by Jade Kerrion
If he was ever going to trust Danyael, it was now. “We watch and wait,” Alex decided. He laced his fingers under his chin. “Our sensors should be able to home in on his location if he exercises his powers. We’ve got people all around the US. We can get a team to him if the situation calls for it.”
“Not a good call, Alex,” Seth warned.
They had been colleagues long enough for Alex not to feel offended or threatened by the feedback. More importantly, he was certain enough of his decision not to change his mind. “We give Danyael a chance. It’s the least he deserves after what we allowed the Mutant Assault Group to put him through.”
“Do you trust his training will hold?”
That was the real question, wasn’t it? “I trust Danyael,” Alex said simply.
Only after he hung up did he realize he had not answered the question at all.
~*~
“And so the hunt begins.” General Kieran Howard, commander of the Mutant Assault Group, stared at the picture on the screen. Danyael Sabre, yet not Danyael. The differences were subtle and would have been invisible to the untrained eye: the pale blond hair slightly longer, the intense gaze in the dark eyes strong and direct, the chiseled features as flawless as a sculpture, smooth skin unscarred.
The weary loss of innocence did not taint him. The subtle pulse of irresistible power did not emanate from him. Galahad was perfect where Danyael was not and impotent where Danyael was powerful.
“Do we know where he is?” the general asked.
“No, sir,” the clean-shaven lieutenant replied. He was human, one of many who served as storm troopers for the mutants who led the assault teams. “There was a reported sighting in New York City, but our early analysis suggests that it might have been Danyael Sabre instead.”
“Does the government even know that they’re looking for someone who has a physically identical twin who just so happens to be an alpha empath?”
The corner of the lieutenant’s mouth twitched. “The FBI warrant makes no mention of it, sir.”
“Ignorant, careless, or deliberate?”
“They are likely ignorant, sir. Knowingly sending unwitting humans up against an alpha empath would expose the FBI to a massive lawsuit from local law enforcement agencies.”
It was a truly terrible thing to be ignorant about.
The lieutenant waited patiently, and when no response seemed forthcoming, he asked, “Shall we advise them about Danyael Sabre, sir?”
“And get in the way of all that fun? Of course not.” Kieran chuckled softly. “The ones who do know are also keeping quiet. Like them, we’ll watch and wait.”
“Should we put all teams on notice to look out for Galahad?”
Kieran stared at the picture of Galahad. Kieran had absolutely no interest in the “perfect human being,” who had recently escaped from Pioneer Laboratories, but there were possibilities for using Galahad as a conduit to his real target. He swiveled his chair around to gaze at the large screen on the far wall, covered with the faces of the alpha mutants, recruitment targets for the Mutant Assault Group.
Among them was Danyael Sabre, fragile yet resilient, and completely out of the general’s reach. Danyael was council trained and unflaggingly faithful to the council’s principles. He had never stepped out of line, not once. He had never deliberately hurt a human.
Then again, Danyael had never before been placed under such intense pressure.
The general had been waiting patiently—and futilely—for Danyael to crack. A chance like that may never head his way again. Three pillars supported Danyael’s sanity: the solace he found in his calling as a healer, his faith in the council, and his friendship with Lucien. No question, Danyael’s faith in the council had been shaken. If the general destroyed the other two pillars as well, who knew how great would be Danyael’s fall?
In falling, Danyael would rise. Broken, he would mend. Danyael would become everything he was truly meant to be—powerful.
General Kieran Howard smiled faintly and turned around to look at his aide. “Get Tim Brown in here. I have a special project for him.”
CHAPTER SIX
The shrill ringing of the cell phone woke Zara from a fitful sleep. She snatched it off the bedside table. “What is it?”
“Found it,” Xin announced, too cheerfully for Zara’s taste. “Oh, and good morning.”
With the cell phone pressed against her ear, Zara rolled over in the bed and glared at the digital clock on the table. “It’s eight already? Took you long enough.”
“I held off on calling you. Didn’t think you would appreciate a call at three in the morning.”
“Who were they?”
“My best guess? A*STAR.”
Zara sat upright in bed. “What?”
“Well, you were on contract to deliver genetic samples from Galahad. When you didn’t show, and the fun and games started in Washington, D.C., they probably figured you were screwing with them. Which, in all fairness, you were.”
“Get them off my back, Xin.”
“What do you want me to do? Call the Immigration Department and have them deported for misusing their tourist and diplomatic visas?”
“All those federal connections you have should be worth something, right?”
“Right. They keep me from getting arrested for colluding with a known mercenary and assassin, that’s what. I think you need to get Danyael back to Lucien. This is getting completely out of hand. You’ve got the American government after Danyael, whom they think is Galahad, the Singaporean government after you for reneging on your deal with them, and you’re going to piss off Lucien in the process. Bad idea, Zara. Profoundly bad ideas. In plural.”
“I’m paid to make successes out of bad ideas.”
“Really? That’s news to me, because in the past week or so, you’ve done a better job at being the generator of bad ideas.”
“Call it job security. Generate bad ideas, and then get paid by others to get out of them.” Zara swung her feet over the side of the bed. “How many agents does A*STAR have in the US?”
