run hospitals like Eastside.
Performance-enhancing… It was a long shot, and Sasha hated the idea with every fiber of her being. She went to the door anyway. It opened to her handprint and retinal scan, revealing a storeroom filled with shelves. She turned on the lights, which were still working, and directed Abbey to a stool in front of the single workbench. After making sure that the door was shut and bolted behind them, Sasha started scanning through the shelves.
“What are you looking for?” Abbey asked, the fear still thick in her voice. Evidently she didn't trust that security door to stop Victor any more than Sasha did.
“This.” Sasha grabbed an individually-wrapped syringe, already filled with a turquoise-blue liquid. She tore off the wrapper, checked the body-mass guide on the side of the syringe, and pressed down the plunger until it was at the line marked for 45 kilos.
Abbey's eye must have caught the label on the other side of the syringe. “MD-109?” she asked.
“You probably know it as Mad John,” Sasha said, uncapping the needle and pressing it into the vein just below her elbow.
“But that stuff is toxic!” Abbey protested.
“I know,” Sasha murmured, then pressed the plunger home.
An instant later the world came alive with a swirling, pulsing glow that seemed to come from everywhere. An electric tingling crackled across her skin, making her hairs stand on end. Her telepathy blossomed open around her, filling her with a sort of hyper-awareness. She could feel Abbey's mind with new clarity, as well as the minds of everyone in the building around her, and she knew that she could reach out and touch any of them with her power. New strength surged into her muscles, and Sasha felt her lips spread apart in a savage grin. She felt invincible.
She knew it was a lie. She knew that the synthetic neurotransmitter that was boosting her control over her psychic power was also slowly poisoning her. She had twenty minutes, maybe less. If she didn't take the antagonist before then, the Mad John would burn out her synapses, and she would fall into a coma and die.
She grabbed the syringe containing the antagonist and stuck it in her pocket. This would be done in a lot less than twenty minutes, one way or another. And right now, she felt like Victor was going to get a hell of a lot more than he bargained for.
“Here's what we do,” she said, the words spilling out of her like she'd just downed a triple espresso. “We form a gestalt and pool our power together. That's a lot of juice, but with the Mad John I should be able to control it. Victor's gonna bust down that door, and when he does I pry my way into his head and shut him down from the inside. I don't care what kind of weird-ass shielding he's got going for him, he's got to have some kind of link between his head and the rest of the world. Between you, me and John, we're gonna find it.” She pulled out her pistol and flicked off the safety. “All we've gotta do is shut down his PK for a few seconds. Then he's mine.”
Sasha felt Abbey's uncertainty, but the girl opened up her mind to her anyway. Sasha gasped at the sense of newfound power as her mind fused with Abbey's, but with the heightened awareness brought on by the drug, they swiftly integrated their talents into a single psychic powerhouse. Identities flowed together and became one, as Sasha-Abbey drew her gun and turned to await her attacker.
Come and get me, you bastard. Come and get me.
Chapter Thirty
A familiar buzzing-sensation filled Sasha and Abbey's unified group-mind, coming down from the floor above and growing louder as it approached. Thirty seconds later, the security door on the storeroom began to shake.
Sasha-Abbey moved both of her bodies into the back corner of the room, well out of the line of sight. Her Abbey-body moved slowly with its injured foot, so she moved her Sasha-body to assist it. At the same time, she reached out and began probing around that buzzing jumble of mental static, looking for pattern and structure in the apparent chaos.
The Mad John was still singing in the nervous system of her Sasha-body, slowly poisoning her even as it expanded her perceptions and amplified her psychic control. She made full use of it now, channeling more of her shared consciousness through that body as she struggled to understand what was going on in Victor's head. The man's rage was obvious, driving him at a level deeper than conscious thought, but that wasn't going to be any help in shutting down his PK powers. Sasha-Abbey needed to get into his cerebral cortex, somehow. She started looking for a door.
The security door groaned, as an unseen force pried at its hinges. Sasha-Abbey ignored it. Victor's thoughts were spilling out all over the place – he wasn't even trying to shield himself anymore – but they were all just fragments, pieces of unfinished ideas. Where are the rest of them? she wondered. A quick inventory of the thoughts she could sense confirmed that they weren't just jumbled; a lot of pieces were actually missing.
With the Mad John giving her an unprecedented capacity for multitasking, Sasha-Abbey laid out all the pieces of Victor's thoughts in a matrix, ordering them chronologically and by similar themes. The missing thought-fragments now resembled a regular series of holes against the backdrop of Victor's consciousness. Sasha-Abbey recalled mathematics that one or the other of them had learned at some point, and almost instantly she came up with an equation that described the pattern. It was more than consistent; it was perfectly mathematically predictable.
No human mind could fragment itself into a pattern like that. Not without help, anyway.
The door groaned again, then shrieked as the hinges finally gave way. It fell out into the hallway with a heavy boom. A moment later, heavy footsteps crossed over the fallen door and into the storeroom.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Victor said, his voice chillingly calm compared with the rage that burned inside him.
