Through the Static (15 page)

With her knees creaking, the world spinning as the blood rushed to her head, Aurelia pushed herself to stand. She staggered her way over to the lab bench and spotted the vials she'd been looking for. Wrenching her bound hands around to her side, she pointed at them.

“A better way.”

For the third time, Aurelia tapped into the house's security system. Just like the first two times, all the heat signatures in the building were clustered in the main room. No one was standing guard outside their door. She shook her head. Overconfident to the end in the power of their link.

She popped the door. In spite of the damage it had suffered when Curse and Charm had burst in, it moved smoothly on its hinges, yielding without a sound. Holding it open just a fraction of an inch, she peeked out through the gap. Sure enough, the hall was empty.

Letting it fall closed again, she looked back at Isabel. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

It was the moment of truth, but she faltered. Kept her hand on the latch as she took one deep breath and then another.

God, this could be such a disaster. So much uncertain and so much left up to chance. They had no idea what they were walking into—just a sketchy one of how they hoped to walk away from it.

Reiterating their basic operating principles, she outlined what passed for a plan again. “We go in. We look for our chance.”

“And I pull the trigger the instant I see my opening. You just have to get his defenses down for a second.”

Doubt chilled Aurelia to her core. “You really think you can do this?”

“You really sure you're okay with what it means?”

She swallowed hard. That was the only thing she didn't doubt. “Absolutely.”

Isabel nodded. It was all the further confirmation Aurelia would get.

After giving the security grid just one last check, she nudged open the trap door. This time, after seeing the coast was clear, she pushed past her fear. Pushed the door the rest of the way and lowered the stairs, then charged right up them with Cepheus's gun held out in front of her. She didn't want to shoot any member of any Three, but if she had to, she would. Pressing her spine flush against the wall, she covered the end of the hall that led toward the room where everyone was gathered. A few seconds passed before Isabel's head rose above the level of the floor. Aurelia passed her the gun. With her hands free, she dug into her pocket to grip one of the capped syringes she'd placed there, then reached out with her mind.

It took all of her concentration, but just as they'd practiced, the lines of muscle and sinew adhered themselves to her thoughts. She lifted one heavy boot and then the other.

His steps were less than silent, but they were as quiet as she could have hoped. Fully under her command, Cepheus rose out of the basement to stand in the middle of the hall. His body was eerily still, the very serenity of its posture and the blankness of his eyes belying a war. She had power over him, for now. But beneath it, he was stirring, his mind working in counterpoint to hers. He was recovering from the blow with shocking speed.

They had to move fast.

She shot a glance at Isabel, caught her nod and then faced forward. Her chest to his spine, she wrapped her arms around Cepheus's torso, then took a deep breath and stepped the both of them away from the wall. With one hand, she bared the needle of the syringe over his heart, and as one, the three of them marched forward. Her breath rose, her nerves flaring as Cepheus's fight for control over his own body reached a pinnacle. Just a few more steps. A few more—

They rounded the corner, and she placed her thumb over the plunger of the syringe.

Before she saw anything, though, before she could take in a single thing about the scene before her, she heard a voice. Her name.

She knew that voice.

“Aurelia.
Sweetheart.
” A thin mouth leered at her. “So we meet again.”

Chapter Seventeen

Invasion. Penetration and wrongness and…Jinx fought back the sick as the probing drove deeper. He was so exposed, so naked and vulnerable and…

He kept himself still even through the shudder.

In all the years he'd been working for the man, Jinx had only met Spellcaster in the flesh a half-dozen times. The number of times he'd had the man's hands inside his mind was even fewer, and it was all wrong. All pressure inside his cranium, feelings that made his skin crawl and his stomach churn. Violation and the sense of being changed against his will.

It was nothing like when
she'd
been in his mind.

He clamped down tight on the errant thought. Trouble. All that new voice in his head seemed to be was trouble. And it was getting stronger all the time.

With a lash of anger, Spellcaster withdrew, stepping back out of Jinx's thoughts and out of his space. Jinx shuddered as his lungs sucked up a deep gulp of air. As his mind closed back up around the holes the master left whenever he meddled inside there.

And the ordeal wasn't over yet.

As soon as they'd emerged from the basement, he'd been railroaded into a cavernous front room, pushed down by Curse's command and by his hands. On his knees, Jinx had been brought face-to-face with the man who controlled their lives. Their breaths and thoughts and their fates. And suddenly, he'd wondered if he'd made a terrible, terrible mistake.

Sharp pain burst across his skull. He couldn't think of that. He couldn't—

Just as quickly as the pain had come, it was gone. Reeling, Jinx sat back farther, but he couldn't relax. He was still too exposed. In his peripheral vision, he watched Spellcaster pace. The glowing earpiece attached to the side of his head signaled that he was communicating across the wires. Good. That was good. It would keep him out of Jinx's head, at least for a little while.

Spellcaster barked a terse greeting, then launched into a tirade.

