Authors: Shannon McKenna
He couldn’t reply. Couldn’t move. Terror and rage built. He braced himself, inwardly, shoving back against the brute pressure, the roaring in his ears. Gaining just enough purchase to breathe, but not enough to move or speak. Footsteps crunched on the gravel outside. Those fucking bastards weren’t even trying to be quiet. They didn’t have to try.
The goons filed into the house, one, two, three . . . four. Three men, a woman bringing up the rear. Relaxed, sauntering, sure of their success. The closer they got, the stronger the gripping sensation became. His ribs closed in around his lungs. His guts, com-pressed like a trash compactor. Pain tightened into a terrifying agony.
One of the figures walked straight into a beam of moonlight that came through the picture window. It lit up the smile on his face. He lifted his hand, like a magician performing a spell, and as he did, Aaro’s gun hand lifted clear of the doorway and stretched out, where the guy could see it. Aaro’s body followed, lurching forward, crawling helplessly. His hand was numb. He could no longer feel it, let alone control it. The gun slid from his nerveless fingers.
“Get him in a chair,” the man said. The two men moved to obey, gripping him under the armpits, dragging him into the kitchen.
Bam. Bam
. The guy who had given the order let out a cry, and stumbled, clutching his arm.
Nina.
The pressure suddenly let up.
Aaro could finally turn his head. Nina leaned out from the doorway, sighting with the Micro Glock—
She shrieked, arched back. The gun fell from her fingers.
The guy walked over to her, pressing his wounded arm, staring down as she writhed and gasped. So the guy could only inflict his trick on one of them at a time.
They flicked on the light, and he was blinded for the time it took them to bind him to one of the spindly chairs, cuffing his hands to the seat, his ankles to the chair legs. They relieved him of the .357 snubbie at his ankle, the Kershaw and Gerber knives in his pockets. He craned his neck desperately for a glimpse of her, straining his ears to hear her voice.
Nina.
Slowly, his eyes adjusted. The boss man backed into his range of vision, his hands hooked in Nina’s armpits. The woman, a hot blonde in skin-tight ninja black, carried Nina’s feet. They heaved her onto a chair and fastened her to it. The boss guy grimaced at the bloody patch on the sleeve of his upper arm, poking at it gingerly. She’d winged the bastard. Pretty good, for a rookie.
Too bad she hadn’t gotten him through the heart. When the blonde was done with the cuffs, she backhanded Nina’s face, hard. The chair rocked up, teetering precariously up onto two legs before it thudded back down.
“That’s for shooting him, bitch,” she said. “Just for starters.”
Nina raised her head. There was a red, angry splotch on her face. The blonde looked less hot with that sadistic grimace on her face.
The bald guy who had attacked them in New York was there, a bandage around his head. Dmitri was there, too. His hot eyes were fixed on his cousin, tongue flicking out to lick his lips.
And that other guy. The one with the psychic taser in his head.
Tall, late forties, unremarkable brown hair in a conservative haircut, high-quality casual sportswear. The bland, pleasant good looks of a Sears underwear model. His smile was terrifying, because it was so normal. Straight white teeth, grin lines, eye wrinkles, even a lopsided dimple. It came across as grotesque, aimed at him now, cuffed in a chair, watching somebody hit his girlfriend in the face.
Aaro dragged his gaze away. He was not ready to deal with Mr.
Apparently Normal yet, though he was their real problem by far, more than all the others combined. Aaro addressed his cousin.
“Hey, Dmitri.”
“Sasha,” his cousin said. “How long has it been? Twenty years?”
“Not long enough,” Aaro said. “You’re a long way from the city out here, aren’t you? I thought you didn’t like nature. Remember how I used to put spiders in your shoes? Snakes in your bed? You were such a pussy about that. I’m surprised to find you in a place like this.”
Dmitri’s lips curled. “Yeah, I remember. Nature’s not my thing. I have you to thank for that, probably. But hate is a strong motivator.”
Mr. Normal clapped his hands. “Cousinly love. Warms the heart. Now shut up. Your tender family reminiscences aren’t on my schedule.”
Aaro stared up into his face. “Who are you, asshole?”
Oh,
fuck
. . . pain slammed into him. Him and his smart mouth.
He barely heard the guy above the roar in his ears, the rasp of his lungs. He concentrated—and pushed it far enough back not to pass out.
“I suggest you be more polite when you speak to me,” Mr.
