by Dean Murray
Trapped as he was dangling from my improvised weapon, it was only the work of another second or two and then he was dead as well.
I shifted back down to my primary form and made my halting way back to my car. I was sorry to give up the unassailable constitution of the hybrid, but the act of shifting helped staunch most of the blood pouring out of my shoulder. Besides, I knew I was going to need hands if I was going to get myself bandaged up.
There was a first-aid kit in the trunk along with more clothes and a replacement ha'bit, the stretchy undergarment that all of the Sanctuary pack wore under their clothes. I had vague plans to steal the plates off of the SUV before lighting it on fire and heading to the gas station that was a few miles down the road, but all of that could wait for a few minutes.
The first thing I needed to do was check on Ben. He was the only reason I was out here instead of safely with the rest of the pack. If Ben wasn't okay then all of this was pointless.
Chapter 2
Geoffrey
South Side
Chicago, Illinois
Geoffrey had been wandering more or less aimlessly for days now, but there weren't very many chances to see the kind of gorgeous architecture present at the Holy Name Cathedral. Since he'd left New York he hadn't stopped in any one place for more than twenty-four hours. Sometimes he'd stretched his stay out in a particular city to a few days by moving around and spending each night in a different hotel or hostel, but even that left him feeling vaguely uneasy.
The trip he'd taken earlier that morning to see the cathedral had been a worrisome departure from the low profile he'd been maintaining, but he hadn't been able to resist. He'd gone heavily disguised and he'd stayed for less than an hour, but it had still been a foolish thing to do. It was one more sign that on some level he was losing hope of being able to maintain his freedom.
It had only been a few days ago that he'd finally realized what had been worrying at his mind. He'd left New York, fled from Imastious, the vampire elder who'd been his master, but he'd never actually expected to make it very far.
That kind of thing could very easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Conviction that he would shortly be recaptured could lead to making the kinds of mistakes that led to being located. Geoffrey knew that, but he still hadn't been able to stop himself from making the unnecessary trip to the church.
He needed a new anchor, something to keep him from slowly giving into the despair waiting in the wings, the despair that needed only a couple of heartbeats to rise up and strike him without any warning.
Geoffrey's memory only extended back over a period of time measured in weeks rather than months. He knew a lot of facts, he knew how to do things, but there wasn't any context for much of what he knew. The popular culture references that the kids in the hostels threw back and forth at each other might as well have been code for all the meaning Geoffrey got from eavesdropping.
The only non-mundane conversations that had made any sense to Geoffrey had been the discussions on morality. It had been astonishing to him how many of them said that they were 'spiritual' while at the same time decrying concepts like good and evil.
Geoffrey spent the odd minute or two wondering how kids like that were going to survive in a world where evil was so prevalent and concentrated that it had created people like Imastious. Geoffrey still woke up sometimes in the middle of the night from nightmares where Imastious was torturing him, nightmares where Geoffrey was being pushed to do terrible things.
It was the kind of thing that should have made him bitter. He was pretty sure that it would only be a matter of days, or perhaps a couple of weeks, before Imastious caught up with him, but he found that he wasn't as jealous of the kids around him as he'd expected to be.
In many ways Geoffrey had earned his place in hell. All that was left was to hope that the teenagers who'd surrounded him like an ever-changing sea of faces ever since he'd left New York would be able to find their moral absolutes in time to save them from a fate like his.
The despair wasn't his only concern though. The hunger had been steadily growing for the last few days. It was dangerous for a vampire to go too long without feeding, dangerous both for the vampire and for any humans in the vampire's vicinity.
Geoffrey hadn't wanted to believe Venice, the gorgeous blonde vampire who'd taught him nearly everything he knew about living in the shadows, when she'd told him that blood starvation could cause him to lose control and kill people indiscriminately, but he hadn't been able to deny the truth of her words after his one and only experience with the hallucinations that had led to the death of an anonymous mugger weeks ago.
Geoffrey hadn't pushed the limits of his endurance very often like this since then, so he didn't know exactly how much longer he had before he'd lose control, but he suspected that his time was almost done. Fortunately he had a…target…in mind.
He'd noticed the couple when he'd first arrived at the hostel earlier that evening. The young man was obviously deep in the throes of an oxycontin addiction, but not so far gone as to make his girlfriend abandon him.
A few minutes earlier Geoffrey had watched the drama play out in one of the public areas of the hostel as the boy had promised he didn't have any drugs and then had snuck off to get high as soon as the girl had left to use the bathroom.
Geoffrey intercepted the girl before she made it far enough down the hall to be able to see her boyfriend who'd just stumbled back in from the kitchen area.
"Do you really care about that guy you are with?"
A barrage of emotions flashed across the girl's face so quickly that anyone else wouldn't have been able to categorize them all, but Geoffrey had an advantage that others lacked. Tendrils of thought had started reaching out to the girl as soon as she'd left the bathroom.
