by Bianca D'Arc
He couldn’t even reach out to Jana with his telepathy. Kol held Darak’s Talent in check as easily as he held his body in mid-motion. Darak couldn’t even speak. He was caught, with no visible recourse. And he couldn’t warn Jana.
She walked in from the outside, her scarf still tight around her head, and stopped short as she took in the scene.
“Kol,” she whispered, dropping the bucket she had taken from the well. Water sloshed over the sides.
“Ah, my little Jana. I’ve missed you.”
Kol’s voice was oily smooth. Repulsive. Jana remembered it well. So much had come back to her about the past in the last few days. She had almost all of it now, and what she still didn’t remember, she could piece together from the Plectaran reports when she got back to the Circe.
If she got back to the Circe.
Somehow, Kol must have sensed her intrusion into the collective and come here to pre-empt her. She wasn’t as ready as she would’ve liked to have been, but perhaps, this was for the best. Kol had apparently come alone. She hadn’t sensed anyone outside—and she had been checking.
The puppet master could have fooled her, but any minds he brought with him should have been detectable. Which meant, he was probably here on his own. Cut off from the collective, as was his usual style. Operating on his own, using all the power of the collective that was still at his disposal through the tiny shard of crystal in his palm, but not sharing his own mind with the other puppet masters who together were the Voice.
“How did you find me?” she whispered into the quiet of the chamber, buying time as she figured out how to play this out.
“I had your memories of this place from when you were a child,” Kol said unexpectedly. “I knew if you ever came back to Mithrak, you would probably not be able to resist visiting this shrine to the lost ways of your people. This place draws our kind and always has. It is a natural place of power, which is why we could never destroy it completely—no matter how hard we tried. But we made it work to our advantage. We’ve had sensors on the gate since we claimed Mithrak for the collective. We knew about you and your sister long before we culled you. I watched you grow and wanted you for my own.” He licked his disgusting dark blue lips as she remembered his many cruelties.
“I’ve tracked many others in this tower since you were taken. They come here, betray themselves by being drawn here, and I get their images sent directly to my files. I make note of them, and on my next trip through—if they are old enough—I take them for the collective,” he went on. “So, when you got here last night and the sensor at the gate sent me your image, I had to come see for myself if it really was you. The scarf hid your pretty face, but I saw enough to make me believe my little Jana had finally come home.”
His smile sickened her. But maybe there was a way to play this to her advantage?
“I’m not really your little Jana anymore, am I, Kol?” she asked in a purring sort of voice as she moved slowly toward him.
Kol’s hand was still outstretched, the crystal sliver in his palm glinting as it focused the collective’s power on Darak, keeping him immobile. Kol’s eyes followed her movements, his expression one of greedy avarice as he watched her body move. She felt dirty just from the look he was giving her, but she had to brazen it out. Darak’s life—her life—and a whole lot more was riding on the next few minutes.
She had to think. If Kol didn’t realize she had been messing around with the crystals in her body and spying on him from inside the collective, then she might just have an ace in the hole. If he expected her to be the same as she’d been before, he had another think coming.
And, if he’d only seen her with the scarf covering her face, she had a little surprise for him…
“You’re still as gorgeous as you ever were. A little thinner, perhaps, but that’s an improvement,” Kol had the audacity to say.
“I’m thin because I almost died, Kol,” she reminded him. “Didn’t you wonder what happened to me after the battle over Liata?”
He frowned. “You weren’t disfigured, were you? Is that why you hide behind that scarf?” He actually looked as if he’d be repulsed if she revealed scars. The superficial bastard.
She moved closer, trying to position herself at the proper angle. When she struck, she would have to get it right the first time. There would be no do-overs.
“I was disfigured,” she said in a small voice, pretending a meekness that didn’t suit her true personality.
It wasn’t sympathy she saw in his eyes, but disappointment. The sick bastard only cared about her as his plaything. He didn’t care about her, at all.
“We can get you fixed,” he said after a moment’s consideration. “I’ll find the best cosmetic surgeons in the collective and make you even prettier than you were before.”
“Why?” She stopped. She was close enough and, if she had calculated correctly, at just the right position. “So you can rape me again?”
Kol’s anger was quick to follow her words. “What I choose to do with you is none of your concern. I will get a child on you, and it will rule the collective one day.”
So, that was his sick plan. She should have known. Kol always wanted power. He didn’t care if it came at the expense of others.
She had no doubt he wanted his child to be the ruler of the collective. Not because he would love the child and wanted it to do well. No, this was all about Kol and what he wanted. He saw his child as a stepping stone to his own increase in power and influence.
The bastard.
So she lied, wanting to see him twist.
“I can’t have children,” she said in a flat voice. “I was too badly injured. They had to take some pieces out.”
“That won’t do at all,” he was quick to say in an angry tone. At that point, she wasn’t sure Kol was entirely sane. His eyes were wild.
“It’s okay. I got other pieces in return.” She was aiming to confuse him, and it seemed to be working. Confounding the power-hungry puppet master was easier than she had thought it would be.