“How the fuck did this happen? Her fingerprints were all over his matrix…” Spellcaster swore and spat. Paced back and forth. “Bullshit. You know I can't dissolve this one… Whatever you have to do to keep them running. Gotta show the suits that we can keep a Three functional long-term… Well, they're the oldest set we've got left, damn it… No, we got her… Agreed. She's too much of a liability. Can't have this getting out now.” His gaze shifted to Jinx, a dark cast to his eyes. “You might have a point.”

Without the other half of the communication, Jinx could only guess at the meaning of the words. There was good news there amidst the vitriol—his Three wasn't in jeopardy. But there had been a fuck-up of some sort. A big one. One that revolved around him.

A murmur of unease passed through his link. Curse and Charm concurred with that assessment, at least.

If his arms and legs didn't still feel like jelly, he would have smacked himself. If only he could remember…

You found yourself. You found yourself with her.

He laughed, a chilling sound in the back of his throat. There was nothing to find. Nothing.

There was nothing left of him.

He sank deeper onto his heels, like his very bones had lost their will to hold him up. There was a sense of loss, swirling somewhere deep. But he didn't even know what he hadn't gotten to keep.

“Stop it, Goddamn it.”
Charm's voice in Jinx's head wasn't as powerful as the new one, but the hiss of electricity she sent down his spine was potent anyway.
“You want to get us all lobotomized?”

“I don't—”

“Just stop. Stop all of it. Everything you're thinking and what you did and…”
Her thoughts rose, circling higher and higher toward hysteria. Betrayal lay hot beneath them, an anger he'd always sensed in her but which had never been loosed on him before.

God. The only people in the world he'd had all these years and he'd…he'd betrayed them.

Curse's thoughts twisted, turning sour and heavy with an amorphous guilt. Jinx didn't understand. He straightened, but he didn't— He didn't know anything.

Not a single thing except the sound of footfalls on wood at the edge of the room, a tremor running through the floor and through his link. The instinctive, defensive reaction of his Three rounding against danger, the cocking back of weapons as they were raised. His own hands going for the sidearm at his waist. Spellcaster turning.

And laughing.

“Aurelia. Sweetheart,” Spellcaster said. “So we meet again.”

Jinx whirled, spinning on his heels, and his gaze landed on
her
. On Aurelia. She was standing there, looking so brave and so scared. Like an image in a dream. Did he know how to dream?

If he did, it wouldn't have been of this—not of this
violence
. She had her arm over the throat of the third member of the other Three, a syringe clasped tightly in her hand, tip aimed at the man's heart. And beside her was another dream. A woman whose face should be dissolving into static, but which was real and hard and disappointed. Always so much disappointment.

But
she
wasn't disappointed. Aurelia wasn't. She was furious.

“Peter.” She spat the name like it was poison, and the nerves in the back of Jinx's skull glowed red. He wasn't supposed to know his master's name.

Spellcaster, for his part, was unperturbed. “Oh, please. Don't look so happy to see me.”

“You.” She shook, nostrils flared and eyes narrowed. “You were behind this the whole time. The attack on me. Stealing all my files.”

“Guilty as charged.”

Her voice hitched. “Why? You hadn't taken enough?”

Spellcaster's eyes drifted up and down her body, and something in the pit of Jinx's stomach turned. There was a memory of sex in that gaze.

There was a memory of sex somewhere deep in Jinx's skin.

“I take what suits me and what serves me. Surely you know that.”

“You take what isn't yours.”

“Oh, but it is mine. Now.” Spellcaster took a single step forward. “And you have been meddling with things that no longer belong to you.”

“You can't stop the truth from getting out. You're killing these people. Slowly but surely, the link is killing them.”

For the first time, a shadow passed over Spellcaster's face. “They aren't your concern.”

“They are.” Her eyes darted to Jinx's, her face a mask of longing and…hurt?

Spellcaster tipped his head back, the barking sound of his laughter harsh in the hollow space. “And you accuse me of taking things that belong to you.” His voice grew colder. “He's mine.”

“He was
mine
.” The other woman—the one who should have receded into the static—stepped forward, gun pointed straight at the spot between Spellcaster's eyes.

“Ah, Isabel. So lovely to see you again, too. Did you ever find your boy? I know you were so bereft at his loss.”

Isabel's face went red, and Jinx's head pounded, his pulse a roar inside his ears as his vision narrowed.

He was nothing. A soldier. No one's. Not even his own.

You are.
The whispers in his mind grew louder, forcing their way through the crush of competing words and thoughts.
You are what you choose to become.

His gaze swung wildly from Isabel's face to Aurelia's and back again.
You were hers. And hers.

You are.

You are.

You
are.

An angry sob broke the silence, tore through the noise in Jinx's mind, and he was staring into hazel eyes he knew. Staring at Aurelia as she tightened her grip around the throat of a vacant shell of a man. She gazed straight ahead, at Spellcaster, and with her eyes burning, she spoke. “We were victims back then, Peter. You made us victims.” She shifted her grip on the syringe. “But we're not victims anymore.”

