by Kate Rudolph
The woods were at least twenty yards away, the ground completely open in between. If she went to the other car, she wouldn’t be able to take out any of the people from the helicopter. And if she didn’t move, she’d be spotted by the people inside the house in seconds.
She knew that when you didn’t have a good choice, sometimes the best option was just to pick a bad choice and stick with it.
Her friends were in the woods, and if Ruth saw her, she’d be able to fry anyone before they could take Sandra out. She gave herself two seconds to gulp in air and steel herself for the sprint. Then she was off. She heard gunfire and shouts behind her as the enemy spotted her, but she blocked that out and tried to speed up.
Her rifle bounced against her back and her heart pounded so fast that she thought it might explode. The woods were practically within reach when pain tore through her side and she stumbled, crying out. She pressed a hand up to her side and it came away wet and red with her blood.
She tried to move but she found herself frozen in place, unable to take another step. It felt like her legs were encased in cement.
“I think you’ve gone far enough.” His voice slithered through her ears and into her mind, caging her. Goosebumps erupted on her skin and she wanted to shiver, but she was unable to move even that much.
Oskar Jung had her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Sandra wanted to scream, but she could barely breathe. Jung forced her to turn and face him. She didn’t realize she was being compelled until her feet moved. It didn’t feel like being pushed, nor was it like being forced out of place. It didn’t even hurt, which made it all the worse.
She hadn’t expected this. She hadn’t known that he would be able to use his powers to control people. If she’d had command of her tear ducts, she might have cried in frustration. She could control people on a small scale, temporarily. Of course someone who could cause her powers to go into overdrive and nearly kill her could drive her like a remote control car.
Once she faced him, she got her first truly good look at him. In Kiev, he’d been wearing a hat and it had been dark. Today he looked casual in jeans and a green button up short-sleeved shirt. She couldn’t gauge his age, he could have been thirty or fifty or anywhere in between. And his smile belied the situation. He wasn’t even sweating. Jung looked like he was having a pleasant day in the park, not like he was standing in a field, using mind control on an innocent woman while surrounded by the bodies of the mercenaries he’d just murdered.
She hated him.
The gunfire hadn’t stopped. Sandra wanted to look, wanted to see whether Derek and Morse were winning or losing, but Jung’s control was too firm, too complete.
She tried to speak again and only resented him more when he let her. She’d kill him for what he was doing to her, and she’d make it painful. “Why?” was all she asked. They were strangers and if he could do this to her, he didn’t need her paltry gift.
Jung got closer, standing only an arm’s length away. He smelled of grass and dirt and blood. “It’s a job offer.”
She wanted to scoff, but facial expressions were out of her reach. “You couldn’t just call?”
“My employers prefer the direct approach.” He looked her up and down, assessing. “You’re so much better than these people.” He gestured vaguely to where she could hear the others fighting. “Why do you settle for some handyman when with your talent you could make a fortune?”
Was this really just about money? About a job? At least ten people were dead. “If they have you, why do they need me?” She needed to keep him talking. She heard another roar, felt the electricity in the air. If Jung was distracted with her, maybe, just maybe, she’d make it out of this. Or at least her friends could get away.
“We’re two sides of a coin, Miss Khee.” When she didn’t respond quick enough, he kept talking. “You read thoughts as clear as if they’re spoken aloud. I am... some would call me a puppet-master, though that seems a bit harsh. You’ll notice your wound doesn’t hurt?”
Now that he said it, she realized he was right. She’d forgotten that she’d been injured. He let her move enough to place her hand against her side. Even though the skin was torn and red with blood, she wasn’t bleeding as much as she should be. Jesus, he could control her down to her veins.
“Mind and body, we were meant to be,” he waved his hands and pain crashed over her. She couldn’t move this time, couldn’t do anything to try and lessen it. The edges of the world sharpened and she heard a whistling sound in her ears. She wanted to gasp, wanted to clutch her side, but she was frozen, his statue. With another wave of his hand, the pain disappeared. “I can’t heal you,” he said, “But we’ll get you treatment. Come along now.”