Normal said. “I’m not used to this much resistance. You must have been enhanced. Are you? Did that lying hag Kasyanov soup you up, too?”
“What . . . are you . . . doing?” he gasped out.
“Look at him. Most people can’t even talk when I blast them with this voltage,” the guy mused. “Only Roy. God knows, he’s had practice.”
“But what the fuck
is
it?” The words burst out of him.
Mr. Normal’s eyes twinkled jovially. “You are experiencing the effects of my very strong talent for compulsion, Mr. Arbatov. It’s my particular specialty. Extremely useful. Perfect for my personality.”
Compulsion?
“To do what?” he coughed out.
“Nothing, at the moment,” the man said. “I’m not focusing right now. I’m just blasting it at you wholesale. But when I do focus, I can push an unsuspecting mind into making any decision I want. Like when your hand decided to reach out beyond the door frame and drop the gun.” He clicked his tongue. “Bad decision, but you can hardly be blamed.” He preened. “Don’t beat yourself up about it.”
Aaro strained for traction. It seemed effortless, for the guy. He stood there, perfectly calm, his face normal, no twitch, no strain, while projecting a battering force that felt like a hurricane wind.
His phone, left next to the remains of their meal, began to buzz.
Mr. Normal scooped it up. “Bruno,” he said. “Your friend, who signed your death warrant. We got your destination from him and your lovely friend Lily tonight. And Miles, whoever he is. These people just talk and talk and never stop.” He shook his head. “It was almost too easy.”
Aaro struggled to bring up the salient details. “You’re . . .
Rudd?”
The guy looked gratified. “You know about me? Yes, my name is Rudd. Helga told you, I expect. She’s been a naughty girl.”
Aaro propelled the words out. “Until you killed her.”
“No, she did that all by herself.” Rudd moved closer, and the energy clawing at Aaro’s mind grew stronger. He leaned close to Aaro’s sweat-slicked face. “She got what she deserved, for trying to trick me. She was caught in her own trap, that’s all. Devious old cunt.”
The sick nauseous dark was rising up to swamp him. He struggled to keep afloat. Not that he could help Nina in his current state, but Christ, he didn’t want to conk out and leave her all alone.
Too bad. It was getting dark, he was sinking lower, drifting farther . . . and farther, into the dark. . . .
“Uh, boss?”
The voice came from miles away. He could not tell whose voice it was.
“Don’t interrupt me!”
“You’ll blow his mind, boss. Let me just read him first, please!”
The pressure let up. Aaro’s head dangled as his vision cleared, dragging in lungfuls of oxygen. “What are you?” he rasped.
Rudd chuckled. “Interesting question,” he mused. “And coin-cidentally, it’s my favorite. But are you asking what I was? What I am, which is constantly evolving? Or what I aspire to become?”
Aaro coughed. “You can stop jerking off any time.”
Pain ripped through him. He jerked, strained. The chair rocked.
“Be respectful,” Rudd warned. “Be very respectful. At all times.”
“Don’t hurt him, please,” Nina begged. “Please, he never—”
“Shut up, bitch!” Spittle flew from the guy’s lips as he whirled on her. “No one asked you to talk yet! I’ll deal with you later!”
Nina shrieked, cringing as the guy had at her with his mental flail. Aaro struggled against his bonds. “Stop! Please, don’t hurt her!”
“No?” Rudd turned back to him, his lips wet. His eyes flicked from Nina to Aaro. “You’ll be good?”
Aaro swallowed that down. “I’ll be good,” he said hoarsely.
“That’s better.” Rudd sounded satisfied. “As I was saying.
What I was, that was the question? I’ll tell you who and what I was when I met Helga Kasyanov.” He waited, bright eyed, for Aaro to respond.
Great. Kissing the ass of a madman who was in love with himself. Just the thing to brighten his mood. “How?” he growled sourly.
“I sold life insurance to her!” Rudd waited for Aaro’s exclamation. He giggled to fill the gap when there was none. “Isn’t it perfect? One of life’s little ironies. Of course, her daughter had already collected the money, three years ago, when we faked her death. But even so.”
Aaro was genuinely baffled. “Life insurance?”
“Yes, it was eleven or twelve years ago.” Rudd had a hint of nostalgia in his voice. “I was back in the TriCities, then. She made an appointment with me. Wanted her daughter’s education covered, in case anything happened to her. Lara was fourteen at the time—”
“Where is Lara?” Nina burst in. “What did you do to Lara?”
