Heart of the Hunter

by Alex Foster

  Nicholas continued to hide from his new host. With a quick poke to just the right part of the man’s brain, memories spilled across the bridge between him and Nicholas. He was John Holman, thirty-four years old, and current resident of the Baltimore area parks.

  Humming like a transformer through John’s subconscious was his ability. Crude and barely touched it was unmastered and waited only for John to call upon it.

  Not giving away his position, Nicholas explored the other man’s power. He remembered the visit from Circle agents as though the memories were his own. Felt The Circle minders rip through his brain, erasing and making him afraid to use his birthright.

  Through fuzzy vision, Nicholas saw John’s hands start to shake. He put the book down and gripped the wooden sides of his cart, breathing deep and trying to work through the headache that suddenly appeared at the base of his skull.

  John Holman’s power would do nicely, Nicholas thought. Leaving a marker behind so he would easily be able to find him again, Nicholas withdrew and again cast himself into the wind. Aiming this time for his own body. He skipped over minds like a stone over water and slammed back into his real form.

  It was striking and violent and a completely different sensation than entering John’s mind. Internally, Nicholas rebelled against returning. If his ability allowed it he would find a mage and inhabit him or her permanently.

  Pain lanced upward from his neck all the way to his bald head. If he was able to, Nicholas would have gasped or cried out. Sound was always the first sense that returned. He heard the steady beep of his monitors and whoosh of his breathing apparatus.

  Taste was next. The astringency of the inserted tubing came up from his cut trachea and filled his mouth, making his tongue feel swollen and dry. His room, his external prison, stank of disinfectant and sweat from his crippled body.

  Settling into his meat suit again, Nicholas reached out with his ability and called his servant Desmond Loomis.

  The small wiry man answered the mental command. Once he was a competent if quiet janitor at St. Juliana’s Nursing Home, a Circle owned institution. Desmond also suffered from a small tweak in his psyche that was enough to open the door to Nicholas . He was the first experiment at reaching out again to another mind after Clark’s attack.

  Nicholas had taken his time, afraid of moving too fast and losing control of his ability again. Desmond slowly became his. At first he used a mere suggestion implanted in his brain and then Nicholas tested the boundaries of his power to control and command for long stretches of time. Finally he began to completely reprogram.

  If there was anything left of the original Desmond Loomis inside his swiss cheese mind it was beyond Nicholas’s ability to detect. Now he was a mindless automaton that did and wanted nothing more in life than to work and take care of Nicholas.

  Feeling the respirator fill his lungs, Nicholas used his mind instead to speak. There is a package I need you to retrieve in Baltimore. Take the van and collect him — he’ll be expecting you.

  Desmond nodded once and moved to do as commanded. He didn’t ask any questions or for additional instructions — he wasn’t capable of that any longer and trusted his master to guide him.

  Nicholas relaxed as best he could in the medical bed. He had no worries about being alone in the house — there were others he had webbed over the years to help look after his physical form and cover all the expenses required to keep him alive.

  It wouldn’t be long before that would change, however. With one vial of blood he could undo all the damage that bitch of a Circle agent had done to him.

  Drawing his strength once more, Nicholas traveled…

  ✽✽✽

  They stopped for the night just outside a small coastal community. The hotel didn't rank many roses on the official guidebook chart but after driving past it, Callie had taken a pencil and wrote "quaint and secluded, perfect for lovers" in the margins and that was good enough for Reina. The town didn't offer many tourist traps, but she figured there were enough marinas around they could find a small charter boat to tour area lighthouses or just explore the Bay.

  Later, after they had settled into the room and made it feel like theirs, Reina struggled to stay awake while watching Callie sleep. She had always loved being the last one awake. Exhausted from the road and their previous activities, Callie lay on her stomach with arms tucked neatly under her pillow.

  Reina smiled and traced small circles over her bare back. Callie’s skin was still warm and moist to the touch. It was worth it, she decided. All the publicity and clamor of being with the woman that had become the face of magic worldwide. It was worth it for quiet moments like these.

  Finally she fell asleep with one arm still protectively over Callie’s shoulders. That night she dreamed of a man wrapped in shadows standing outside their hotel room, trying unsuccessfully to get inside.

  Chapter Four

  Since the night when she died, Dakota tried very hard to stay away from large crowds. The pack and press of a multitude of people unsettled her. Even before that night she didn’t like crowds — the noise bothered her — but she always attributed that to her upbringing in the relatively secluded environment of The Circle.

  Miles Addison did not own a car, Dakota knew this for a fact, so if he wanted to get out of town fast his options were limited. She could have had her contact run a trace on his credit cards or even hack into the security cameras of the greater Baltimore area, but she didn’t have him do any of those things.

  Addison was her project.

  Instead of taking the fast way out she hedged her bets and staked out the one place she would use to sneak from the city. Penn Station.

  Doing her best to stay out of the way of the hordes of commuters, travelers, and sightseers Dakota had spent most of the morning in the Baltimore station hub. She’d witnessed two cheesy goodbye scenes, drank an extra large mixed berry slush, and peed twice. There had been no sign of Addison.