She reached up to slide a lock of black hair back behind her right ear and then her face settled into an impassive mask. The expression was the hard-won trophy of the kind of life no parent would want for their child, but her emotions all but leaped out of her mind and threw themselves at Geoffrey. She didn't just love the guy she was with in the casual, here-today-and-gone-tomorrow manner of most of those he'd run into lately, she loved him with a fierceness that caused Geoffrey's breath to catch.
By almost any rational measure it wasn't healthy to be that attached to another person, but there was a purity and strength to the emotion that had a beauty all of its own. The emotion was at the forefront for only a split second before other feelings took center-stage.
"Yeah, I guess I do. I must to put up with everything he puts me through."
The words were a brave front, but Geoffrey could feel the longing she wouldn't vocalize. She saw goodness in her boyfriend that she'd never found in anyone else, not in so much abundance, and she'd made it her personal mission to try to drag him back from the edge of ruin, even if he came kicking and screaming.
"What would you say if I told you I could help?"
"I'd ask you what your angle was. Nobody does something without having something in it for them."
"That's a pretty jaded worldview…"
She didn't want to tell Geoffrey her name, but he sent a tiny pulse of power through one of the tendrils he'd inserted into her mind. It wasn't enough to compel her to do anything, but it did soften the hard core of resistance that he sensed inside of her.
"Aly. My name is Aly."
"Okay, Aly, that's a pretty jaded world view, but I'm not going to try and dispute the fact that I'm hoping for a trade of sorts. Is your boyfriend really worth saving?"
"Keith, his name is Keith and he's all I have left in the whole world. He's tried not to use. He made it for an entire month a little while ago. We moved out of our old neighborhood, but eventually his dealer tracked him down."
She was fighting the hope he could feel building inside of her, but her strength was too brittle to successfully quash all of what she was feeling.
"I won't be able to help him if he doesn't really want to change, but if h
e does then I can make it so that he won't ever go back to the drugs again."
Her laugh had an edge of hysteria to it. "You must not be very good at conning people. Don't you know that you're supposed to promise to fix him no matter what?"
Geoffrey gave her a smile that he was pretty sure was tinged with more sadness than he meant it to be. "I could promise that, but it wouldn't be the truth. I'm only offering to do what I'm really capable of delivering on."
"Right, payments in advance, no refunds given."
Her melting determination, her softening core, had given Geoffrey the access he needed to skim off some of the surface thoughts he otherwise would have been unable to access while still carrying on a conversation.
"Your favorite color is yellow, but you haven't worn it since you first caught Keith using. You had a canary named Sunshine when you were little, and I remind you of…your butler."
Aly opened her mouth, doubtlessly to ask him how he knew all of that, but Geoffrey didn't give her a chance to interrupt him.
"I'm going to make you say springtime now. You're going to try to stop yourself, but you won't be able to."
Even as he said it, Geoffrey poured some more of his precious reserves into a surge of power along the tendril that he'd lodged into her speech center.
"So what, you're some kind of springtime hypno…"
Under other circumstances her expression would have made Geoffrey laugh. She looked like someone who wanted with all her heart to believe. The hope that she'd been doing her best to keep in check had just surged through her like the crescendo of a world-class orchestra.
"No springtime way…how are you doing that? I meant to swear, but the wrong word keeps coming out. I can feel it on the edge of my mind. Every time I go to say…well, you know, springtime pops out instead."
"What I do is better than hypnosis, but it still has limits. Do you believe me now?"
She nodded, not like someone who was unable to speak, but like someone who was worried that speech would shatter the illusion and wake her from a dream.
"What do you want? What is your price? We…we don't have any money."
"What would having Keith back be worth to you? What would you be willing to give up in order to have things be like they used to?"
"Anything."
Geoffrey's emotions surged up in a tidal wave that nearly cracked his composure. He was so adept at interpreting other people's emotions, but sometimes it was all but impossible to properly categorize his own.
Relief was certainly a huge component, but it was more than just that. He'd sworn never to feed from someone unwillingly again, but a part of him knew that what he was doing wasn't any better than abducting Aly in the dead of night and tearing the side of her throat open. She was so obsessed with Keith that she wasn't fully capable of making the decision Geoffrey was offering her. Despite all of his efforts, Geoffrey wasn't sure that he was all that much better than Imastious.
"Are you sure? Anything?"
Another nod and this time Geoffrey couldn't have missed the certainty washing through her mind. She was imagining the worst possible things she could think of and yet she was still willing to pay that price if it was what Geoffrey demanded.
"I can't promise to fix him, it all depends on whether or not he really wants help. Are you still willing to pay anything for just the chance that he'll come back to you?"
"Not death, and I don't want to be a cripple. If there is a chance that this won't work then I'll need to be around to take care of him. Beyond that whatever you want is yours."
Geoffrey had been planning on asking her if she was the kind of person who took her promises seriously, but there wasn't any need. He could feel her commitment surging through the tendrils connecting their minds. She'd already risked everything she was or could become on a promise to Keith, this was just an extension of that original promise.
"We'll need privacy; do the two of you have a room?"