He turned and walked back toward the helicopter. She followed, unable to stop herself. But he hadn’t silenced her this time, “Did you come to Kiev for me?” Had she merely been putting this off since that night? And if so, why had he left her there? Sandra stopped moving. It happened so quickly that she stumbled. Pain blossomed in her side and she curled into it.
Jung turned back to her and she straightened at his mental command. His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t comment on the lapse in control. “That night is when you came to my employer’s attention. It was a coincidence that we were there. We’ve been searching for you since you left the Sector.”
He turned back around, but Sandra wasn’t satisfied. “How?” He didn’t stop, but she was able to stay in place. “How did you find me?”
“Come along, Miss Khee. All will be answered once we have you safe.” They both started to move again. Sandra knew that if he got her on that helicopter, she’d never escape.
She’d never see Derek again.
No fucking way.
It was nearly impossible to fight when she didn’t even feel like she was being forced. She knew that she didn’t want to walk to the helicopter, but her body moved easily towards it. It wasn’t mind control that Jung was practicing, it was body control. He had no idea what she was thinking.
Sandra could use that, but she didn’t know how.
She didn’t have much time. They were thirty feet away from the helicopter. Sandra opened up her mind. Now that she knew he couldn’t read her thoughts, she wasn’t in danger of him picking up what she was trying to do. She dove into his mind, subtly this time so she didn’t arouse suspicion.
His mind was a morass, a hundred plans swirling around, plates in the air all about to tumble over if one thing went wrong. She was a linchpin, she saw. He needed a psychic to read his enemies and his business partners. But even more importantly, he needed a psychic because his bosses - and even he didn’t know who he was working for - would kill him if he didn’t find her.
And she thought the Sector was bad.
Sandra just needed one thing to latch onto. Anything to stop their interminable walk towards the chopper.
One of the bears roared again, closer to her now. She still wasn’t free to look around, to see where they were. Most of the rifles had stopped firing, and now when she heard gunshots they were coming from pistols. Either the fighting had turned to close range combat, or Jung’s men were running out of ammo.
A second roar had Sandra flinching back, fear making her veins turn to ice. No, not her veins. Jung’s. He was afraid of the bears. She could work with that.
Sandra followed the thread of that thought, diving deep into his mind. She didn’t even realize that she stopped walking or that the pain in her side had come back.
His fear was small, sensible, but Sandra worked at it, stoking the flame until she could feel panic at the edges of his thoughts. She kept going, imagining gruesome scenes, teeth and claws rending at Jung’s flesh, mutilating him.
His control of her snapped and Sandra was flung out of his mind, physically recoiling and falling back onto her ass. Jung turned on her, his face beaded with sweat and his cheeks flushed.
Come on, Derek, she thought, roar again. Keep it up.
&n
bsp; He couldn’t hear her, she knew that he couldn’t hear her. But as soon as she thought it, his roar filled the air around them, louder than anything he’d let out before. It shook her, even though she knew he’d never hurt her.
She wanted to take Jung out, but she knew he’d stop her before she could make a move.
Sandra ran, trying to block out the pain in her side. She headed for the bears. She hoped that Jung’s power would be as useless on them as hers was.
Morse’s white fur was spotted with blood, especially around his claws and his mouth. Derek’s dark fur obscured the damage that he’d done, but his shoulder was bleeding. A bullet had ripped through it and she could see his exposed muscle. But he swatted at three of Jung’s guards like it was nothing.
Carnage lay all around them. Ruth fought a man near the helicopter, her powers sparking around her. Canary was nowhere to be seen, but when a man fell to sniper fire, Sandra knew that she had her eyes on them. And Derek and Morse rallied to her the moment they saw her, forming an ursine shield between her and the remainder of Jung’s men.