“In theory, none. In practice, who knows? They’re not in the habit of getting involved in activities that get people killed, at least not in a way that makes the evening news. The Singaporeans have too much subtlety and class for that. The mere fact that they managed to trace you to Danyael’s apartment and were waiting for you with weapons tells me that you’re in brand new territory here. If they’re that grumpy with you, there’s no telling how far they will go to retrieve what they believe is their property.”
“I promised them a genetic sample, not Galahad. I intend to keep Galahad safe.”
“That doesn’t mean sacrificing Danyael. Danyael’s safety and Galahad’s safety aren’t mutually exclusive.”
“When did you become a member of Danyael’s fan club?”
“I’m not, but none of this is his fault, Zara. Don’t lose sight of that. You started this mess when you freed Galahad from Pioneer Labs.”
Zara scowled. “I didn’t know that Danyael was Galahad’s physical template, and I didn’t set the abominations free.”
“No, none of this is your fault, of course.” Xin’s voice dripped sarcasm. “It’s Roland Rakehell’s fault for using his own son as Galahad’s template. It’s Jason Rakehell’s fault that his pro-humanists broke into Pioneer Labs to kill Galahad, freeing the abominations in the process. And it’s the abominations’ fault that Carlos died.”
“Danyael could have healed him, but he chose not to.”
“Danyael tried.”
Zara slammed her hand on the mattress. “It wasn’t good enough.”
“You really need to cut him more slack.”
“You’re becoming soft in your old age.”
“Hey, I’m barely through my second childhood,” Xin protested with a soft chuckle.
“You don’t have to rub in the fact that you’re the clone of a Chinese queen.”
“Don’t forget high priestess and general.”<
br />
“Start putting those tactical skills to work then. Get A*STAR off my tail. Send them Galahad’s genetic code. You have it on file, don’t you?”
“Do you want me to change anything in it before I send it to them, like tweak around the edges of it so that it’s not actually Galahad’s genetic code?”
Zara scowled. “You sneak, cheat, and lie just to keep in practice, don’t you?”
“Aw, that’s unkind.” Xin chortled, apparently not insulted.
“Just send them the damn thing. Tell them to pay up and to stop hounding me. It’s only been four days since I broke in Pioneer Labs, and I haven’t even had a chance to catch my breath.”
“Fine. I’ll see what I can do with A*STAR. You’re consuming more time than my day job.”
“Hobbies can take up lots of time. Keep me in the loop.”
“Of course,” Xin said before hanging up the phone.
Zara returned to the car at a little past nine in the morning. She released the breath she had not realized she had been holding. Danyael was in there, still fast asleep. She pounded on the car door for several minutes until he awoke. He sat up slowly, blinking sleep from his eyes. She knew when he raised his external psychic shields. He lowered his gaze to conceal the pain flashing through his eyes. His breath caught for a long, difficult moment before easing into a natural rhythm. Only then did he look up and nod at her.
It was safe. Wearing a mocking half-smile, she unlocked the car door with the remote attached to the car key and waved a cardkey under his nose. She stepped around to the trunk of the car, removed his backpack, and tossed it at him. “Want to freshen up before we head out? Room two eleven.”
He caught his backpack. Surprise and gratitude flashed over his face. “Thank you,” he murmured, his voice hoarse from disuse.
By the time he returned to the car in a fresh change of clothes, his pale blond hair still damp from his shower, Zara had enjoyed a quick breakfast at the hotel restaurant. “I want to get moving, so you’ll have to eat along the way. This is for you.” She pushed at him a plastic plate with four slices of toast, several small packets of butter and strawberry jelly, and a plastic knife. “There’s both juice and water, if you want something to wash it down.”
She turned away quickly as he accepted the plate with another whispered thanks. If he was similarly startled by her gesture, she did not want to know it. The surprise in his eyes told her kindness was rare in his life. She did not want to linger over the fact that something in her had ached, however briefly, for him.
She did not want to like him. She had to remember her priorities lay with Galahad and in keeping Galahad safe. She would not allow herself to get distracted.
Danyael was merely a means to the end. The ends would be achieved far more easily if he played along. Kindness was evidently the key to his cooperation. She would not even have to try too hard, not when Danyael seemed conditioned to expect little.
She would just have to find a way to live with the sharp twist of guilt in her gut.
~*~
The morning passed largely in silence. Zara focused on driving, sparing an occasional glance at Danyael to assess his condition. The alpha empath managed half his breakfast before leaning back to rest. For several hours, he drifted in and out of consciousness, apparently struggling with exhaustion and pain. By late afternoon, he seemed a great deal more alert. He sat upright in the seat and reached over his shoulder to massage his neck as he looked around at the featureless stretch of highway. “Where are we?”
She did not answer his question. “Rough day?”
“I’ll be all right.”
Irritation flashed through her. “Do you ever say anything else?”
He looked at his subtly misshapen left hand. “I’ll be all right,” he murmured. “I have to be.”
She spared him a sideway glance. Apparently his annoyingly consistent answer was as much—perhaps even more—for him than for anyone else.
