I rolled across the lawn, lashing out with Neural Disruption energy in the direction I had detected the movement. Another bullet hit the ground near me. I still hadn’t heard a shot. I tried to identify where my assailants were, but no luck. Their shields were strong and tight. Vague empathic impressions leaked through, but I couldn’t use those to locate anyone.
On the other hand, if I couldn’t detect anyone, there wouldn’t be any innocent bystanders to hurt.
I lashed out again, feeding real power to the Neural Disruption stream. Then I pulled my air shield back up my arms to free my hands. Neural energy will penetrate an air shield, but fire won’t. I let loose a fireball into the air and it lit the scene.
A body lay on the lawn. Another man fired a gun with a silencer on the barrel. The bullet hit my air shield right in front of my face. I flinched, instinct causing me to throw myself backward. I shot another fireball in his direction but missed.
I rolled to my feet and saw him race around the corner of the building. I scanned the area for others, but saw no one else. Cautiously, I followed the running man. By the time I rounded the building, he had jumped into a car and driven away, spinning tires lifting a cloud of dirt and gravel.
I heard steps approaching behind me and whirled, a fireball blazing on my palm. Just in time, I realized it was Edwin.
“Damn! I almost fried you!” I cried, putting out the fireball.
A faint grin crossed his face. “I’d have been all right if that’s all you threw at me. I’m air shielded.”
I drew a deep breath, turning to look at the taillights fading into the distance. There would be no tracing it. It didn’t have a license plate.
We walked back to the man lying on the grass. He was definitely dead. Holding two pistols, Davin knelt over him. I put a hand on the man’s head. There was nothing to read there. The way he died had burned out every nerve in his body, leaving no psychic residue behind.
“We were right behind you when you parked your car,” Davin said. “They were waiting for you, and it happened so fast we couldn’t get here in time to help.”
“Did you see his face?” I asked. “The man who ran?”
Davin shook his head.
“Only a glance,” Edwin said. “When you lit things up, I caught a glance before he turned away. I’m not sure I could recognize him again.”
“Show me,” I said. I received the image he sent me. I ran through the pictures O’Donnell had given me. It might be one of them, but I couldn’t be sure.
Davin rifled through the man’s pockets, pulled a passport from one and handed it to Edwin.
“We need to get him out of here,” Edwin said. Davin nodded and moved to grab the corpse under his arms.
“Where are you going to take him?” I asked.
“We’ll carry him down a couple of blocks and dump him in a rubbish bin,” Edwin said.
The adrenaline was wearing off and I felt tired.
“You just walk beside him. Hold his arms like he’s drunk and you’re helping him,” I said. Using Telekinesis, I lifted the dead man upright. He stood there like a rag doll, head lolling.
“I’ll be damned,” Davin breathed.
We set out, truly looking like a group that should have stopped drinking several hours earlier. I suspended the dead man with his feet an inch or so above the pavement. Davin held one arm, Edwin the other. We found a large bin a couple of blocks down and I lifted him into it.
Back in my flat, Davin pulled out everything he had taken from the man’s pockets and put it on the kitchen table. Edwin tossed the passport in.
“German?” I said as I picked it up. “I figured it would be one of Gordon’s men.”
“Probably von Ebersberg’s Clan,” Edwin said. “Gordon’s people are either in O’Donnell’s custody or on the run. O’Donnell is conducting a manhunt throughout the country.”
“What are they doing with those they catch?” I asked. There hadn’t been a war between telepaths in my lifetime. During the Silent War, atrocities had been committed on both sides. We are far closer to our savage ancestors than humans are.
He didn’t answer me.
“You’ll have to ask O’Donnell,” Davin said. “It’s not something we’re privy to.”
~~~
Chapter 14
I contacted Nigel Richardson the following morning.
*We found a silver Volkswagen at a train station,* he sent, after listening to the story of my evening. *It matches the description of the car you saw last night, including not having license plates. A man bought a ticket to Paris at that station using a German passport for identification.*
*Have you found Donald Carpenter?* I asked.