Sasha-Abbey stayed out of sight behind the set of long shelves, all of which were much heavier than the door and securely bolted down. She reached out for Victor's senses, looking for the link between his head and the outside world.
There, in the occipital lobe. Victor's vision, at least, was an unscrambled signal. She saw him scanning the room, moving one cautious step at a time, the faint shimmer of his PK shield around him. She followed the signal further in, toward the parietal lobe, and the raw visual input was joined by a sense of Victor's own body awareness: the movement of his limbs, the heat that flushed his skin. From there she tried to pass into the frontal lobe, where sensory data joined with conscious thought and the will to action – and there she ran up against that frustrating pattern of fragments again.
Her Abbey-half had a sudden insight. I'm using the wrong power. She added her ESP to the mix, and a picture of the inside of Victor's head revealed itself: a silvery network of tiny wires and transistors, weaving amongst the neurons and glial cells, interfacing with synapses and splitting the signals between organic and cybernetic components. And all along that network, like tiny insects swarming through a nest, a host of nanomachines worked non-stop, maintaining the incredibly complex circuitry.
Sasha-Abbey was impressed – and horrified. This was the secret weapon that the vampires had been working on: not an anti-teep virus, but a cybertech scrambler to block telepathic intrusion. The vamps themselves didn't have anything to worry about – their minds couldn't be read anyway – but a tool like this would give their human ghouls nearly the same level of protection. If they got these things into the heads of all their minions, the Collective would have a hard time learning about their plans fast enough to counter them.
And now Victor was turning that power against his own people, the traitorous bastard.
All of these insights took only a matter of seconds. Unfortunately, seconds were all Sasha-Abbey had. As she took her hard-won knowledge and tried to apply it, looking for a way to shut down or bypass the neural network, Victor appeared around the last set of shelves.
“There you are, honey!” Victor said. He bared his teeth at Abbey's body in an expression that couldn't even remotely be called a smile. "I've been looking all … over … for you."
Sasha-Abbey trained her gun on Victor, more out of reflex than anything else. He hardly seemed to notice.
"I'm not going back with you, Victor." She said it through Abbey's mouth, not wanting to give away their plan to Victor. Even as she spoke, she continued prying at his mind, looking for the connections where the nanopixies' influence ended. What could she do to him that might still get through?
"Oh, I know you're not," Victor said, that ugly not-a-smile splitting his face again. "I wouldn't take you back, anyway, you backstabbing little whore. But no, see, you … have something that belongs to me." A knife dropped into his hand from a hidden sheath under his leather coat. "I'm just here to take it back."
Sasha-Abbey covered her pregnant belly in a protective gesture. She moved her Sasha-body squarely in front of Abbey, pointing the barrel straight at Victor's heart.
"You're not taking anything." She said it with Sasha's voice this time. Inside his head, she found a vulnerable spot: Victor's own telepathic abilities still functioned, and while his half-cybernetic consciousness kept her from manipulating him or stunning him with a psychic blast, he could still feel people's emotions.
She took all of her fear, her pain, and her terror, amplified the signal through her combined powers, and channeled them straight into the telepathic receptors of his brain.
Victor reeled, his mouth open in a silent scream, as he stumbled back away from them. Sasha aimed and fired, three shots in quick succession. Victor raised a PK shield, but it was weak and not fully formed; the shots only deflected instead of stopping cold. One of them struck him in the left arm, while a second grazed his shoulder; the third caromed off and hit one of the shelves, smashing a line of bottles. He grunted in pain and dropped the knife he'd been holding. At the same time, Sasha-Abbey felt his walls go up, shutting off his telepathy — and with it, the gap in his defenses.
"Bitch!" he growled, reaching out with his telekinesis. Sasha-Abbey felt the pull of the gun on her hand and hit the clip-eject button before it was torn from her grasp. Victor tossed the weapon aside. "I don't need a weapon to kill you…"
Sasha's body reached for her backup revolver, but was stopped by a sudden force pulling back on her neck. Through Abbey's eyes, she saw Sasha's yew-tree crucifix constricting around her like a garrote, cutting off her oxygen as the same invisible force pinned her to the wall. Sasha-Abbey moved her other body forward, clutching at Victor to try to make him stop, but he snarled and shoved her backward. She landed hard against the shelves and fell to the floor, the wind knocked out of her.
Sasha-Abbey felt herself losing contact with Sasha's body, as the lack of oxygen and the ongoing toxic effects of the Mad John reinforced one another. She made one desperate, final push with her combined psychic powers, trying to batter down Victor's shields with the raw force of their psychic pain. Victor flinched under the assault, and his grip faltered for an instant, but it was too little, too late; Sasha-Abbey had nothing else to follow up with, no weapons at hand to exploit the opportunity.
