Authors: Dean Murray
It wasn't quite
enough to knock Carson out, but it was apparently more than enough to
break his concentration because Samuel suddenly looked disoriented as
though having just realized that the anger he was feeling wasn't his.
"Don't do
that again or I'll pick one of the wolves at random and kill them."
The mentalist
turned and looked back at James and the two wolves who had come
through the roof access with him.
"Speaking
of which, let's make sure that we don't have any more breakout
attempts."
Another
invisible bar of force lashed from the vampire and Alison collapsed,
also unconscious. I'd stopped fighting the vise of pressure that was
squeezing against my mind, but my beast hadn't and using his
secondary power apparently took more out of the mentalist than was
immediately evident, because my beast managed to break a corner of
our mind free.
I stumbled
drunkenly towards the mentalist, desperate to get my claws on him
before he could reassert control over me. I threw the strength of my
conscious mind into the fight as well, but it simply wasn't enough.
No matter how strong I tried to make the wall around the outside of
my mind, the mentalist was still two steps ahead of me.
He'd
overextended himself by knocking Alison unconscious, but that had
been only a momentary thing and now that she was unconscious he had
the bandwidth he needed to reassert control over me. I made it to
within half a step of the mentalist before my body once again ground
to a halt.
"Interesting.
I would have said you were an unlikely candidate to lead this group.
Even from what little I've pulled from your mind I already know that
you're younger than these others. Weaker, lacking in any kind of
unique ability that would make up for your apparent inferiority, but
maybe I haven't given adequate credit to the strength of your…beast."
My hands were
frozen only inches away from the vampire's throat, but he
unconcernedly stepped between them so that he could get a better look
at me.
"How many
of you are there in the world?"
The pressure
inside of my mind relaxed the slightest bit and I realized that I
could now move my mouth.
"I'm
surprised that you didn't find that out from Addison. You obviously
already rolled her mind."
"But of
course. It's fortunate I was here checking up on my master's newest
holdings or we might have missed out on the chance to make this
incredible discovery. I dare say that if Samuel and I hadn't been
here—and you'd been able to take our people by surprise—you
probably would have succeeded in your attempt to free her.
Unfortunately she has a rather self-centered and narrow world view. I
was unable to get as much of use out of her as I would have liked."
"I guess
you'll just have to see how much you'll be able to pull out of my
mind. I'm not going to tell a worthless parasite like you anything."
I'd been hoping
to anger him enough that he would forget himself and step into range
of my fangs. I was literally quivering with anticipation as I tried
to override the block he'd put on my limbs. I managed to make them
shake slightly, but actual control of them remained just out of
reach. It was like I was pushing against an impossibly strong
membrane. It distorted and stretched, but refused to break despite
everything I could manage to throw at it.
The vampire
smiled at me. "You know, I truly am going to enjoy breaking you.
I could threaten the wolves under your command and that would
probably get you talking, but somehow I just don't think that would
be as enjoyable."
He stepped to
the side and drove his fist into my ribs with such force that I felt
one of my ribs break. It was a titanic, impossible blow to have come
from someone so small. Another hybrid could have delivered that kind
of force, but it should have been physically impossible for someone
with so little muscle mass to hit me hard enough to break my ribs in
this form.
I wanted to
scream in rage. I probably would have if the pain hadn't caught me
off guard, but there was more than just pain and shattering bones
going on. Something else inside of me, something located further
down, tore at the same time that my rib broke.
It was like
nothing else I'd ever experienced. The closest thing I could think of
was the first time that I'd done a partial shift. All of the rage and
need crested into something that had to go somewhere, but for the
first time in my life there wasn't anywhere for it to go. I was
immobilized and helpless, but my beast had never been meant to be
powerless—
I
had never been meant to be powerless.
The energy
inside of me displaced something else, something that had always been
there in my center even though I'd never consciously realized it.
That something moved aside for the first time in my life and exposed
a hole that greedily pulled at everything around it.
The ephemeral
manacles fastened around my mind shattered between one instant and
the next.
There wasn't
any fight, there wasn't any gradual process of gaining the upper hand
against the vampire that had me trapped. Their destruction was
immediate and total, but I almost couldn't pick that event out from
everything else going on around me.
I felt as
though I'd gained a new sense—a new way of perceiving the world
that was overwhelming my mind's ability to sort everything out. My
limbs were free now and it seemed the most natural thing in the world
to continue the action I'd started before I'd last lost the ability
to move.
The shock on
the mentalist's face as my claws tore into his chest was one of the
most satisfying things I could have experienced. My knees were
buckling, but I couldn't take chances that my attack wouldn't
actually kill the mentalist. Even if Samuel was about to incinerate
me I still needed to make sure that his master died—it was the
only way to give Carson, and the others a chance of surviving.
I brought my
left hand back around and connected with the parasite's body again
and what hit the floor a second later, an instant before I hit the
ground myself, wasn't going to hurt anyone else ever again.
I felt heat and
pressure building around me, but it seemed the easiest thing in the
world to reach out to that energy and send it somewhere else,
somewhere it couldn't hurt me. Only that somewhere else was inside of
me in some way that I didn't understand.
The energy that
had been meant to consume me from the outside in, Samuel's energy,
instead seemed to be burning me from the inside out. My nerves should
have been less sensitive in this form, but it was like the pain had
bypassed my nerve endings altogether and was pouring liquid hurt
directly into my brain.
My limbs were
weak and heavy, but I forced myself over, forced myself to roll onto
my back. I wanted to give up, but I knew I was a sitting duck—I
needed to at least make Samuel look me in the eye if he was going to
kill me.
