by Dean Murray
As I worried at one of the clear threads inside of my mind, she interrupted my thoughts. "You've found my probes. You know you can't win, that I can read your thoughts as you have them. Give up, take me down to your friend, to Ben, and I'll heal him in return for you letting me go."
She was right. In that instant she knew me better than anyone else…and she knew me not at all.
I couldn't hope to destroy her network of probes, I knew that. They were too extensive and I was too tired, so I didn't even try.
Instead I grabbed a single thread and thrust it at my beast. I forced her to see what had invaded our mind, forced her to see past the camouflage that had hidden them from her. My beast went crazy. She ripped through the probes with a speed I never could have hoped to match on my own, and she showed the kind of animal cunning that sometimes defeats even the brightest intellect.
She didn't try to destroy the network of threads from the inside out, she went along the inside of our mental wall and cut them off even with the wall. She pulled them up by the root and left what remained to wither and die.
The vampire sensed my actions as soon as I started them, but it didn't do her any good. She attacked, lunging forward with a speed and grace that was greater even than what the twins had demonstrated, but knowing what I was going to do wasn't sufficient to overcome my even greater speed.
If I'd attacked her, moving towards her in an attempt to kill her, then I would have been spitted like a pig. Instead I backed away from her, springing backwards so hard that I sailed through the doorway behind me and shattered the sheetrock of the corridor wall.
The vampire knew I'd been committed to retreating. She'd thrown herself forward with every ounce of speed she possessed. Under normal circumstances it wouldn't have been out of line for her to commit so strongly to an attack because she would have known what I was going to do in plenty of time to foil any attack I might launch.
This time was different though because my beast had thrown her out of my mind. I bounced off of the corridor wall and moved forward myself, dodging slightly to the side as I advanced. I could feel her pressing on my mind, furiously trying to work her way back in so that she'd once again have the upper hand. My beast was still doing the best she could to keep the vampire out, but the parasite's efforts were almost sufficient.
The vampire brought her sword around, aiming her sword at the center of my chest, the spot where I was going to be. It was a remarkable display of mentalist power, but it was too little and much, much too late.
I swept the point of her sword out and down, so that it took me through the stomach, and then slashed her across the chest with the claws of my right hand. She collapsed to the ground as her sword dropped from hands too weak to hold it.
"Why? I could have healed him. Without me he'll die."
"I can tell when I'm being lied to. You aren't thousands of years old and you weren't as omnipotent as you wanted me to believe. You pulled a lot out of my mind, but you didn't know that I'll live for another three hundred years."
She was having a hard time talking around the blood leaking out of her mouth, but my hearing was still good enough to make out what she was saying.
"Something so small…you were ready to give up everything for him."
"I still am. I wasn't before, but I am now. I'd give up everything for him, but only if I know that my sacrifice will pay off. I couldn't have guaranteed that you were going to help him. You had the upper hand and we both knew it. You had to die and I'll just have to take my chances that Rachel will come through for me."
Chapter 6
Jasmin Bianchi
Near the corner of Nassau and Liberty
Manhattan, New York
Once all the vampires were dead I went back to Ben and found to my relief that he was unharmed. I texted Alec and then gathered up our stuff and carried Ben out into the darkness outside. The text to Alec was probably a waste of time, but somebody needed to know that I was leaving behind a massive problem. Alec didn't have the resources to scrub the hostel clean, but the Coun'hij did. It was a long shot, but maintaining the cloak of secrecy that had protected us from humans and vampires was the one thing that the Coun'hij had demonstrated a commitment to over the years.
I moved us to a very pricy, very exclusive hotel. It meant that I only had a few days before my money would run out, but it also guaranteed a level of privacy and security that I wasn't going to find anywhere else in the city. I expected to hear from Rachel the next day, but almost forty-eight hours passed before she contacted me.
Go to Nassau Street by yourself. Look for the red neon circle.
By the time her text arrived, my injuries from the fight were almost completely healed, which was the only thing that allowed me to keep control of my beast. If I'd still been weak and hurt, my beast probably would have shifted us into a hybrid and destroyed half the room. I maintained control, but that didn't mean that I liked the order, didn't mean that I was willing to go on letting her do this to me indefinitely.
I saw to Ben before I left, hanging a new IV bag from the golden light fixture above the bed and brushing his hair back so that it wouldn't be in his eyes. He seemed to sleep better that way.
I hung the 'do not disturb' sign on the door and started down towards 25th Street. It took me an hour and a half to find the spot Rachel had been talking about. The red neon circle was barely an inch across, practically hidden behind a window display in the store where it was located. I was debating whether or not to go inside the store when Rachel called me.
"Hi, Jasmin."
"Hi, Rach, more wild goose chases?"
"That depends on you, it always has."
I expected my beast to be unruly, but instead I just felt tired. It had started raining a few minutes before, a light, freezing drizzle, and I wanted nothing so much as to just go back to the hotel and curl up on the bed next to Ben.