Sasha's body went limp, and Victor tossed it contemptuously aside. Sasha's consciousness was still fused with Abbey's, but their group-mind immediately felt the loss of power and the accompanying loss of the hyperawareness that the Mad John had given them. The part of her that had been Sasha felt a tugging inside her, as if she were being pulled apart. An indefinable something left her then, slipping out of her grasp as it moved beyond even the realm of psychic perception.
The part that was left had to deal with the knife that Victor plunged straight into Abbey's belly.
Pain like nothing either woman had ever experienced tore through their shared body. The knife dragged against her flesh, and Sasha-Abbey realized that Victor, in his madness, was trying to cut Darla out of her. She curled up and grabbed the knife with both hands, desperately trying to protect Darla, but Victor struck her in the face with a telekinetic blow that sent her sprawling.
"OH NO YOU DON'T!" Victor raged, pulling the knife back to his hand and sending it into her with another telekinetic thrust. "I'M TAKING BACK WHAT'S MINE, BITCH! YOU CAN'T HAVE IT!"
Victor's second knife thrust came in too low. Darla woke up as the blade passed through her mother's womb and buried itself in her infant body. Her psychic scream tore through Sasha-Abbey's mind and Victor's alike, and the man fell to his knees. His moan of agony turned into a howl of rage, as he pulled the knife out and sent it flying into Abbey's gut once more. This one buried itself to the hilt in the center of her womb: he had apparently given up on taking back his child and was simply trying to make the screams stop.
Darla twitched one last time and went still. The silence that followed was deafening.
Sasha-Abbey lay helpless, bleeding out, as Victor stumbled to his feet and staggered out of the room, clutching his wounded arm. She could hear the psychic voices of other telepaths, converging on the area from the floors above, sending earnest promises that help was on the way. Too late, she thought, overwhelmed with grief and loss. It's already too late.
Mercifully, then, the darkness took her.
Fiona watched with a numb detachment as Daniel pulled Sasha's skimmer into the parking garage below the nest. He set it down in a spot close to one of the lifts, to minimize the chance of exposure. Brian closed his eyes briefly, then nodded.
“No one's around,” he said.
“Small mercies,” Daniel said. He gestured at Miriam's body, lying on the back seat with her head on Fiona's lap. “I'll help Fi take her upstairs. Call Sasha and let her know what happened, Bry. Since the trap for Victor was a fake, we've got to assume he found out where Abbey is really being kept and he's on his way there.”
“Will do,” Brian said. “I'll see if 'Becca can get a fix on his location for us.”
Daniel opened the door for Fiona and helped her to lift Miriam out. The security cameras would show them moving the body, but the building was Hive-owned so Fiona wasn't concerned. Besides, Brian could always edit the footage later.
Brian got out of the lift at the floor for the nest, but Daniel and Fiona continued upwards for another thirty stories, coming out at the common area where Fiona and Miriam had shared a certain conversation six months before. A gust of winter wind blew over them as they opened the doors to the snow-covered terrace. Some detached part of Fiona's mind noted that the lush greenery that had filled the place in summer was now withered and dead. Somehow that felt appropriate.
Daniel glanced at her in unspoken question. Fiona nodded to the broad ledge that sat at chest-height between the terrace and the open air of the city. They laid Miriam down on top of the slab of concrete, and Daniel arranged her arms so that her hands were crossed over her waist. He stepped back, lowered his head, and made a small invoking gesture.
“Eli grant her peace,” he murmured.
Fiona brushed a few locks of Miriam's hair out of her face. “She worshiped the Great Maker, actually.” Her voice sounded small and fragile even in her own ears. For some reason that didn't bother her as much as it might have, once.
“Oh.” Daniel gave her a weak smile. “In that case, may the Mother of All welcome her in her everlasting embrace … or, um, however they say it.” He paused, his bright blue eyes studying her closely. “Would you, um … like some time alone with her?”
Fiona nodded once. Daniel nodded back and turned to go.
“Daniel.”
He stopped and looked back, questioningly.
Fiona closed her eyes and swallowed once. “Thank you. For saving my life.” She looked down at Miriam, then back at him. “And you were right. We did need you.”
He didn't smile, but she saw in his eyes and in his aura how much that meant to him. “You're welcome.” He turned again and left her alone.
Or, not quite alone.
I always liked him. Miriam's telepathic voice was soft but clear in Fiona's mind. He has a good heart.
Fiona let herself smile a little at that. “It was never his heart that I questioned,” she said dryly.
Oh, come, child, Miriam chided. You must have trusted his brain, as well, for you to take the chance that you did.
Fiona looked down at the Elder's unmoving form. “What do you mean?”
Miriam's tone was gentle. Fiona, dear, you could have kept up our little dance for a good while longer. You chose to let me catch you, in that spot, so that Daniel would have the chance to attack me while I was feeding.
Fiona shifted uneasily. “A tactical decision,” she said, with a casualness she didn't feel. “It was the only way we could have won.”
Yes, exactly. And do you think you could have made that decision six months ago?
Fiona opened her mouth, then closed it again.
You let yourself become helpless to save the lives of the people you cared for, Miriam said. I am immensely proud of you, my dear.