And then she stabbed the needle down, through chest and between bones, into beating tissue, thumb squeezing.

Chaos erupted as the man in her arms collapsed into a writhing mass. All around them, it was the same, the other two from Cepheus's Three dropping like so much dead weight, their weapons clattering to the ground. Commands echoed through Jinx's cerebral cortex, and his arms lifted his gun to eye level. His hands pointed it at Aurelia.

But his mind screamed.

Curse and Charm were in motion. Curse had Isabel's weapon in his hand, his arms binding Isabel's tight behind her back, and Charm had Aurelia held just as tightly.

Spellcaster laughed and laughed and laughed.

“You sad, pathetic little girl.” He flicked a hand, and Jinx took an automatic, staggering step forward as his thumb unlocked the safety on his gun. “I should have ended you back then.” The corner of his lip twitched. “But then I wouldn't have gotten to watch this. Jinx?”

The man held a knife toward Jinx, and he took it in exchange for his gun.

“Her throat,”
Spellcaster spoke into his mind.
“Slit her throat and feel her life run down your hands.”

Jinx tried to resist, to slow things down just long enough to think, but words kept cycling through his brain.

One mission. One mind.

He didn't know his own
mind
.

He blinked, and then his fist was at her collarbone, his blade pressed tight against that pulsing cord of cream-white flesh. Everything was silence and breath. A last breath.

And another. And another.

“Jinx.” Her whole body trembled, the motion placing that tender skin even closer, flush with steel. “Jinx.” She swallowed. “Jack?”

“End her. Now.”

And then that other voice, loud and desperate in his skull.
You are. You are you are you are.

Frozen in space and time, Jinx lifted his gaze from the press of blade to throat and stared up into soft, wet eyes, the very depths of them pleading with him. Pleading for something he didn't know how to give.

“Jinx, don't do this. Please. Please, Jinx.” Aurelia blinked, opened her eyes and glanced to the side. But when she looked at him again, it was with an expression that took his breath away.

He saw it all. His body over hers, her hands in his. His body
inside
her. Her mouth, her touch, her kiss, her words. Her quiet. And her mind.

He touched it, and she touched him.

“I love you, Jinx.”

Love.

Love.

Love.

You love. You are loved.

You
are
.

Everything stopped, and his grip slipped, the blade and the world all falling away with his defenses. This wasn't his mission. This wasn't
his
mind.

“I—” he started.

And then a burst of light exploded behind his eyes.

It was what they'd been waiting for.

Aurelia saw the gap in Jinx's armor at the exact same moment Isabel had, and suddenly there was fire.

Too fast for her to do anything but hold on, Aurelia's mind expanded, the circuits and neurons all unfurling as one, and she let them go. Let the wires run adrift, open like her hands. And when Jinx's thoughts were placed flush to hers, she grasped onto them with everything she was worth.

The fire of connection spread as Isabel tore him loose and soldered all his nerves to hers, forging an unbreakable bond deep in the tissues and wires of their minds. Aurelia heard him, felt him,
touched
him. He opened his eyes and stared into hers. And she was home.

She was home.

“Aurelia.”

All at once, the hands on her shoulders released, and she staggered. She snapped her head around to see Charm stumbling backward, the back of her wrist pressed to her brow and her eyes closed. Isabel sank as she was released, Curse stepping forward on shaky legs to catch Charm, his mouth tight, lines etched deep into his face.

And then Jinx was pulling at Aurelia's shoulders, clasping her to his chest, and the only thing in the world was him. As one, they collapsed into each other and into the earth, and she welcomed him with open arms, holding him in her thoughts and in her heart. When she felt his voice flooding through her synapses, it seemed like a song she'd been meant to sing for all her life.

“Jinx.”
She clutched him closer, quenched the newly forged connections and made them steel.

His thoughts were a tidal wave of relief and need, remorse and something glowing. Something too perfect to believe.
“I love you. I got so lost.”
He shook his head, eyes glossy as he gripped her shoulders.
“I love you.”
And then he held her tighter, voice aching even in her mind.
“I almost hurt you. They almost made me—”

And then he was pulling away, one hand on her arm to keep her behind him as he whipped around, glancing at Isabel before focusing on Peter. He picked the knife up off the ground.

She heard his thoughts, heard the same murderous rage that had almost ended him when she'd yanked him from his Three the first time. Only that time, he hadn't been able to follow through.

Facing Peter, Jinx spoke words so cold and so detached. “You made me hurt them.” His tone dropped an octave, the ice crackling and making the revulsion dripping from his words slick. “You made me forget them.”

“Jinx.” Peter's face barely masked his panic as he backed away. “Let's be reasonable.”

“You never were.” Jinx's memories were a surge of pain, a longing so intense Aurelia wondered how he'd survived it. In his thoughts, she saw the way his life had been ripped away from him. Saw the punishments and the suppression. The loss as he'd forgotten what he'd loved. As he'd been forced to do terrible things. “You'll never stop,” he said, voice flat. “I know you. I know your mind. You'll never, ever stop.”