  What are you trying to prove, her father’s voice asked. Who do you think he is running from?

  "I have to talk to him," she murmured. "If he gets away, then fine, but I have to at least try."

  You will fail. You always do, baby girl.

  Dakota paused next to a trashcan and ignored the voice. Miles was standing several paces in front of her, looking at the arrival and departure schedule. Bingo, she said silently.

  Falling in step with a passing group of businessmen, Dakota came up behind Miles and pressed her hand against the small of his back. "Don’t run away," she said, feeling him jump. "Your powers might not work through clothes but mine can. I can put you down with a thought."

  Blood drained from his face and he went rigid. "Please," his voice broke, "please don’t take me again."

  If you weren’t a cold sociopathic bitch this is where you’d feel guilt.

  "I’m not going to take you anywhere." Dakota changed position, relieving some of the pressure against his back, and stepped around to face him. "I just want to talk to you."

  "You said you were from The Circle."

  "I was. It doesn’t exist any longer."

  "Then what do you want from me?" His tone rose dangerously close to a whine and she had to swallow the desire to zap him anyway for being annoying.

  "You have connections I need," she said. "I know about that group you meet with, the one for people that had encounters with The Circle."

  Miles shook his head insistently. "No. I won’t give them up."

  "Fine, keep the names. But I need you to pass a message along to them. There are people out there, former Circle like me, that want to help. I have a contact, an archmage, that feels something bad is coming, and that we have to be together to survive it. All of us. Mages and nons."

  "So you’re, like, recruiting?"

  "No, just passing his message on to other mages and asking you to do the same. He wants us to be ready for what's coming. The message is this: 'Be open. Work with each other to help. Be together.'" Dakota licke
d her lips. "I have other, more personal, business with you and those like you. I need to make up for what I did as a hunter."

  You’ll never be more than what you are right now.

  Miles frowned. "I don’t understand."

  "I have a second chance," she tried to explain. "A .... very special person gave me a second chance when I probably didn't deserve it and I need to make something of it — this is the only way I know how. All those twelve step thingies say you need to seek forgiveness from those you’ve wronged before you can move on."

  "You want me to say I forgive you?"

  She shifted from one foot to the other. "Yeah. I’ll do what I can to earn it."

  You can’t make amends, you never will.

  Miles’ face tightened with anger. "Not forgiven. You people took me from my home, experimented on me, blocked my gifts, and then tried to make me forget. You stole my memories and poked around in my brain! There is nothing you can do. I hope Congress throws you all in prison for what you’ve done."

  He glanced over her shoulder, no doubt wondering if he could make a break for a security guard before she could stop him. Dakota sidestepped and caught his gaze with hers. He wouldn’t make it in time. A low charge filled the air.

  That’s my girl! Let loose and bring this entire complex down. You know you could — the experiments we did on you proved that. You remember all those now, right? All that power and pain! Thanks to Callie?

  Dakota gasped and jerked backward, stumbling over a line of chairs and falling to the floor. Distantly she heard people scrambling to help; her full attention was on the voice filling her head. It was no longer her father's voice.

  That is a fun little side effect of her blood, isn’t it? The spellwork holding some of the more awful things in your brain back unraveled when she healed you. I bet having to put up with you reliving all that was a surprise for her. She knew you were messed up before, but to actually see it.

  God, what she must think of you now.

  Dakota gripped her head and rolled on to her side, drawing her knees to her chest. "Shut up!"

  There were people everywhere, crowding her and making it hard to breathe. They were talking to her but she couldn’t hear them and the voice inside at the same time. And the internal one was pressing harder than it ever had before.

  I know everything you know, you blonde headed bitch. I know everything you don’t like to admit about her and that night. What you fear? You are right. She doesn’t want to be around you, no one does, and you are just a means to an end to the archmage and his little army. You're limited use, Dakota. What do you think he's going to do with you once he has real agents helping him?

  Desperate, Dakota tried to force it down. She could do that sometimes when the mania got to be too much — her father taught her how to focus away from it.

  I’m not going away, Clark. I’m coming for you like I did those other agents … after I get what I need from Callie.

  At that mention, Dakota’s power roared to life for her defense. One of the bystanders around her had touched her shoulder to see if she was okay and received a shock hard enough to knock him backward. Arcs of red and white power crackled around her.

  Circle training, her father’s actual instructions, took over and she wrestled control over her mind back from the voice. The crowd had backed away; if it wasn't before security was on its way now. No one wanted to get too close to a mage. The bystander she’d shocked was the recipient of sympathy now — Dakota spared him a quick glance as she climbed to her feet to make sure she hadn’t killed him. He was still moving.

  Miles Addison was long gone and that was fine with her. Dakota knew she had bigger problems to worry about than completing her twelve steps.

  She stalked through the crowd, willing it to part with a perceptible charge crackling through the air. "Who the fuck are you?" she demanded.

  The voice laughed. Your conscience.