There weren’t that many left.
They’d come armed to take out the mercenaries, but they hadn’t been armed for bears. Jung had brought at least ten men with him, and it looked like only three were left.
There was a whoosh of flame from the helicopter as Ruth hit it with a bolt of electricity. She’d taken out the man she was fighting.
And that left the remaining men with no escape.
“He’s afraid of bears,” she told Derek. It felt like she was yelling, but that was only the panic setting in, the desperation to survive. “And he can control people. Maybe not you.”
The brown bear turned to her and gave her a toothy grin. It shouldn’t have made Sandra feel relieved, but it gave her hope. She reached out and ran her hand over the fur of his flank.
Her hand froze in place as Jung came into view. His eyes were crazed, but he showed no other signs of the terror she could feel gripping him. Sandra heard a thud behind her as Canary’s rifle hit the ground. She followed shortly after it, jumping from a high branch and hitting the ground hard.
Her face was blank, empty as she limped toward them. Her leg looked wrong. Ruth jogged over towards them, her face equally devoid of emotion. At least she appeared uninjured. Jung didn’t block Sandra’s pain this time. He was done playing nice.
Derek stood tall, screaming out in his loudest bear roar, keeping her out of Jung’s clutches. Jung flinched back, but he didn’t run.
Instead, he pulled out a gun and aimed it straight at Ruth’s head. “I can tell you’re both not normal bears. You understand me. Nod if that’s true.”
Unwilling to risk Ruth’s life, both Derek and Morse nodded.
“Let Miss Khee pass. If not, I’ll use this one,” he waved the gun near Ruth’s head, “To kill that one,” he nodded at Canary. “And then I’ll shoot her.”
She could see inside his mind that he was deadly serious. There was still one car left in the driveway. Now that Jung’s numbers had been whittled down so low, they could all fit into that one vehicle. Sandra looked at Ruth. The barrel of Jung’s gun was pressed tight against her temple, but her face was blank. Sandra could feel the fear pouring off of her in waves, but Ruth couldn’t show any of it.
And then she blinked.
Sandra narrowed her eyes, Jung’s hold on her was loose enough to allow it. She focused in on Ruth, on her thoughts.
Don’t fight it, she was thinking, Be docile.
Then Ruth blinked a second time. Whatever she was doing to fight Jung’s control was beginning to work. Sandra tried pulling her hand in close to her chest, away from where it hovered right over Derek. She moved an inch before she froze again.
Jung’s control was spotty. Holding onto three people with such precision had to be difficult. He was about ten feet away from her and the bears, but fifty feet away from Canary. If only she could turn his grasp away from Ruth.
Sandra began to struggle. It didn’t look like it, not at first. It wasn’t like she was tied up, she was simply frozen. But the more she tried to move, the more she could begin to feel Jung’s power and attention turn to her. He was leaning in a little, his face looking away from Ruth, and even past the bears.
He hadn’t been hanging onto Ruth, and that was his mistake.
Sandra took a step, it was more of a shuffle, but it was proof that her struggle was working. She couldn’t look at Derek or Morse, she forced her entire being to focus on Jung and break the hold he had on her.
She felt something like a cord snap within her and snatched at the mental leash. She pulled. Jung stood up straight and lowered his gun. Without waiting another second, Ruth dove to the side and to relative safety.
For a frozen second, Sandra felt the power as Jung felt it. She was bridging the mental connection with her own power and that gave her access to his. It felt so simple. She wanted him to raise a hand and he did. She knew she could make him run until his body gave out.
Could she use his own hand to shoot him?
She didn’t get the chance to answer that question.
The second he noticed that Jung was distracted and Ruth out of danger, Derek pounced. Sandra didn’t know that bears could leap so far or so fast.
She saw Derek through Jung’s eyes, the dark, furred beast blotting out the light of the sun. He landed and the connection between her and Jung snapped for good.