“What are you talking about?” he demanded, clearly agitated.
His focus had shifted from Darak to her. She had his undivided attention, though Darak was still held immobile. He wouldn’t be released from Kol’s amplified telekinesis unless something much more drastic happened to Kol.
And she was just the woman to make that happen.
“Did anyone tell you what exactly happened to me above Liata?” she asked instead of answering his question.
“The control crystal failed. It must have been flawed,” he spat out.
“It didn’t just fail, Kol,” she informed him. “It blew up. In my face.” She tore away the scarf and let the light filtering into the room from the holes in the ceiling sparkle off the many shards of crystal embedded around her right eye and down her cheek.
Kol gasped, his eyes growing wide with fear. Good. She wanted to see that look on his face for the few minutes he had left to live.
“I’ve been looking for a way to get these sparklies out of my skin, but they don’t seem to want to go.” She took off her riding gloves, one finger at a time, revealing the gems stuck into her right hand and holding them up to the light. “They’re kind of pretty, but also a bit of a nuisance. Don’t you think?”
“You can’t take them out,” Kol babbled. “Once implanted, the crystal will never come out. How did you survive having so much? It’s easy to overload…” He trailed off as if realizing he was speaking secrets he should not be talking about.
“Is that why you only have that tiny sliver?” She taunted him while she systematically isolated him from the collective, first in small ways, and then enveloping him entirely within her shielding that allowed only what she wanted to pass in or out. At the moment, she let nothing out, though she still allowed Kol the illusion of receiving power from the collective so he wouldn’t realize the noose was already around his neck until it was much, much too late.
“It’s not tiny. It’s the larges
t of anyone’s except the grand master,” he claimed, like a child boasting after he’d received an insult.
Jana hadn’t realized there even was a grand master among the puppet masters of the collective, but it made sense. Someone had to be pulling all the strings to keep the others in line. Though, apparently Kol was one of the more important of the puppet masters.
“That’s interesting,” she said, nodding. “But what would he make of my new jewelry? I assure you, there are much larger chunks, but they’re in places on my body that only my lover will ever see. And that’s not you, Kol,” she said pointedly. “You were my rapist. My lover is someone I fuck because I want to, not because I’ve been tied down and forced.”
“You liked it,” Kol argued. “You wanted me.”
“Sorry, no.” She shook her head and tried to be cool, even though she was shaking inside.
She wanted to kill this bastard with her bare hands, but she needed the information in his mind. He knew things about the collective that the Council needed to know if the collective was ever going to be stopped. And the more she saw of what she had once been forced to endure, the more she vowed to make it her life’s work to stop the collective and free all those trapped minds and souls.
“You disgust me, Kol. You’re an animal, despite all your efforts to pretend to be civilized.”
He raised his hand to her, and she felt the tickle of his power, but it was no match for her. With the stones in her body, she could pull power from the collective, if she wanted to—but she was rapidly discovering there was another, much stronger source of power closer at hand.
The tower was a place of power, and that power was coming at her request, filling her to overflowing and allowing her to shape it to her will. Right now, her will was to freeze Kol with her telekinesis—which had never been her strongest Talent—as Kol had frozen Darak.
Kol gaped as he discovered he couldn’t move. Jana smiled.
The next thing was to free Darak. A simple snip of Kol’s telekinetic line that had led to Darak, and he was free. She noted Darak moving behind her, but her focus had to stay on Kol, for now. She was enjoying this, but she wouldn’t be cruel. She would get whatever information she could from the man before she decided his fate.
Before she’d wanted him dead, but now that she knew she could control him, she was beginning to think about taking him prisoner and bringing him back to Geneth Mar. Surely, there were people there who could discover all his secrets and use them against the collective much more effectively than she could do alone.
But, while she had him in her power, she wanted to get as much information as possible. Depending on what happened next, she might not get another crack at him. The planet was still crawling with the collective’s troops and Talents. Any number of things could go wrong. She had to do what she could to learn more while she still had the clear advantage.
Kol seemed to know a lot about the crystals. She needed to know more, since they were apparently going to be a permanent part of her.
“Tell me about my pretty jewelry, Kol,” she said in a deceptively idle tone as she lifted her hand to the light, watching the crystal sparkle. “Do you think it’s going to kill me in the end?
Kol seemed entranced by the dance of light off her crystals, following the pinpoints of light with his black eyes.
“I don’t know how you managed to survive so much,” he breathed. Jana hid her smile. “Even the grandmaster only has a single gem. It’s larger than all of ours combined, but it’s still just one. You’ve got…how many?”
“There are too many slivers to make an accurate count,” Jana replied, wanting to keep him talking. “But I know there are at least four or five that would equal ten karats or more.”
“Ten!” Kol exclaimed. “The grand master’s is only one karat. Mine is two-tenths, but only because I claimed it myself, in the mines. The others only get a tenth or less.”
“How many others, Kol?” she asked calmly. “How many puppet masters rule the collective?”