  Avoiding two guards walking her way, Dakota ducked into a group of people heading for the entrance. No alarms had sounded yet and she had to get out before panic at having a wild mage on the loose set in.

  "I don’t have one," she said.

  An image of Callie's face hovering over her when she woke up underneath the stars flashed vividly through her mind. The same confusion and terror she felt in that instant slammed into her gut like a physical blow.

  Maybe you do now?

  She refused to let herself get distracted by thoughts of Callie Wood.

  "I said, who are you?"

  The voice seemed more real, as though whispered directly into her ear. Aw don’t you remember me? I remember you, Dakota. I had years to think of nothing but your face when you pulled that trigger and called those men to cart my body away. You should have killed me that day because I’m coming for you now. I’m coming for all you Circle whores.

  Dakota hit sunlight and didn’t slow. She walked quickly back to her car.

  Another memory came back to her, less vividly than before and she couldn’t be sure if it was from her own mind or the voice. One of her early assignments for The Circle, a hunt they sent her on alone, that went badly. He fought back, caught her unaware, and forced her to draw on him.

  The cleaners took care of the body, still alive despite the bad head wound, and removed all trace of her having been in his house. Her father had been furious. Her control was better than that, her mastery better than most, and if she had used her natural talents instead of a mundane human weapon The Circle wouldn’t have lost an asset in Nicholas Kane.

  The voice was silent, not giving her anything to confirm her suspicions.

  Dakota thought hard. The cleaners had taken him to one of their medical facilities — it was standard practice. But which one? How could she be sure he was still a vegetable?

  She reached her car, climbed in, and immediately turned the key. Dakota needed to move, to get away as fast as possible. Police cars were pulling into the lot when she left. She didn’t look back.

  Dakota drove without direction for a long time. Edginess buzzed underneath her skin, making her worried the voice would return and at the same time wishing that it would. She needed more information or at the very least help.

  She had just learned she was on the target list, right after Callie.

  Callie.

  She was far outside Baltimore’s city proper when she finally sighed and reached for her phone. It only took entering the area code for his number to fill itself in and connect this time. Smart phone in more ways than one.

  A young woman answered. "Agent Clark?"

  "Put your boyfriend on." Dakota switched the phone to speaker and tossed it on the passenger seat.

  "Did you find another?" he asked after a few moments.

  "Access your stolen Circle files," Dakota said without preamble. "I need to know the location of an incapacitated asset named Nicholas Kane. Search back as far as you can — I need to know everything that happened to him from the moment I shot him."

  "You—?"

  "Now." Dakota noticed she was traveling twenty miles over the speed limit and forced herself to slow down.

  He was silent for a full minute while he read through the files, searching and letting the data come back to him. "He was checked out of St. Juliana’s by family members two years ago."

  "I need names and addresses."

  Another beat. "They are fake. Nothing in tax records matching those names in New York or New Jersey."

  Dakota cursed softly. "I need to find him. Right now. He’s dangerous with a capital D and he just told me that he’s responsible for killing Circle agents. You know what I need her to do."

  "She — wait, slow down, he told you?!"

  "Yeah, we just had a little mental chat."

  "Mental?" Dakota heard him mumble aloud as he read further into Nicholas’s file. "Agent Clark, I don't know if Katie could even help find him."

  "I don’t care what sort of crisis of magic she’s having, we both need—"

 
"He's a spirit channeler," he reminded her. "And if he just contacted you from a distance then I want to know more of how his power works before even attempting to have her search for him."

  "Hey, this is more important than—"

  "No." His tone suddenly took on that of an archmage and not just a friendly voice offering help. She remembered that this wasn't the first time he'd directed orders to another mage and had proven more than capable to leading a magical fight. "If he can follow the trace back he could hollow her out, Dakota. I'm not risking that without knowing more. Let me do some research ... it will be up to Katie. Even if it is safe, I can't promise she will help."

  Perfect. Just fucking perfect.

  Dakota drove without really seeing the road. What she had to do was slowly settling over her and making her guts twist.

  "Agent Clark? Dakota, are you still there?"

  "Yeah." She sighed. "Send me Callie’s location."

  ✽✽✽

  Nicholas merrily skipped from Dakota’s mind and launched himself back toward his other asset in the same area.

  He didn’t bother hiding his presence this time. His will bore straight through John Holman’s mind, feeling memories and personality wrap around him as he went deep.

  John. Nicholas let his voice vibrate through Holman’s hurt psyche. I need you to do something for me, John.

  Through the other man’s ears, Nicholas could hear yelling and confusion. John wasn’t like Clark, he wasn’t used to voices talking to him in his head. He also wasn’t a fun project like Clark so he didn’t get the same pass of kid gloves.

  Nicholas let his ability take control and shoved away free will. He began weaving instructions, giving him a mental image of Desmond and where to meet him, and what he wanted with his power.

  "No," what was left of the man John Holman mumbled as it faded, "I don’t use it. No more. The suits came, tried to make me forget, and now I don’t."

  Yes, you do, my poor friend. You’ll use it because I tell you to.