She was unconscious before she knew she felt dizzy.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Hospital rooms all smelled the same. Antiseptic with the faint hint of canned food and sadness. Sandra had lost a lot of blood and she still felt weak as a kitten, lying in the Missoula hospital two days later.
Ruth had disappeared into the ether. Sandra hadn’t heard from Morse, other than a message from Derek telling her that he wanted her to heal up quickly. Canary had stayed by her the first night, but even she had to leave. She’d said her farewells that morning. Even the hostage was gone. In the midst of the battle, Paul had freed himself from Derek’s house and disappeared.
Derek hadn’t left her side for more than a few minutes and now he was holding her hand.
“Why can’t I have your magic gunshot healing superpower?” she asked him. Her words were a bit slurred from a mix of painkillers and exhaustion. She didn’t feel loopy, though, just weak.
Derek leaned over and kissed her forehead, “It takes more than a day of being mates for that to kick in.”
“Wait? Really?” She couldn’t tell if he was joking, and she didn’t know enough about matehood to know if he was serious. Even the cloud of his thoughts around her didn’t help. She felt his love, his protectiveness, but his mind was closed off to her, keeping her away from his specific ruminations.
“Give it a century and we’ll see.” He smiled and traced his thumb over her knuckles.
Damn he was handsome. The light from the window was hitting him just right, highlighting the slight curl in his hair, giving him a small halo. “You look like an angel.” No, that wasn’t what she meant to say. Maybe the drugs had messed with her, after all. She tried again. “Centuries?”
Derek nodded. He met her eyes, sheepish and almost guilty. “I didn’t mention that part, did I?”
“Are you serious?” She wished she were sitting up for this, but her stitches wouldn’t like that, and the doctor would like it even less.
“We’re connected now. And bears like me live for a long time.” He wasn’t looking at her now, and he was blushing.
“Just how old are you?” Maybe she should have figured that out before binding her soul to him, but it was too late for that now. She didn’t regret it.
“Um, seventy-four?” His face turned even redder.
He was older than her dad! Sandra tilted her head back and laughed. “I’m in love with an old man.”
“Hey!” He stood and leaned over her, his lips inches from hers. “Can an old man do this?” He pressed his lips to hers, kissing her ge
ntly, sweetly. “I love you, too, you know,” he said when he sat back down.
She didn’t care if the grin on her face was dopey. “Good.”
There was a knock on the door, and it opened without invitation. A tall woman with honey brown skin and long, straight dark hair walked in the room and shut the door behind her.
“May I have a moment?” she asked. She looked a few years older than Sandra, but her eyes were ancient.
“Who are you?” demanded Derek.
“That’s Sonny Reyes. My old boss.” It was a bit more complicated than that, but Sandra didn’t care to explain it. She looked over at her, “You came a long way.”
“May we speak in private?” Sonny asked again.
“No, you can say whatever you want to me in front of him.” Sandra was done with Sector bullshit, and she wouldn’t keep their secrets from Derek.
“Who is he?” Sonny scowled.
“Mine.”
Sonny was silent for a moment, but she finally nodded when she realized that Sandra wouldn’t relent. “I’ve come to tender apologies from the Sector. There was a substantial reward for taking care of Oskar Jung. The directors decided that it would be appropriate to remit payment to you.”
“Thanks.” It was unexpected, but Sandra didn’t need the money. “But how the hell did he find me?” That was the one piece of the puzzle she was still missing. There should have been nothing to link her identity to the Sector, and yet he’d found her home less than a month after she moved in.
Sonny glanced at Derek, but she took a few more steps into the room until she was on the other side of Sandra’s bed. “You can’t repeat this to anyone. If you do, there will be consequences.”
There always were. Sandra just nodded.
“Over the past six months, Sector servers have been compromised at least three times. Your identity and skill set was leaked. Jung was the only person to connect the dots to find you here. Of that we’re certain. Measures have been taken to protect the data, and your identity. You’ll be safe now.”