"Whatever. Just tell me what you want me to do so I can get it over with and go back to Ben. He doesn't have much longer. I should be spending this time with him rather than running around doing your dirty work."
"Tell me about the hostel."
I snorted. "I suspected that was more of your handiwork."
"Not my handiwork, no more than a gentle nudge to make sure that you were there to stop them."
"You already know everything you need to, then. I killed them, nearly getting killed myself in the process, and then we left."
Rachel was silent for a few seconds and then she sighed. "I know some, but not all. I know what happened, but not how you felt."
"Pain. I felt a lot of pain. That happens when you get stabbed."
"Is that the only pain you felt?"
It took a couple of tries to get my voice working. "No, that wasn't the only pain."
"Why don't you tell me about that?"
I wanted to tell her that it wasn't any of her business, but I forced the beginning of anger back down where it wouldn't explode, at least not yet, and leaned against the window behind me.
"They were a bunch of vampires, a bunch of worthless, bloodsucking parasites, but you already know that. There was this mentalist, a pretty powerful one. She said that she could save Ben, that she could reverse whatever the vampires he was working for had done to him. She said that there weren't very many vampires strong enough to save him, but that she could."
"Did you believe her?"
"Yeah, it only makes sense, at least the bit about a mentalist being able to save him. A mentalist messed him up, it only stands that another mentalist might be able to fix him."
There was something about Rachel's voice, it almost seemed like I was talking to another person for a minute. "That's very logical, Jasmin. Logic can be a harsh mistress though, it doesn't have any room for exceptions or mercy."
"Whatever. Are we done now?"
"No, not quite. You said just now that Ben doesn't have much time left. She wasn't able to help him?"
"I don't know if she could have helped him. I ki
lled her a few seconds after she offered to heal him."
"Because she was a vampire? I thought you were ready to do whatever it took to save Ben."
"Yes, I killed her because she was a vampire, but not for the reason you mean. I couldn't trust her. For all I knew if I let her close enough to work on Ben she would have just made him worse."
"So you would have let her live? You would have taken responsibility for all of the blood she would have shed if you let her go? You would have spared her?"
I felt like a traitor to my own kind, but Rachel kept saying that she needed more proof that I was ready to go however far it took to save Ben.
"Yes, damn it. I would have let her live if I'd been able to guarantee that she would fix him in exchange. I would have traded however many faceless, anonymous people it took in order to keep him alive."
"So you're saying that not all lives are equally valuable?"
I closed my eyes and nodded even though I knew she couldn't see the gesture.
"Yes, is that what you want to hear?"
"Honestly? I'm not sure. I guess I can see both sides of that particular argument right now."
My patience was exhausted, just like my body. I turned and started down the road, heading back to the hotel.
"Where are you going, Jasmin?"
I didn't bother asking how she knew I was moving.
"I'm headed back to Ben. I don't need to be standing here in the rain to play twenty questions with you. We can do that just as well if I'm warm and dry in my hotel room."
"You're right, we could talk just as easily there, but you can't save Ben from there. Geoffrey's in the building you were just standing in front of."
It was suddenly hard to breathe. It took everything I had to manage a response to her. "You're not screwing around with me again?"
"No, he's really there, and you're going to break him out in a few minutes."
"Break him out? He's captive?"
"Yes, he's being held against his will…by vampires."
My stomach clenched tight at the word. Vampires…I'd killed vampires already once in this city. I'd walked away without any kind of serious wound, but it had been a closer fight than almost any other I'd ever had.
"How many?"
"That's not important, Jasmin. It doesn't matter how many there are there, you're going to win him free, I've seen it."
I took a deep breath and then nodded. "How will I know when I've found him?"
"He's the only one there who's chained and bound."
"Okay, which suite is he in? I'll go to him now."
"No, not quite yet, it's not time yet." There was a pause, almost like Rachel was consulting notes or something. "He's on the twenty-third floor, in Suite A."
"Suite A, on the twenty-third floor, okay. What else do I need to know?"
"In a few minutes you're going to see a woman in a red dress walk by, you need to follow her. She'll go to an elevator, but you don't want the same elevator as she takes, you want the next one over. You'll know it's the right one because it will open at the same time as hers."
My mind felt like it was simultaneously reeling in shock and hyper-focused. Every single word she was saying engraved itself on my mind in fire.
"Your elevator will have a vampire on it. He's headed towards Suite A. Follow him, but make it look like you're going to go past him to another suite. As soon as he opens the door to Suite A, kill him."
"Is that all?"
"No, you need to kill everyone there but Geoffrey. It's very important that none of them survive, even the ones who aren't vampires."
The world swayed slightly. I closed my eyes to keep from throwing up. "I'm going to have to kill humans too?"
"Yes. They aren't any more innocent than the vampires. They know what they are working for, at least a little bit. They need to die or else you'll have an execution crew after you before you can make it back to the hotel. In hybrid form the evidence you leave will look like the attack was done by a werewolf, but if there are any eyewitnesses they'll know that they were up against something else."