*No, we haven’t. He flew to Paris last night.*
*Well, I guess I’m headed back to Paris. Thanks for the information, Nigel.*
*Rhiannon, be careful. The situation is chaotic at the moment.*
Richardson obviously had a gift for understatement. I packed a bag and contacted Mum. I figured I’d use her place as a base of operations. It would be safer than a hotel. Goddess help anyone who tried to attack me there. The old thing about a she-bear with cubs kind of thing. I’m not entirely sure what I inherited from my father, but my strength came from Mum. And she could be a right bitch if the mood took her.
I wasn’t sure what to do about the twins, but I’d had no luck shaking them so far. With a mental shrug, I went downstairs and stepped out on the front porch. I stumbled on something and pitched forward, catching myself with my free hand. I caught a glimpse of Mrs. Smyth’s newspaper on the porch.
A bullet hit the door behind me. I threw up an air shield just as a spray of bullets from an automatic weapon tracked across the porch, at least two hitting my shield. A car with the engine running was parked on the street. Gun barrels poked out of both windows on my side.
I dived off the porch, rolling on the grass and coming to my feet shooting neural energy at the car. One of the guns, a mini-submachine gun, fell silent and clattered on the sidewalk. With squealing tires, the car lurched forward.
And then Edwin was on the street behind it, aiming a pistol with both hands. He squeezed off shot after shot at the car. I could see a silencer on the barrel of the large revolver, so there was little sound. The back window, and then the windscreen, blew out. I saw a bullet hole appear on the car’s boot. A damn big hole. I wondered what kind of cannon he was carrying.
The car swerved, then sideswiped several cars parked on the street, jumped the curb and hit a tree. A man staggered out and fell on the ground. Another man jumped out of the window on the other side and ran away from the scene. Davin took off after him, dodging traffic and leaping over a hedge.
I beat down the shields of the man on the ground and captured his mind. It wasn’t hard. He was bleeding from his shoulder and back. As Edwin and I approached the car, we could see two men still inside. The driver’s head looked like a pumpkin that had been hit with a sledgehammer. The other man was staring at infinity. He was still breathing, and his body shuddered with small convulsions. I tried to enter his mind, but it was gone. Two weeks ago, I had never killed anyone.
Edwin entered the wounded man’s mind and found me already there.
*Get what you want quickly,* he sent. *This was very noisy and there are people coming out of their houses.*
I felt a flash of pain, coming from his mind through our link.
*Davin’s been shot,* he sent.
I jumped up and started to run in the direction Davin had gone.
*Nay, I’ll go to him. You need to get your bag and make yourself scarce. The area will be swarming with coppers in a few minutes. Blur every mind you can touch. We don’t need people remembering you were here.* He pushed me toward my building, then took off at a run in the opposite direction.
He was right. In some parts of London, gunshots would be a reason to duck low. But in this neighborhood, people were looking out of windows. Some had come out of their houses and were approaching
the car.
I put all my mental effort into blurring memories of the twins and me. I grabbed my bag from the porch, walked around back and stashed it in my car. Dozens of people had witnessed some part of the attack. I couldn’t be sure I’d be able to wipe my presence from all of them.
*I have Davin,* Edwin sent. *Can you pick us up?*
I drove three streets over and stopped as they jumped in the car.
“How badly is he hurt?” I asked.
“Bloody stupid!” Davin replied. “It’s not bad.”
“He needs a Healer,” Edwin said.
I turned to look as I pulled out into traffic. Edwin was taking a bandage out of a pouch at his belt. Davin’s right arm was covered in blood.
*Monica?* I sent. *Are you available? I need a Healer right now.*
*Yes,* a calm mental voice came back. *What did you do to yourself this time?*
*It’s not me. A friend of mine took a bullet. A Protector.*
*I’m at the office,* she sent back. *Give me twenty minutes and meet me at my house. Where was he shot? Does he need a surgeon?*
“Edwin, where was he shot? Does he need a surgeon?” I asked.