Tears came to Fiona's eyes, but she didn't brush them away. She bent over Miriam's body and pressed her face against one cold, ashen cheek.
“I'm s-sorry I couldn't save you,” she said, her voice catching on a sob.
Hush, child, Miriam said soothingly. You've done all I could have hoped for, and I knew the risks when I challenged ard'Valos. You owe me nothing.
“You're wrong,” Fiona said fervently, taking Miriam's still hand in her own. “I owe you everything.”
They sat there in silence for some time, their spirits communing wordlessly through the psychic link. At last Miriam spoke again. How long until sunrise?
Fiona consulted her watch. “About six hours,” she said. After a pause, she added, “The terrace has southern exposure. You should have direct sunlight by ten o'clock, at the latest. The forecast is for clear skies.”
Very good. I'll be glad to see the sun again, if only briefly. Miriam seemed to hesitate before speaking again. Fiona, I wonder if you might attend be willing to attend to a few details after my … passing.
“Of course,” Fiona said at once. “What would you ask of me?”
In my service to Malcolm, I took a number of … well, “thralls” is the term he prefers. Some of them are telepaths. I don't want the syndicate to keep control of them after I'm gone; I did my best to care for them well, but others in the hierarchy would not be so … conscientious.
“We'll get them out,” Fiona promised. “Where can I find them?”
At the private apartment reserved for me as Elder. I left instructions for my seneschal to take them there – in case I succeeded in failing in my mission. The ironic note in her voice was obvious, but she quickly turned serious again. Her name is Seralina Grayhaven. She would tell you that I saved her from a fate worse than death – though I fear the woman I saved is not quite the same woman who was lost. She may hate you for destroying me, but be kind to her, for my sake. She is … very precious to me.
Fiona sensed the odd mix of feelings behind Miriam's words: love, pride, guilt. She nodded once. “I promise.”
Before either of them could say anything further, Fiona's enhanced hearing picked up the sound of someone running down the hall behind her. She turned to look just as the door to the terrace flew open. Daniel stood there, his face a mask of anguish, tears streaming down his face.
“Fiona, you've gotta come down,” he said, his voice breaking. “Victor, he … hospital … Sasha … oh, Eli…”
Fiona's heart felt like something had wrapped it in its claws and started to squeeze. She looked at Daniel, then down at Miriam.
Go, child, Miriam urged her. The sun will do its work without you.
She didn't even wait for Daniel. After brushing past him in a blur of motion, she took the stairs free-running style, leaping from the railing of one flight down to the next with feline agility. She reached the door of the apartment just as Brian and Rebecca were rushing out of it.
Brian's voice was as choked as Daniel's. “Something's happened,” he said.
Eastside General Hospital. Intensive Care Unit.
Abbey Preston lay in her bed in the ICU, the soft rhythm of a heart monitor beeping in the background. The blankets hid most of the bandages from view, but what Daniel could see was bad enough. Besides the EKG, they had her hooked up to a ventilator, a pulse-oximeter, an automated blood-pressure cuff, and half a dozen IV pumps. Daniel had seen people in worse shape, but not often.
“We got her to the surgeons as fast as we could,” Morgan said, sounding almost as if she blamed herself for what had happened. “But it took an hour to fix what that psychopath did to the power conduit, and he hurt a lot of our staff while he was hunting her down. We were down to back-country medicine for a while there.” She shook her head. “They say she'll make it, but … well, there's gonna be a lot of uterine scarring. I'm sorry.”
Daniel nodded heavily. So Abbey Preston, the Collective's great prodigy, was going to be unable to bear any children for them. The irony was almost unbearably cruel.
And speaking of unbearable cruelties…
He looked into the adjoining room, where Sasha's family was gathered at her bedside. Fiona was on her knees, clutching her lover's hand and weeping openly. Brian held Rebecca in his arms on the opposite side of the bed, giving Fiona her space. His eyes caught Daniel's, and the bleakness in his expression made Daniel's gut clench inside him.
“No chance for Sasha, then?” he asked Morgan.
The mundy woman shook her head. “The ligature marks suggest that he strangled her until she passed out,” she said, her voice hoarse with shared grief. “The Mad John she injected herself with did the rest. We could keep her body going indefinitely, but her cerebral cortex is just … fried.” She hesitated. “Daniel, Sasha was a registered donor … and there's a teenage girl upstairs who badly needs a liver transplant. We're just waiting for her family to give consent.” She took a deep breath, then added in a thick voice, “I feel like such a fucking vulture for saying that. Damn it, she was my friend, too.”
Daniel wiped the tears out of his eyes and put a hand on her shoulder. “It's okay, Morgan. You're just doing your job. Sasha would have wanted you to.”
Damned right I would.
Daniel froze. Over at Abbey's bed, the rhythm of the heart monitor sped up slightly. The gentle whoosh of the ventilator seemed almost deafening.
“Did … you hear that?” Daniel asked.
