Chains of Fire (2 page)

The girl had the mark of an eye on the palm of her hand and became a seer. She turned to the devil, gathering six other gifted ones to her. They became the Others, bringing darkness and death to the world.

The Chosen Ones and the Others have fought for centuries for the hearts and souls of the Abandoned Ones.

That battle goes on today . . . in New York City and around the world.

He was contemplating the lineup of shoes from the poor schmucks who didn’t get theirs returned to them when the guards very politely requested his pen, his belt, his tie clip, and his watch. They placed them in a safety-deposit box, had him lock them inside, and gave him the key.

Then they frisked him.

The Swiss took their security very, very seriously.

Don’t make a joke. Don’t mess up now.

He heard the woman so clearly, he turned to see where she stood.

But she wasn’t here. She was in New York, in a hospital, sitting at Irving Shea’s bedside, smelling of cigarettes and passing on Irving’s instructions in that freaking spooky telepathic way of hers. Dina was in her sixties, short, bitter . . . and a mind-speaker, one of the most talented ever born.

She was also one of the Others. She held an old and towering grudge against Irving, and why any of them were trusting her, Samuel didn’t know. Why
he
was trusting her, he didn’t know. If he got caught trying to pull this off,
he’d
be the one rotting in a Swiss jail for the rest of his life.

Life’s full of tough choices, isn’t it?
that rough female voice asked.

“Damn it!” he said.

The guards looked up inquiringly.

“Stubbed my toe,” he explained.

Inside his head, Dina laughed.

He didn’t react to her amusement, but only because he knew cameras followed his every move, and somewhere a computer was analyzing his features, looking for his resemblance to any known criminal.

Not that the Swiss banks didn’t allow known criminals to hold accounts in their hallowed vaults, but they liked to make sure those criminals didn’t have designs on other criminals’ money.

He knew how this operation was supposed to work. They—the Chosen Ones, aided and abetted by Martha, their Gypsy Travel Agency adviser—had set up Samuel’s schedule. He was to go into the bank, talk to the bank president (the bank president and no one else, Martha warned), and convince him to open the Gypsy Travel Agency accounts, frozen since the explosion of the headquarters almost three years before. Because with Irving in the hospital and deemed incompetent by his doctors, the Chosen Ones’ funds had dried up and they were in danger of losing their shirts, not to mention Irving’s mansion and their ability to perform the task for which they had been recruited—rescuing abandoned children from the Others.

Samuel couldn’t carry a wire or have any mechanical way to remain in touch with the Chosen Ones, so he had memorized script after script of what to say, what to do, whom he might meet, plus the Chosen would occasionally give him a surprise setup and have him wing it. He was a natural. As a child, he’d learned to be fast on his feet—it was a matter of survival—and law school had honed his talents.

Mostly, he had been picked for this mission because he was a mind controller.

He found it a useful talent for a lawyer.

He had also used it to destroy his own happiness. Because yes, everyone knew he was blunt to the point of rudeness, abrasive, impatient with fools, and he was fine with all that.

But he was also a monumentally stupid ass.

That hadn’t turned out so well for him.

When all of the Chosen Ones had been satisfied he was as prepared as he could be and he was on the way to the airport to catch his flight to Switzerland, he went to the hospital to say good-bye to Irving . . . and Dina was there.

The old man struggled to communicate in words, but he made himself clear in other ways—through Dina’s interpretation, through the few instructions he could manage aloud, and with gestures that indicated approval or rejection. Irving intended that she help Samuel with little reminders.

Samuel thought it was a bad idea.

Dina thought it was a bad idea.

But for some reason, Irving was intent on getting his way. He was ninety-four. He had fallen down the stairs, broken his hip and his shoulder, started rehab, had a small stroke, spent months in the hospital . . . and he was insistent on this point.

Samuel gave in.

Because it isn’t like you have a choice. If I want to talk in your head, I will. I know the way.

Knock it off.
Samuel accepted his shoes back from the guard, put them on, and walked directly into the elevator.
You’re a mind speaker, not a mind reader.

She was quiet for so long, he began to relax, thinking she hadn’t heard him.

Then she said,
You’re a strong receptor
.

It’s not like I have a choice here,
he snapped back
.

You’re a strong sender, too, probably part of your gift. And I don’t know why, but . . . if I listen, I can hear your thoughts. Sometimes. Lately my abilities seem to have expanded.

Samuel knew what was going on, and that comprehension made him want to thump his head against the stainless-steel walls of the elevator. He would have, too, except he knew the guards who observed him on the cameras would flag that behavior and escort him back down to the lobby and out the door.

Dina was not only one of the Others, the enemy of the Chosen Ones. She also shared a past with Irving. A pretty intense past, if the way those two acted proved anything. So she might be wicked. She might be cruel. She might have been stalking every single Chosen for the past two and a half years, delivering cryptic warnings into their minds and scaring the crap out of them. But because of the prophecy that affected the Chosen Ones—when a Chosen sacrificed his or her greatest fear for true love, that love expanded his or her gifts in ways no one could have foreseen—her talents had expanded.

Not that she was Chosen. Quite the opposite. But the Chosen Ones and the Others were flip sides of the same coin. All had been abandoned as infants. All had been given gifts. Some used them for good. Some for evil.

If Samuel needed proof that Dina loved Irving, this assistance was it.

But still it didn’t mean she wasn’t going to betray Samuel. Women had a history of betraying him.

Or rather . . . one woman.

Never mind her,
Dina said in his mind.
You can worry about her later.

If I live through this.

There is that.

He grinned.

If Dina wasn’t a lying, cheating, treacherous minion of the devil, he would almost like her.

She reminded him of himself: rude, conflicted . . . and tainted. Tainted by birth, tainted by living, tainted by dark blemishes on their souls.

No matter what they did, no matter what reparations they made, how honorably they behaved . . . they could never escape themselves.