“Try, for novelty sake, to tell me how you really feel right now, as opposed to how you’ll be in the indefinite future.”
To her surprise, he smiled. The easy warmth reached his eyes, briefly infusing his remote beauty with life.
“Let’s try this again,” she said, refocusing on the road. She fought to conceal the fact that she had been momentarily stunned into silence by the power of his smile. “Rough day?”
His smile turned wry. “I guess,” he admitted quietly after several seconds.
“How do you manage to work as a doctor if healing knocks you out for hours at a time?”
“I do most things the conventional way and use empathic healing only when the odds are slim or time is of the essence. Even then, I usually don’t absorb any more than I can realistically work through in about five or six hours of rest.” He shrugged, the motion graceful now that he no longer seemed burdened by extreme pain. “I’m sorry I was out for so long. Your friend didn’t have the luxury of time.”
“So she’s alive. And now what?” Not even her new resolution to win Danyael’s trust with honey instead of vinegar could keep her anger from surging.
With directness she had not expected, he asked, “Why are you angry with me?”
She bit her tongue to hold back the scathing retort. “It doesn’t matter.”
He inhaled deeply. “I don’t recall ever having met Maria or her family. Does this have anything to do with the memories I’m not supposed to have?”
She stared stonily ahead and kept her gaze on the road.
He seemed to accept her silence as agreement. “All right. We’ll let it pass.”
“Like you let everything else pass? Do you ever make a stand?”
“It’s hard to make a stand when I can’t remember what I’m supposed to make a stand for, or against,” he said mildly.
“What about a stand for yourself?”
“Why?”
“Why?” she echoed incredulously, flashing him a quick sideway glance. “Why not? For starters, what were you planning to do with all the emotions you absorbed?”
“I absorbed them?”
“Didn’t you know? Couldn’t you tell?”
“No. Without memories, I can’t differentiate between my own emotions and someone else’s.” He exhaled, a sound of relief. “Thank you,” he murmured under his breath. The gratitude rang out clearly in spite of the quiet tone. “Thank you for telling me.”
“Does it make a difference?”
“More than you can imagine. I was going mad wondering what could have happened to me to warrant feeling this way. But if I’d absorbed them from someone else, it…it makes it a little easier to bear.”
“What were you planning to do with them?” she asked.
“I’ll work through them. Release them if I can. If not, I’ll bury them.”
“What about returning them to the people you absorbed them from?”
“Why would I do that?”
She rolled her eyes. “Exactly, you’ve proven my point. You don’t even make a stand for yourself.”
“This has nothing to do with making a stand. I assume I absorbed the emotions for a reason, most likely because they weren’t doing the then-owners any good.”
“They’re not doing you any good either.”
He laughed softly. “I guess you’re right.” His expression was contemplative, his eyes darkening like shadows set against the night. “Absorbing emotions is the emotional equivalent of ripping memories, only the price paid by the empath is much higher. The telepath doesn’t have to live with the ripped memories, but the empath has to live with the absorbed emotions. I wouldn’t have made that decision lightly, which stands to reason that I wouldn’t back away from it now. Even without memories.”
“Even though you feel like hell.”
“I’ll be all right,” Danyael said. He chucked sheepishly when he realized that he had reverted to his standard reply.
It took effort to suppress the smile. The last thing she wanted was to be charmed
by him.
He turned his face away as if he had sensed her withdrawing. For a long moment, he gazed out of the window before asking, “Where are we going?”
“Away from New York City.”
“Are we headed anywhere in particular?”
“We’ll figure that out. People are looking for you, and they’re not the sort to be easily deterred.”
He did not seem overly alarmed. “If I can change enough of my appearance to not immediately draw their attention, my psychic shields will do the rest.”
“What do your psychic shields do?”
“Which one? The inner or outer shield?”
She glanced briefly at him, her eyes narrowing thoughtfully. She knew her way around telepaths and telekinetics. Most of them could do much of the same things, though the range of their capabilities varied. Empaths were common too, but they were largely weak and ineffectual.
Among the alphas, however, empaths were the rarest. Alpha empaths who required double layers of psychic shielding were out of the scope of her experience. Xin’s analogy of the caged tiger was disturbingly apt. Understand your enemy. “We need to talk.”
~*~
Danyael and Zara stopped for an early dinner in a small restaurant close to an I-95 exit. In a quiet corner booth, they lingered over Chinese food and cups of jasmine tea. Zara began the conversation after they had taken a few bites of the food. “Tell me about your shields.”
Danyael leaned back in his seat, grateful that he could manage a dinner of steamed rice and lightly seasoned vegetables. The rich aroma rising from Zara’s meal tempted him, but he knew better than to push too far, too fast. “I use two layers of psychic shields. The external shields are usually up when I’m conscious. I adjust them to contain the effects of my emotions. If the shields slip, whatever I’m feeling at that time amplifies. The more powerful the emotion, the more extreme the impact on the people around me.”
“Do you ever drop them deliberately?”
“Sometimes. If I’m controlling the emotions of a large group of people, I drop them to get the desired effect, but I need precise control over whatever it is I’m feeling at that time. I can’t afford to make mistakes when the external shields are down.”