“Yeah, yeah,” Morgan sniffed, wiping her eyes. “Sasha would have wanted it. Just doing my job. Doesn't make it feel any better, you know.”
“No, no, I know,” Daniel said, stepping away from her and turning in a slow circle. “I just thought I heard…”
Daniel? Hey, Daniel! Over here!
Daniel turned in the direction of Abbey's bed. The telepathic signal was faint, but it was also unmistakably familiar. “What in the hells…?”
C'mon, pretty boy, figure it out. Damn it, if anybody should be able to, it's you!
Inside Daniel's head, Danni gave a cry of alarm. Oh, holy hells. Daniel, it's her! It's Sasha!
Daniel rushed over to Abbey's side, then gently took her hand. Immediately the telepathic voice grew clearer.
Hey there, big guy, Sasha said, flashing him the telepathic equivalent of a grin.
Daniel grinned right back at her. “Brian! Fi! Becks! Get in here, fast!”
Telling the full tale didn't take quite as long as Daniel might have expected. Over the next hour he, Sasha, and the others compared notes on what had happened with Victor, Abbey, and Miriam. In the process he found himself unloading the whole story of how Victor had suckered him into taking part in the ill-fated smuggling operation that had cost Del and Trace their lives. It was strange; he had thought that he would never be able to tell anyone in the Collective about the terrible choices he had made, but the trials they had just endured together made it easier somehow. Certainly Brian and the others would never question his loyalty, now that he had risked his life to save Fiona.
His own conscience still ached, though. “I just wish I'd said something earlier,” he said, the frustration coming out in his voice. “We might have avoided some of this if I'd been honest with you guys.”
“We've all been keeping secrets,” Brian said sourly. “That's the problem with the whole Collective. Too many damned secrets.”
Well, that and the paranoia, Sasha said.
“And that,” Daniel agreed. He looked around at them, then down at Abbey's unconscious form. “Sasha, is Abbey still in there with you?”
She's here, but she's sleeping right now. Our gestalt got unraveled a bit when we lost consciousness. I think the only reason I'm awake is 'cause I have this astral-projection thing going on. She paused. Guys, I've got to be honest here. I don't know how long I'm going to be able to hold myself together after she wakes up. I lost part of myself when my body … well, when my brain died, anyway. I think Abbey got a good-sized piece of my soul, but I don't know if it's enough for me to keep going as a separate personality forever.
Rebecca trembled visibly. “So … we're still going to lose you?”
No, baby, I'm not leaving, Sasha said soothingly. I just … I can't live like this, as some kind of ghost riding shotgun in Abbey's body. I don't know how you and Danni do it, Daniel.
Daniel gave her a half-smile. “It isn't easy, believe me.”
I can tell. And I can't even shapeshift to get some time in a familiar body. She sent Rebecca a telepathic hug. When Abbey wakes up, I'm going to start integrating with her. We made a good gestalt, and I wouldn't mind staying that way. I think Abbey feels that way, too. I can give her something she hasn't had since she was a kid: a family and a place of belonging. She paused, a trace of uncertainty appearing in her thoughts. Assuming you still want me like this.
Fiona squeezed Abbey's hand, then sent a mental image around to all of them: herself as a young girl, orphaned through violence just as Abbey had been. Daniel hadn't seen the image before, and he was startled by the woman's sudden display of honesty. “How could we turn either of you away?” she asked.
“Fi's right,” 'Becca said. “We're a family, and nothing's gonna change that.”
Daniel smiled, thinking back to their graduation day five years ago. “Not nobody, not nohow,” he said.
Memories stirred in the link, as they each remembered that gestalt they had made the day that their lives changed forever. Inevitably, thoughts turned to their two lost companions, Del and Trace – and to the man responsible for all this misery.
“Victor's going down,” Brian said grimly. “Today. I'm not letting that bastard disappear into the woodwork, not again.”
“But how?” Rebecca asked. “He's stronger than any of us. He trained us. And now he's immune to telepathy!”
I've got an idea about that, Sasha said. Let me show you what we saw when we looked in his head…
Images flickered through the link at high speed. Once they realized what they were looking at, the plan fell into place quickly, though there were some reservations.
“I dislike being left behind,” Fiona said, though there was more regret than heat in the words.
“I know,” Brian said. “But you stand the best chance of stopping him if he decides to come back and finish off Abbey and Sasha. Daniel and I can handle this.”
How are you going to get him to go where you want him? Sasha asked.
“Leave that to me,” Daniel said. “If I know Victor, he's going to be looking for a way to get out of the Hive's crosshairs – and I know just who he'll trust to find it for him.”
Victor glowered up at the parking garage entrance, his instincts prickling uneasily. Something felt off. Granted, he was probably just off-balance because he had his telepathy shut down. After a lifetime of depending on his psi-senses, keeping the walls up felt like walking around with his eyes closed. He could do it when he had to, but it always made him twitchy – and all the more so, since Sasha King had shown him he could still be hurt through his psi-senses, even with the vamps' neural network in his head.
