She thought about how his lips tasted, and how his embrace made her feel warm and mushy inside. She longed to have his arms wrapped around her now, to be hugged. Or maybe, she worried, he's not as crazy about me as I am about him.
Galadriel raced in the dawn, her feet pounding the pavement as she took the long climb above Pine Valley, into the trees.
She had wakened to a dream about Bron. In it, she had been in her hospital bed, an IV dripping into her arm, and he had told her, "The human body can be shaped by will. You can choose the figure that you want, then sculpt your muscles and pare away your fat until you choose the exact form you want.
"In fact," he went on, "through will alone you can shape your entire future. You can take control of your destiny."
In the dream, he'd shoved will into her.
She wondered what it would be like to have limitless will. If I could have all I want, what would I shape myself into?
I wonder if there's a way to exercise my will, make it grow more powerful, make it respond to my wishes more forcefully?
She suspected that there was.
She'd never been a runner, but she knew that Bron had done a little racing, and she hoped that someday they might be able to run together.
The sun was still creeping over the bowl of the valley, and a pale blue fog wound along the creeks. The air smelled of bitter juniper and sweet grass. Meadowlarks sang in the tall grass at the roadside.
Galadriel raced with eyes closed, taking long loping strides. A yellow car was driving toward her, but she paid it little mind.
She'd never run this long before. Her mother had warned her that if she ran too far, she'd pay for it tomorrow with aching legs, but for right now, Galadriel was experiencing the joy of her first runner's high.
It was strange, all the energy that coursed through her. She'd never felt anything like it before.
I'm like a little car that has suddenly been given an enormous new engine, she thought. She picked up speed and sprinted with abandon. She wondered if you could make someone love you by will alone.
No, she thought, you can't make them love you. But maybe you can remake yourself into the kind of person they can't resist.
She decided to do just that. It might take a week to win Bron over, or a month or a year.
She imagined Bron just in front of her, and herself calling, "You can run, but you can't hide."
In her imagination, Bron turned back and smiled gamely. She imagined the sweet smell of his musk in the car.
Yummy!
Justin Walton drove past Galadriel in his yellow Mustang and wondered what could cause such a beatific smile. He'd noticed her at school last week. Who wouldn't? She was the gorgeous girl who had gotten into the madrigals on her first audition.
Justin wasn't entirely sure why he was driving into Pine Valley. He was looking for Bron, and he'd heard from his dad that Bron liked to run in the morning.
But Justin could see no sign of the creep.
What would I do if I found him? he wondered. Run him over? Beat him up? Call him names?
Justin had been stewing all week, ever since he'd failed to deck Bron at lunch that day. It would be a shame if Bron got hit by a car some foggy morning, run down from behind.
He glanced into his rearview mirror, watched Galadriel's backside as she ran. She was all curves, sensual and languorous. He admired the way that her hips swayed as she ran, the way that the muscles in her rear bunched, then rolled, and stretched, almost in slow-motion.
Suddenly the car jerked to the right and he hit gravel. He veered hard to the left, flushed with embarrassment, and got all four tires back on the road.
Keep your eyes on the road, he thought. Remember, it's Bron you're after.
Epilogue
Ten thousand miles away, in Vienna Austria, Lucius Chenzhenko opened his eyes.
Around him, more than a hundred memory merchants milled in a congregation, each holding only a part of the vast store of information that made up Lucius Chenzhenko. The last two of them removed their hands from Lucius's skull.
Lucius knew that he was a clone. Experiments in Australia with human cloning had been done in secret as early as 1968, and this new body was the fruit from those experiments. Until now, Lucius had never had need of a new body. He'd always been able to extend his own life.
But Lucius was far more than just a clone—he was a poppet, too. Thus he was an exact duplicate of his previous incarnation in both genetic makeup and in memories and skills.
Adel Todesfall, the head of his security, wearing a fine young cloned body, handed Lucius a cell phone and pressed a button.
On it, a guard stood and took a shaky video of Lucius's enemy. His son. It showed a pathetic young man, secured to a chair, a piece of gray tape slapped across his mouth.
A thickly accented voice said, "This is video of Bron Jones, dream assassin...."
Future Books
In this Series:
Dream Assassin
Draghoul
Shadow Lord
For more information, visit the Nightingale website at www.nightingaleseries.com. Purchase the Enhanced Novel at: www.nightingalenovel.com
To contact the author, email David Farland at [email protected] or visit website at www.davidfarland.com.
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