The man shot her an annoyed glance. Nina twitched and yelped in the chair as if she’d been lashed with a whip. “You be quiet,” he snapped. “I wasn’t talking to you. Anyway, I sold Helga a policy, quite expensive, but very good, and the next day, she came back to see me again.” His eyes drifted up, dreamily, as he remembered. “She told me I had a strong talent of persuasion.
That she was involved in a think tank that was exploring all the possibilities of enhancing these innate talents. She invited me to take part. Said my abilities were wasted selling insurance. She was right. I was reborn on that day.”
“Kasyanov gave you this drug?” he asked. “This psi-max shit?”
“Not at first,” Rudd explained. “It took her years to develop the formula. I was there for all of it. Anabel joined us about seven years ago, and Roy right after her. Helga had no idea what she had wrought.” He giggled. “It was all so very secret. It made it easy, in the end, to take the operation over and run it myself.”
“And your power to persuade turned into the power to compel, with this drug?”
“More or less,” he said. “Everone who is enhanced has their own special twist. Anabel, for example, does invasive telepathy.
If memories are stimulated with the appropriate questions, she can pull them out of your head like beads on a string. Roy, here, he’s my faithful hound. He can follow your mental frequency from over two miles away sometimes, on a good day. Both very handy abilities to have on my staff.”
“Ah,” he said. “So what are you now?”
“Ah . . .” Rudd considered the question. “Well, compulsion can be applied in so many ways. Business, for starters. I have made a great deal of money. But I’m bored with that. Always the same. Big yawn.”
He paused, waited, eyes twinkling. Aaro gritted his teeth, and did what was expected of him. “So? What’s next for you?”
“That depends on many things. One of which is you two,” was his response. “We were on a cusp of a new era, before Helga betrayed us. She was developing the formula that would end our dependence on psi-max forever. But she double-crossed me, and you two are going to fix that.” His smile widened. “At least, I hope so, for your sakes.”
“What is it that you’ll become?” Aaro hastened to drag the guy’s thoughts from anger and betrayal and back to his own glorious self.
“I was making the shift into politics, you see,” Rudd explained. “I need a larger scope. A bigger canvas, for my abilities, my gifts. But I need that new formula first. I want the enhancement to be permanent. No ebb and flow, no needing a fresh dose, no constant strain from the side effects.” He looked at Nina.
“Helga injected one of the A doses into you, my dear. And you have another dose with you, is that correct?”
Nina hesitated, her eyes darting to Aaro. Anabel hauled off and whacked her again. The sound of contact made Aaro gasp and cringe as if the pain were his own. “Yes, she does,” he blurted. “One dose.”
Rudd walked over to Nina, and tilted up her chin, squeezing it hard enough to make her squeak. “And how do you feel?”
Nina coughed. “I’ve been better.”
Rudd slapped her again, rocking her head back. “Don’t be snotty.”
“She won’t be,” Aaro said hastily. “Tell them, Nina.
Now.
”
Nina held her head up, blinking, but her face was composed.
“Yesterday I had some nasty hallucinations,” she said. “Also some waves of what I assume was telepathy that I could not control. Today, not so much. I can hear thoughts, but I can block them out at will. Helga told me I had three days, four at the most, without the B dose.”
“Or what?” Anabel demanded.
Nina looked up at her, quiet for a moment. “Or I die.”
Silence. The four attackers all exchanged grim glances.
“Without the B dose,” Rudd repeated. “Well, there it is, then.
This is the part where the two of you tell us where that B dose is.”
Rudd crossed his arms. The silence grew once again, and took on actual weight as it charged with danger. Impending pain and terror.
Aaro’s guts sank. “We don’t know where it is,” he said.
Rudd glanced at Roy, and made a gesture. Roy punched Aaro in the jaw. The blow snapped his head back, cut his lip against his teeth.
Aaro licked blood off his lip. “It’s still true,” he said flatly.
“Is it?” Rudd was breathing hard. “Is it? See if it’s true, Anabel!”
The blonde approached him now. He winced as the mental hand began poking. It hurt, almost as much as Rudd’s mental beating, but in a more intimate way. He resisted, kept those vault doors locked. Like he used to do with Oleg. She battered on them, but the doors held.
“He’s blocking me.” Anabel’s voice was sharp. “The son of a bitch is blocking me!”