Stupid bitch. King had been a good support operative, but she'd never had what it took to be a front-line combatant. Now she'd gotten herself killed playing hero in a fatal outburst of Hive loyalty. She never should have interfered.
He flexed his arm and winced a little. It still throbbed where the bitch had shot him, even after the back-alley healer was done with it. Victor was sure the guy had screwed up something in there, but he couldn't afford to be picky. He was on a tight deadline — assuming that his contact showed.
Victor pulled out his new phone, freshly purchased from a first-level kiosk vendor, then dialed a number from memory. The familiar voice answered on the second ring.
“Hello again, Victor,” Evan said pleasantly. “Everything work out with your little … emergency job transfer?”
“We're about to find out,” Victor growled. “Evan, are you sure about this guy? I appreciate discretion as much as the next man, but I haven't seen so much as a security guard in the last half-a-klick. You could do a mass execution here and I don't think anyone would notice.”
“That is the general idea, Victor,” Evan said, his voice mild. “I'm not sure how they did it in the Collective but, as a rule? Smugglers prefer staying out of the public eye. With the office complex under renovation, that garage is about as out-of-the-way as you're going to get. Unless you'd prefer to work with the traffickers on Street-level, of course.”
Victor's lip curled in irritation, but he bit back a retort. Evan was the last ally he had left who had the contacts to get him out of this mess. It wouldn't do to waste that resource in a moment of frustrated anger.
Yes, you've done enough of that already, haven't you? He'd gone into the dark place while he was chasing Abbey. He hadn't meant to; he'd tried to be careful and reasonable, to plan the whole thing out, just like any other mission. And he'd done a damned good job of it, too. He'd had the whole hospital staff dancing like puppets, until Sasha King showed up and saw through his tactics. When he realized Abbey had slipped out of his trap, and that last squad of security guards launched their ridiculous charge against him … well. He had to admit it: his control slipped. It was so much easier to just go into the dark place for a while, to let that other side of himself take care of things.
Except that he'd come out of it to find his child dead and her traitorous mother bleeding out on the floor. The dark place was effective, but it wasn't exactly discriminating.
“You still there, Victor?” Evan asked. “I'm not sure, but I think I can hear you fuming.”
“You haven't answered my question,” Victor said. “How much do you trust this guy?”
“I trust him to get you to Algra more-or-less unharmed,” the runner said. “Isn't that enough?”
“More or less unharmed?”
“Well, you know how it is with freight dogs. The ships are old, held together with duct tape and good feelings, and they fly them like hell-bats – but they're some of the best pilots cash can buy. No worries, you'll make it to the rendezvous with your new employer.”
Victor grunted an acknowledgment of this. “All right. I meet him inside, right?”
“Yes indeed. The door will open for you two minutes before your meeting, and not a moment sooner. Is there anything else?”
Victor thought about it. He was still uneasy, but Evan was solid; he'd proven that well enough before. “No, we're good. Thanks, Evan.”
“Enjoy your new home, Victor. I hope you like the heat.” Evan rang off.
Victor tucked himself into an alcove near the garage's security door and waited for it to open. One good thing about meeting in such a remote location: there wasn't much chance that some Hive member would run across him while he waited for his flight.
Not that they'll ever stop looking. His gut twisted a little as he thought about that. Killing King had been a mistake, and he resented his darker half for indulging itself so foolishly. The Elders probably would have left him alone, if not for that. After all, Abbey's treachery had been blatant, his anger at her entirely understandable. But King would be seen as an innocent bystander, and the Elders would bring the full wrath of the Hive down on him if they ever caught him. She may have been a meddlesome, do-gooding bitch, but she was a well-trained bitch, and the Elders hated losing useful resources as much as Victor hated wasting them.
That made him think of Abbey again. He ground his teeth together, cursing the bad fortune that had ruined his perfect happy ending. All those years of effort — the carefully-staged death of her mundane parents, the equally orchestrated “rescue”, the countless hours working with her in the samnak — all of it gone. He'd been so close to getting what he wanted, a child to call his own. Now he'd have to start all over again – and since Algra was a major stronghold for the vampire syndicate, it wasn't likely he'd be seeing many female telepaths for a while.
That consideration alone almost made him want to stay in Metamor City, to wait out the Hive's manhunt and then start looking for new prospects – but no. This wasn't going to blow over. Best to get out of town now and worry about his posterity at a later date. Algra wasn't his first choice for a new homeland, but there was no place in the world he'd be safer, and the job offer couldn't have come at a better time. Victor silently thanked Evan for thinking of him when his soon-to-be employer called looking for a new security consultant.
The security door buzzed, and Victor pulled it open and slipped inside. It locked behind him a moment later, which was a little bit more paranoid than the norm – but as Evan had pointed out, smugglers had good reason to be a little skittish.
A skimmer horn beeped once, echoing in the concrete maze of the parking garage. The echoes made it hard to pinpoint where it was coming from, but Victor knew where he was supposed to go: up two levels, straight ahead up the ramp, then around the corner to the manager's office. As he came up the stairs to the second level he could see that some of the lights were out on this floor of the garage, leaving an irregular patchwork of blue-white illumination and pools of deep shadow.