His face shuttered, as if he suddenly realized he was talking about things he shouldn’t mention. She could compel him to talk—she could even invade his mind and take all his memories—but she didn’t want to sink to his level.
“Where are the mines?” Darak asked. Released from Kol’s hold, he now stood behind the blue man. It looked like ready Darak was ready to jump Kol if he made the slightest move toward Jana.
But Kol wasn’t going anywhere. She had him in her hold, and she wasn’t letting go for anything.
Not surprisingly, Kol refused to answer Darak’s question. Jana knew this information was critical. The crystal was what gave the puppet masters of the collective power. Without it, they could never control so many minds.
“Is that where you used to go on all those secret trips?” Jana asked. “Are you the mine master? Is that the job your brothers left to you? Digging in the dirt for rocks while they live in palaces of gold?”
“It’s not like that,” Kol’s pride seemed to force him to say. “The mine master is the most trusted position.”
Jana laughed. “Is that what they told you?” She took off her cloak, revealing a few more of the gems in her arm and going down her neck. The rest were hidden by the various layers of her clothing.
She watched Kol’s reaction to her crystals. He was staring, and the sight of the larger crystals seemed to entrance him. Perhaps enough to be tricked into revealing vital information? She would have to test her theory and find out.
“I think they are using you, Kol. They make you find the crystals that they use to control everyone else. If you showed a little initiative, you could choke off the supply and keep it all for yourself. You could be grand master, Kol. If you control the crystal, you control the collective.”
His eyes bulged as the thoughts ran through his mind. Something was going on in there, and she was very much afraid she was going to have to enter his mind to find out the truth. She didn’t want to go in there, but she feared it would end up being the only way to get the information they needed in time.
Kol would be missed sooner rather than later. He’d come here alone, she was certain, but his guards were nearby and would look for him when he didn’t return. They didn’t have all day to do this.
“I am lord of the crystal planet!” Kol suddenly cried out, his body going rigid.
Jana and Darak both moved forward. Kol was having a fit of some kind, moving violently, even against Jana’s telekinetic hold.
“He might be programmed,” Darak said as he met Jana’s gaze. “That grand master of his probably inserted a pain command if Kol started thinking too independently.”
Jana frowned. She’d never heard of such a thing, but knew it probably was feasible given the crystals and the way they focused power.
“What should we do?” she asked Darak, Kol’s shuddering body in the yards between them.
“If there’s a failsafe, go in fast and take whatever you can get,” he advised.
“I don’t know if I can. I don’t want to go into his mind.”
“You’re the only one who can, Jana. His crystal blocks all my probes,” Darak admitted. “We need what he knows.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Jana realized the truth of Darak’s words. The crystals weren’t just for focusing power; they also made the user nearly impervious to outside attack, which is why she’d carried one as leader of the armada. Certain trusted leaders within the collective were given the scepters when they were on important missions. Each of the scepters was tightly controlled because of the power it represented—both the power to rule other minds and to be safe from psy attack while wielding it.
She focused again on Kol as his pain seemed to subside. She had to work fast, and she had to ask the right questions. She knew what Darak had meant by failsafe. If Kol could be programmed to feel pain at independent thought about taking over the collective from the grand master, then other commands could have been implanted—much more fatal command
s. If she triggered one of those, she’d have to harvest what was left of Kol’s mind before he died.
Grim. But necessary.
She had no love lost for Kol. Up until a few minutes ago, she thought for sure she was going to kill him herself, with her bare hands if necessary. But she had come to realize he was more valuable as a prisoner—if he survived the programming the shadowy grand master seemed to have put in place.
Kol would probably die, anyway, but at least she wouldn’t bear the sole responsibility for it. The grand master had killed him as soon as he put those commands into Kol’s mind. Jana would be the one to trigger them, so she did bear some responsibility, but she could live with that if it meant they could free others from the collective and possibly stop its advance.
She had to be cautious with her questions, but she also had to get the information. She thought carefully about what she would ask.
“Where is the crystal planet?” she asked finally.
“None of your business.” Kol frowned and looked to be in pain again, this time, not as bad as before.
“Who works in the mines?” she asked, trying a different tack.
“Nobody,” Kol spit out.
“Bots?” she mused. “I’ve never heard of any mining operation that didn’t have at least a few organic minds running things, even if the heavy lifting was done by bots. So, tell me, Kol, who does the collective trust enough to have work in their crystal mines?”
“Me,” he boasted, clearly triggering a pain response. “Just me!”
“Try again.” She looked at him with disdain, and he bristled.
“You can’t do this to me! I am your master!”
“Gee, uh… Let me check.” She looked at the ceiling, rolled her eyes a bit and then looked back at Kol. “Nope. I have no master. Not anymore. And, yes, it does appear I can do this to you.” She tightened her hold so that he couldn’t move a muscle, letting him know in no uncertain terms that she was the master now.
Then, she relaxed it a bit, allowing him to speak and make small movements. Her control was fine, and she knew from prior experience that Kol himself didn’t have that kind of finesse. His eyes widened as he realized her power.