“Upper right arm. I think a standard Healer can deal with it,” he said.
“It’s just a bloody scratch,” Davin said.
I glanced in my rear view mirror and met Edwin’s eyes. The worry I saw there told me it was more than a scratch.
*Monica, it seems to be just the upper right arm.*
*All right. See you in a few,* she answered.
~~~
It turned out that the small caliber bullet had not done a lot of damage, but it had cracked the bone.
“How did you get so bloody careless?” Edwin raged at his brother. “You knew they were armed.”
“You’re lucky it was just a .32,” I said. “Considering the firepower they were using, I’d have expected he’d at least be carrying a Glock.”
“It wasn’t a he,” Davin said, lying back on the daybed where Monica had put him. “No man has an arse like that. I guess I kind of relaxed a bit when I realized I was chasing a woman.”
I thought back to the scene. With some time to sort it all out, I realized the person who ran did seem rather short. She’d been wearing jeans, a long-sleeve T-shirt and a baseball cap. I’d just assumed it was a man.
“So who were they?” Edwin asked. “More Germans?”
“No,” I said. “Some of Gordon’s lot. The man we left bleeding on the street was Donald Carpenter. Someone Nigel Richardson told me had left the country.”
With Davin ordered to rest in bed for the next day or two, and Edwin worried about him, I slipped out of Monica’s house and walked to the nearest bus stop. Two hours later, I was on the train to Paris.
~~~
On the train, I sorted through what I knew and what I didn’t know. I hadn’t had much time in Donald Carpenter’s mind, and he was dying. But some things stood out.
Carpenter thought that I was his brother’s killer. Who had told him that, I hadn’t picked up. David had left Myrna with Donald, then gone to Paris to meet with the men who killed him. David had fallen hard for the girl, and meant to tell the men in Paris that she was no longer for sale. Obviously, that hadn’t worked out well.
Donald was afraid of Gordon’s reaction if he found out David hadn’t sold the girl as ordered. Lord Gordon had paid a pretty penny to Brendan O’Driscoll for the girl, and expected millions of euros for her in Paris. Donald didn’t think Gordon would understand David’s infatuation.
So as soon as David left Oxford, Donald took a flight to Paris, arrived before David, and sold Myrna. That still didn’t explain why someone decided to kill David.
And who told Donald about me? Who told the Germans about me? It came down to only three logical possibilities.
O’Driscoll saw me with Morrighan just before we busted his operation in Dublin. He could have told Gordon or others about me. That struck me as the least likely scenario. I had also gone in and out of O’Donnell headquarters in London several times. To think that Gordon’s men didn’t have the place under surveillance would be naive.
The third possibility was that someone inside O’Donnell was a spy. For whom, it wouldn’t matter.
The last one bothered me the most. It meant I couldn’t rely on Nigel Richardson. I doubted he was a spy. No one in his or her right mind would betray Seamus O’Donnell. But it could be someone Richardson trusted.
~~~
Among the tidbits I’d gleaned from Donald Carpenter’s mind was a list of places in Paris where he met his contacts. Pubs, restaurants, massage parlors and resorts were all on the list. He seemed to enjoy the telepathic nightlife in the open city.
As I was getting ready to go out, Mum took my arm and led me to the sofa. She sat and pulled me down next to her.
“Rhi, I know you feel you can take care of yourself. But I want you to be very careful. If these people are kidnapping women, you need to consider that you might be a target for them as well.”
“Yeah, I know, Mum. I’ll be careful.”
“Rhi, you try to pretend your looks don’t matter. But you would sell for a huge amount of money in most markets. There are courtesans in this town who command six figures for a night, and you’re better looking than any of them. A trafficker could probably get millions selling you into China or Japan.”
I found this conversation very irritating. “Mum, ever since I took this case, people seem to feel the need to tell me what I look like. Goddess, I’m not blind and I do own a mirror. Of all my faults, false modesty isn’t one of them. I can’t walk down a street in London without someone offering me a modeling contract. And if one more idiot tells me I could be the greatest porn star of all time, I’m going to puke on him.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather be pretty than plain. I know how I look, and I know how to use it to my advantage when I want to. But it’s not what I’m about.” Her expression hadn’t changed a bit.