He had just gone around the corner when he was struck by a sudden wave of dizziness. An instant later his guns and knives tore themselves free from their sheaths. The weapons flew twenty meters through the air and thudded loudly against the body of a parked skimmer—
A skimmer with Brian Sommers strapped into the driver's seat.
A trap! Victor snarled and reached out with his telekinesis, trying to snatch back his weapons. They didn't budge — he dimly remembered that magnetism got stronger the closer the object was, while his own TK worked at the same strength regardless of range. He tried to snatch at Sommers with his power, but the man was bonded to the skimmer and wouldn't budge. Victor looked around for anything else to use as a weapon, but there were only a few other skimmers, nothing small enough for him to lift it.
Victor gritted his teeth. Fine. He'd get in close and kill the pudgy son of a bitch with his bare hands. He charged in, watching closely in case Sommers pulled a gun and he needed to dive for cover.
Victor still wasn't used to fighting without his telepathy, so he had only a split-second's warning before a tall, dark shape came out of the shadows and tried to blindside him. He dropped and spun to avoid the high kick the figure aimed at him, catching himself on his hands and quickly turning to block the next attack. They exchanged a flurry of blows and counter-blows, lightning-quick. By the time they parted, Victor didn't need to see the man's face to know who he was fighting.
"What the fuck, Daniel?!" Victor snapped, incredulous. "I get you a ticket out of the Hive, and this is what I get for it?"
Daniel darted in, feinted, then jumped back when Victor didn't take the bait. "Right. 'Cause the glamorous life of the lone teep worked so well when you did it."
Victor almost choked on a laugh. "Are you fucking serious?" He waved a hand briefly toward Brian. "This prick stole your girl, remember? Gods, I can't believe you didn't get out when you had the chance!"
Daniel shrugged once. "Got a better offer."
Victor spotted what looked like an opening and struck, but Daniel anticipated the move and blocked it. Another quick exchange of blows passed before Victor got clear again. "They'll … make you choke on that offer before they're through," he said, already breathing hard from the exertion. "Tried to warn you. You're gonna be just another lap dog."
Daniel's eyes went cold. "Better that than a rabid mutt who needs to be put down."
Victor snorted. "And you think you're the man to do it?"
"This is your last chance, Vic. Surrender now and we'll let the police have you."
Victor reached out with his teek to show Daniel what he thought of that idea, but the younger man saw it coming and disrupted the attack with a head-on assault. As Victor blocked and parried Daniel's blows, he couldn't help admiring how much his pupil had improved. Daniel had a ferocity now that he'd lacked before, and it kept Victor off-balance enough that he couldn't concentrate on using his powers. He didn't know what Daniel had been up to these last few months, but he'd obviously learned how to take a fight seriously.
It was a real shame Victor was going to have to kill him.
They whirled and spun across the garage floor in a deadly dance, Daniel's youth and speed matched against Victor's strength and cunning. The kid hit more often, but Victor hit harder, and one hit was all you needed if you could hit the right spot. Eventually Victor got the opening he was looking for and scored a hit to the side of Daniel's knee. The young man grunted in pain, and Victor rode him to the floor, smashing Daniel's head against the concrete.
He was about to deliver the killing blow when he felt a hand grip the base of his neck. Sommers! He'd almost forgotten about the little sparky during his fight with Daniel. Victor felt a sting of electricity against his skin, and then stars exploded in front of his eyes. He snapped a fist back into Sommers' face and the man slid off him, landing on the floor. Victor spun on him and called up his teek, intent on crushing the man's windpipe, but all that happened was a blinding surge of pain and a gut-wrenching vertigo. Victor bent double and almost wretched at the sensation.
"What … what the fuck did you do to me?" he rasped.
Sommers wiped the blood from his nose and winked, his eyes alight with triumph. "That's a nice piece of hardware you've got in your head, Vic. Real state-of-the-art stuff. No ferromagnetics in there, so I couldn't just rip it out of your head, but it's still circuitry — and it's tied in there nice and tight with your brain cells."
Victor stared. How did Sommers know about the circuitry? He hadn't told anyone, and the vamps wouldn't have said anything…
"See, my wife Sasha — whom you just murdered — passed on the word to us about what you’d done to yourself. With all that wiring in your head, you’re half computer now, so I just … logged in.” He raised a finger, baring his teeth at Victor. "And that means I own you, bitch."
Sudden rage boiled up in Victor's mind, burning past the stunned and disoriented synapses as he slipped toward the dark place. He grabbed Sommers and slammed him bodily against the nearby skimmer, as his vision literally went red with fury.
“I’ll kill you! I’ll rip off your fucking head! I’ll—"
Sommers gestured. Victor's body froze, unable to move a muscle. He tried to choke the little man in front of him, tried to scream, tried to run — but his body would do none of it.