Only he wasn't
poised above me with a weapon, he was just as helpless as I was. He
was lying on the floor, struggling to prop himself up, glaring at me
with hate-filled eyes as he tried to use his ability to end me.
The pain hadn't
gone away, but I knew how to make it stop, knew how to make sure that
my friends would have a chance to at least escape. Samuel was just
close enough that my claws could reach him if I stretched.
A second later
Samuel was dead and I passed out, unable to maintain consciousness
against the weight of everything that was pressing in against me.
My last thought
was to worry about what would happen when the rest of the gang
returned with the cages. Carson, Jack and James were the only ones
still conscious.
Adriana Paige
Marauder's Gas Station
Central Wyoming
I wanted to
just sit there and stare at my phone after Alec and I hung up, but I
knew I needed to roll out of bed and go see what I could do to help
Isaac and the others. Taggart was waiting for me when I opened my
door.
"I was
starting to worry about you, Adri. You don't usually sleep this late,
even after a particularly taxing night dream walking."
I was doing
better when it came to remembering my dreams once I woke up, but
apparently I still had a ways to go. It all came back to me in a rush
and I reached out to Taggart as though to confirm that he was really
there, that he'd made it out of Kaleb's dream okay. It wasn't until I
made such a sudden movement that I felt the low-level pain in my
chest where Kaleb's metal shard had stabbed me.
It was a bad
sign that it hurt so bad. Usually the pain didn't peak until
mid-morning, only based on all of the people currently running around
the halls we were way past mid-morning, which probably meant I'd
slept through the worst of it.
"What time
is it, Taggart? How long have I been asleep?"
"You've
been asleep for a long time. It's after six. Dominic has been
covering your shift."
Poor Dominic.
She was probably going out of her mind with worry. I made a mental
note to make sure I apologized to her as soon as possible, but I
needed to get up to speed with everything else that was going on
first.
"I just
talked to Alec Graves. He sounded like he was headed into something
dangerous, but he didn't get into specifics. It looks like he must
have called Isaac first?"
There was an
awkward pause as Taggart suppressed his natural urge to assume the
worst about Alec.
"Yes, he
called Isaac to tell him that one of Alec's people was captured by a
group of vampires. Alec and his allies are about to try and rescue
the individual and kill the vampires, but there is a chance that they
are all walking into a giant trap."
"That
sounds serious."
"It is,
maybe more so even than you realize. Through something that very
nearly approaches the level of a miracle, we've managed so far to
keep our existence a secret from the vampires. If Alec's worst fears
have already come to pass, it is quite possible that the vampires
have pillaged the mind of his captured wolf and already know about
us."
"So we
could soon end up with vampires actively hunting us."
"I'm
afraid so."
I nodded and
headed back into my room to grab my suitcase and gun, but Taggart
stopped me before I made it two full steps away from him.
"Where are
you going, Adri?"
"To get my
stuff. We're leaving pretty soon, right?"
"No,
they
are going to leave soon. You and I are going to stay here, mind the
store, and do what we do best, which is gather information via dream
walking. The addition of one more aging hybrid and a human girl isn't
going to make or break the assault force if Alec and his people have
bitten off more than they can chew."
"Really?
How would Agony's rescue mission have gone without this particular
human girl?"
It was very
nearly going too far. I wouldn't have used that much sarcasm with my
dad, and he didn't have an angry hitchhiker sitting in the back of
his mind. Taggart closed his eyes and took a couple of deep breaths,
but then managed something very like his normal smile.
"Your
point is taken. You're more than capable of protecting yourself under
the right circumstances and I don't have any right to tell you where
you can or can't go. I guess I'm just worried about you. There was a
moment there last night where I was worried you weren't going to get
your shield up in time. I should have known better than to go after
Kaleb like that, even with two of us. He's simply too dangerous."
"Hey, it
was my choice. I could have agreed to your preferred option and
sucked him into my dream instead. Although I'm not sure that would
have made a whole lot of difference. You guys were far more effective
last night than I was."
Taggart reached
over and gently squeezed my arm. "You did just fine. You
actually did better than fine. I was impressed at how quickly you
adjusted your attacks to make them more effective. The last time I
crossed paths with him your help would have easily been enough to
drive him out of his own dream, but he's improved a lot since then."
"So last
time he didn't heal like that? Please tell me he doesn't heal that
quickly in real life."
"No,
that's new. It was ingenious really. In the real world he heals
quickly, but nothing like what you saw last night. Because his mind
is already predisposed to believe he heals unnaturally fast, it was
likely easy for him to expand the results inside of the dream to what
you saw last night."
"So it was
an area where he got a lot of bang for his buck."
"Indeed."
"Well,
thank you for getting me out of there. I'm not eager to go face off
against Kaleb again right away, but give me some time to practice
against some lesser opponents and then maybe we can try again."
He wanted to
ask about the other option, about pulling Kaleb into my dream and
then assassinating him, but at the same time he didn't. Taggart liked
to think that he was hard to read, and truthfully he was, especially
inside of the dream where he could alter his appearance, but I knew
him too well. He might as well have been holding up a sign with his
thoughts on it.
He desperately
wanted to begin picking off the members of the Coun'hij, but by the
same measure he was worried about what that might do to me. He cared
about me and didn't want to see me turned into some kind of heartless
killer. There were a lot of prices that he would have been willing to
pay to bring down Kaleb and the rest, but that wasn't one of them.
"Regardless,
it ended up being a worthwhile outing. I'll have to go back to my
journals to confirm the dates, but I think that was about the time
that Kaleb joined the Coun'hij."