Aly nodded and went as though to pick Keith up. Geoffrey slung Keith's other arm over his shoulder and a couple of minutes later the pair had safely deposited Keith on the bed in a small white-walled bedroom one floor down from where Geoffrey would be sleeping.
"I'm going to close my eyes for a few minutes, it's important that you don't disturb me while I'm working."
Aly nodded. "I understand."
Geoffrey took a deep breath and then closed his eyes and inserted a mental probe into the front of Keith's head. Hours of practice paid off as Geoffrey strengthened the probe, forcing it to a thickness that made it seem as though his mind broke free of his body and traveled down the probe and into Keith's mind.
Geoffrey hadn't been sure what to expect from deep contact with the mind of this particular kind of addict. He'd expected to find a torrent of destructive energy, all directed inward, he hadn't expected to find that the torrent had been frozen into motionless suspension by the drugs coursing through Keith's system.
Swimming downward through the surface levels of Keith's mind was a new experience as well. His thoughts didn't actively resist Geoffrey's efforts to go deeper, but there was a stickiness to them that left Geoffrey feeling like he was being coated with an unpleasant residue.
Geoffrey's reserves of strength weren't what they should have been. He'd known that before setting out, but he hadn't realized just how depleted he was from the combination of being on the run and the blood starvation. The realization triggered a wave of almost panic, but Geoffrey was disciplined enough to keep the emotion from leaking into Keith's psyche and he was experienced enough to know that once he was this deep there was no course open to him but continuing to dive deeper.
He would either have the strength to make it to the seat of Keith's reason, the metaphorical eye of the storm, or he wouldn't, but turning back now would just guarantee his destruction.
Just as Geoffrey became convinced that he'd misjudged, that he wouldn't have sufficient strength to arrive at his destination, he brushed up against something hard, something unyielding, the only unyielding thing he'd yet found in the sticky sea surrounding him.
Matching his essence to the barrier was more difficult than usual. The same stickiness he'd noticed in Keith's thoughts was also present in the barrier, but eventually Geoffrey was able to pass through the barrier and into the calm center of Keith's mind.
As always, Geoffrey was astonished at the way the thoughts and beliefs in the center of Keith's mind formed a coherent, beautiful latticework of glowing crystal. Aly had been right, there was an incredible amount of goodness in what presented itself to Geoffrey. Keith was a person who had great creative capacity, but there was a black fissure running through one side of the arrangement of light and glass.
The beliefs and habits located here in the center of Keith's being had only minimal ties to the memories outside of the room, but Geoffrey still got vague impressions of a soul-crushing loss that had happened at some point in Keith's past. There was just enough to that thread for Geoffrey to formulate a plan for fixing the flaw he was examining.
As always, creating constructs inside of this place was a heady but difficult experience. The mental commands and impulses Geoffrey was leaving would have a staying power exponentially longer than anything he could do on the surface of Keith's mind, but it was hard to work simultaneously with thoughts and emotions all the while seeing the fruits of his labor visualize as part of the living forest of crystal before him.
Even working here in the near-absolute calm that made what he was doing possible, Geoffrey still knew that he wouldn't be able to fix everything that needed to be fixed before he ran out of strength. He arrived at a compromise as he was working, a compromise that felt right even though he had no way of being sure that it would work.
Creating an aversion to the drugs that were ruining Keith's life was easy. That construct was equal parts aversion to poking himself with needles and a healthy fear of the long-term effects of what the drugs were doing to his body.
If Geoffrey had be
en able to stop there he would have returned to his own body still with a large portion of his energy reserves intact. Unfortunately that was nothing more than a short-term fix. Unless Geoffrey could correct the underlying problems Keith would just find a different way to self-destruct.
Geoffrey laid out a series of patches designed to hold the damaged part of Keith's mind together. An acceptance that loss was part of life, that without the bad parts of life the good parts wouldn't be quite as good, was one glowing shard that connected the two halves of Keith's psyche and then contracted to pull the edges back together.
An ability to forgive himself, a deeper understanding of what his actions were doing to those around him, especially Aly, a desire to interact with others, the constructs sprang into existence one after another and stitched themselves into the fabric of Keith's beliefs like life-saving sutures.
Looking at the clean vista around him, it would have been easy for Geoffrey to believe that he'd solved the problem, but he knew it was still there, a fissure of weakness running underneath the patches that was just waiting to break back open.
Geoffrey marshaled what was left of his strength and sent a single tiny tendril of thought back out into the sludge of Keith's thoughts. He'd never tried this particular experiment before, but it seemed to be working. Geoffrey let his probe skitter from thought to thought, memory to memory, until he finally found what he thought was the key.
Keith had lost someone important, but it wasn't just anyone, it had been someone very similar to Aly. The similarities had been a blessing at the start of his relationship with Aly, but as time had gone on they'd become a curse. Their relationship had progressed to the point where Keith should have told her about the other girl, the girl Aly reminded him of, but he hadn't been able to bring himself to tell her precisely because of how much she reminded him of what he'd lost.