He felt the cool metal barrel against his temple for only an instant. He never heard the shot.
Brian flinched as the gun went off a meter in front of his face. Victor's body fell limp, the contents of his skull sprayed liberally across the garage floor to Brian's left. The neural circuitry made for a liberal accenting of silver among the usual shades of red, gray, and pink.
Daniel lowered the pistol slowly, his arm remaining stiffly at his side. He gazed for a long moment at the body, his face expressionless. Then he glanced over at Brian. His bright blue eyes looked like they were made of glass.
"I'm all right," Brian assured him, getting slowly to his feet. "You?"
Daniel nodded once. He'd taken a nasty blow to the head when Victor brought him down, but apparently his healing power had taken care of it. He wiped down the gun with careful, deliberate motions before pressing it into Victor's hand. Then he walked over to the corpse's head and lifted it under the arms. Brian took the legs by unspoken agreement, and together they carried it over to the nearest entrance to the garage. Brian opened the electronic door with a gesture, revealing the narrow skyway beyond.
The location of the trap had been chosen carefully — not just for the garage itself, but for what lay beneath it. Two levels below lay one of the most dangerous sectors of the Street, a place where the things that lived under the city were known to hunt. Daniel and Brian removed all of Victor's identification, put his knives back in their holsters, then dumped the body and the pistol over the edge of the skyway. Brian watched as the body vanished into a tiny dot, then disappeared into a snow drift. There would be nothing recognizable left by morning, and even if he were found, the evidence would point to suicide.
Brian went back inside and used their nondetection scroll to erase the evidence from the scene. The spell was Artax's work, and while Brian didn't care much for the man, he did know how to make such things accessible for the layperson. The scroll disintegrated in a cloud of glowing sparks, and Victor's blood vanished from their clothes along with it.
"That'll do it," he said, brushing off his palms. "We should go before we contaminate the scene."
He turned around and saw Danni standing back at the entrance, looking out over the skyway. She looked over her shoulder at him as he approached. Her eyes glistened with tears and, though she was a few centimeters taller than Brian, she looked very vulnerable and small. His arms folded around her in a gentle embrace. She rested her head on his shoulder and let the tears run silently down her cheeks.
They had been back in the skimmer for nearly ten minutes before Danni spoke.
"It doesn't really fix anything, does it?" she asked. Her voice was subdued and thoughtful.
Brian shook his head. "No. It doesn't." He thought of Sasha and blinked back the tears that welled up in his own eyes. “But it stops it from happening again. Sometimes that's the best you can do.”
Danni nodded, keeping her eyes fixed on the world outside her window. "I guess so."
Brian reached over and took her hand. He wouldn't ask her if she and Daniel were all right. You were never "all right" after your first kill.
Still, Danni seemed to sense the unspoken question. "Daniel needs to be alone for a while," she said. "He doesn't regret … what we did … but he needs some time."
"I understand," Brian said, and he did.
Silence fell between them for a few minutes. When Danni spoke again, her voice was hesitant. "I feel like … what happened to Sasha was my fault," she said. "I keep thinking, if I had just told you guys who Abbey was, you wouldn't have fallen for Miriam's trap … and Sasha wouldn't have been left to face Victor alone." She lowered her eyes. "If you want me to leave, I'll understand."
Brian rolled that around in his mind for a while, weighing his words carefully. "No," he said at last. “This whole thing started because we thought we had to isolate ourselves from those who weren’t perfect enough to measure up. ‘He’s too broken; he’s defective; he’s useless.’” He shook his head. “Maybe if we did a better job of embracing our own people, we wouldn’t breed the kind of resentment and hatred that turned Victor into what he was.”
“That was the Hive’s policy, not yours.”
Brian scoffed. "It's the same thing. We are the Hive, all of us together. We made those decisions together — either because we thought they were right, or because we were cowed into going along with it. A group can agree unanimously and still be wrong." He pushed his glasses further up on his nose, setting his jaw. "If we want things to change, we have to start a new way of thinking about how we treat the have-nots in the Collective. And it's going to start with us, with the Sommers cell. Maybe the others will agree with us and maybe they won’t, but I’m tired of just going along with the majority opinion to keep from rocking the boat.”
Danni turned and looked at him, amazed respect in her eyes. "Do you think the Elders will let you get away with that?"
Brian shrugged dismissively. "I honestly don't care what they think anymore. They're supposed to be servants, not leaders. It's time they remembered that." He smiled, then, taking Danni's hand again. It wasn't much of a smile, really — they had both seen too much pain and death for their hearts to be very light — but he gave it his best effort anyway. "You are welcome in our family," he said. "As Danni, or Daniel, or whoever."
She returned his weak little smile with one of her own, but he saw something soften around her eyes. "Thank you," she said. "And it probably will be as Danni, most of the time — at least for a while." She turned and looked back out the window at the city below. "Daniel has done some things that we'd like to leave behind."
Brian nodded knowingly, as he turned the skimmer onto the freeway and headed for home. "Haven't we all."