“Okay, Mum, I’ll be careful,” I finished with a sigh.
“Just see that you do.” She hugged me and kissed my cheek, then pushed me away. “Go on now. And be careful.”
~~~
The first place I hit was in Montmartre near Pigalle. Mum told me the area had gone downhill in recent years. I walked in and everyone turned to look at me. Pimps and whores, a lot of them past their best years. The smell of tobacco and hashish hung in the air. I didn’t sense a telepath in the place, and quickly backed out. If this was a place where Donald Carpenter hung out, I wasn’t impressed with his idea of class.
My next destination was a dungeon deeper in the Pigalle district. As I walked through Pigalle Place, I broadcast aversion to keep from being accosted. Any woman walking alone in this area automatically was considered either a hooker or a customer.
I found the address. It was a three-story building dating from the mid-eighteen hundreds. A dozen limos were parked in a vacant lot next to it. The drivers were standing around talking, looking bored. One group was in the back of a stretch limo playing cards. All the drivers were telepaths, and several turned to watch me. Obviously, their customers didn’t take the chance of walking to the place.
Next to the front door was an arrow, pointing that the entrance was around the corner. A small sign beside the door facing the parking lot said Abandonner l'Espoir, Abandon Hope. Very encouraging. I rang the bell and waited a minute. A man with a shaved head, almost as broad as he was tall, answered. He looked me up and down, brushed my shields, smiled and stood aside so I could enter.
With very little fanfare or small talk, he asked if I’d been there before, then showed me to a co-ed locker room where I could leave my clothes and belongings in a combination-coded locker. I asked if I could have a tour first, and kept my clothes on. We passed bodies concealed in the darkened nooks. I didn't really want to look. I was able to tell what was going on from the emotions.
There were private rooms, he explained, along with a couples-o
nly room. We cut through an empty dim-lit room with elevated platforms, like mock beds, covered with what looked like wrestling mats. We turned the corner on our way to the pool and hot tub area.
In the back room, young men were swimming naked in the pool. All three hot tubs were occupied with people relaxing and talking. At the front of the room was a bar, flanked by cabana beds and a billiards table.
We climbed a set of stairs to the next level. Various types of apparatus were occupied by people doing various types of things to each other. There was another bar, and watching the action from a stool was a female sex slave in a leather-studded corset that covered her stomach and rib cage, leaving her petite breasts exposed. Knee-high boots and a collar with a leash completed her ensemble.
The third level matched some of my ideas of hell. Whipping, cutting, electric cattle prods, and other torture devices were in use. The victims were both men and women. I heard one of the women shout “yellow” in German, and her tormentor immediately stopped what he was doing, rushed to her, and began stroking her and saying soothing things. She relaxed and smiled and cuddled up to him.
Okay. If I hadn’t known it before, I was able to confirm that I’m definitely old-fashioned vanilla. In spite of the pheromones in the air and the pleasure blasts going off on all three levels, my sexual arousal measured on the minus side of the scale.
As far as I could tell, all of the people I’d seen were willing participants. I didn’t see anyone with the blank-eyed, emotionless faces characteristic of the girls we had rescued. I’d only seen a couple of succubi. Both were torturing men, one with a whip, and I didn’t look very closely at what the other was doing.
I thanked my guide and told him it wasn’t my cup of tea. He looked disappointed, but was gracious and allowed me to leave without a fuss. Gratefully breathing the polluted Parisian air outside on the sidewalk, I hoped I wasn’t scarred for life.
I caught the metro down to the Latin Quarter. The next place on my list, according to Mum, was very popular with the young telepathic party crowd. Excès Dans Toutes les Choses translated to Excess in All Things. There wasn’t any sign outside, just a door on a side street. I opened it and walked into a small foyer.
Broken Dolls: An Urban Fantasy (The Telepathic Clans Saga Book 3) Page 12