"Okay, I'll do it."
"Jasmin, this is the most important part. You have to make sure that Geoffrey survives. No matter how badly you get hurt, you can't afford to lose control and let your beast kill him."
"How badly am I going to get hurt?"
"Does it matter? I thought you were willing to pay any price to save Ben."
My breath caught, but I still managed a response. "You're right, all that matters is that I survive so that I can get this Geoffrey guy back to Ben. You've seen how this all ends up, so I don't need to worry."
"I never said that, Jasmin. Even in those instances when you can see things, it doesn't mean that there isn't anything to fear. The man who saw the truck coming at the last second is just as dead as the man who never even saw it before he was killed."
Rachel hung up on me before I could say anything else. I called her back. I wanted to demand an explanation, but she didn't answer and before I could try again, I saw the woman in the red dress.
I wrapped my trench coat tighter around me and then followed her inside, trying to look casual. The stately building, fully of marble and mirrors, reeked of vampires. It was so bad that the stench burned as it traveled through my nose and down into my lungs.
The stainless-steel elevator doors opened exactly at the same time, just like Rachel had said, and I got into the second elevator. I'd never seen such a big elevator, and by the time the doors closed it was so full that I almost felt like I couldn't breathe.
The certainty I'd felt at the start of the conversation with Rachel evaporated as I considered her last statement. I knew Rachel better than almost anyone else. She'd been warning me there at the end. She hadn't wanted to lie to me, but she also hadn't wanted to tell me the whole truth.
There was no way for me to prove it, but I suddenly knew that she couldn't see everything. Her vision was infinitely more powerful than Kristin's dreams, but it was still somehow limited, still somehow constrained such that she didn't know how the next few minutes would go. She'd talked in absolutes—the woman in the red dress, the elevators opening at the same time. She'd acted like she was reading from a script, but that was an illusion.
I fought to keep my pulse steady. It was ludicrous to worry about something so small—the fight at the hostel had proved that the vampire hearing wasn't as sharp as shape shifter hearing, and even if he could hear my heart hammering away inside of my chest he wouldn't be able to pick me out of the crowd as the person who was scared out of her mind. It was silly, but that didn't stop me from doing my best to keep my breathing steady and any trace of concern off of my face.
I might die, but I couldn't control that, all I could control right now was the small things. Breathing, keeping a smile on my face, those were the things that were inside my power right now. I just prayed that I wouldn't have to kill any of my fellow passengers.
That was when I realized just how far gone I was. Killing humans on nothing more than Rachel's word that they weren't innocent, that they knew what they were involved in, was bad enough. Killing innocents who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time was the kind of thing that I'd always despised the Coun'hij for doing.
I would still despise the action, even if it was me that did it, but I was finally ready to kill anyone who got in my way. I would save Ben regardless of the cost, the only question was whether or not I'd be successful. The question of whether or not I'd be able to look him in the eye once this was all over didn't even enter into it, not yet. I'd rather have Ben alive and hating me than see him dead. If that happened then the fact that my hands were clean wouldn't save me from the despair I'd felt stalking me for weeks now.
We made it all the way up to the twentieth floor and without losing much in the way of passengers. A trickle of people got off on the twenty-first, but not enough to make a real difference. I'd nearly resigned myself to the impending murders, but everyone else got off on the
twenty-second floor, leaving me with the vampire, a gaunt-looking man, dressed all in black, who made my skin crawl.
A couple of seconds later the elevator slowed and the doors slid open. I could hear Rachel's warning thrumming inside of my head.
I needed to make sure that he thought I was going somewhere else. I slipped out of my trench coat and fished my phone out of my pocket, walking the same direction as him as I pretended to be looking up an address.
The door to Suite A was a large metal affair that was only a few steps from the elevator. The vampire pushed a button and looked at the camera as though expecting to be buzzed through. I spun slowly in place as though trying to figure out which hall led to wherever it was I needed to be going.
I caught the vampire looking at me out of the corner of my eye, but he seemed to have dismissed me as any kind of threat. He stepped closer to the buzzer, entered a code on the number pad next to it, and then slid his finger across a biometric sensor.
As the door clicked with the emotionless sound of a remote unlock, I struck. I'd pulled my trench coat off because I hadn't wanted to walk back to the hotel wearing nothing more than my ha'bit, but I hadn't come up with a solution that would let me save my shoes.
I stepped into the vampire as my beast ripped free of the chains I'd placed around her. My massive hybrid body hit him hard enough to make sure that the door wouldn't shut and lock us back out, and my right hand tore into his back, killing him before he'd even realized that I was anything other than the harmless girl I'd worked so hard to look like.
Just inside of the door was a security booth, but for whatever reason it was empty. I let the corpse drop off of my right hand even as I shook my trench coat off of my left arm. There was a huge, obscenely heavy bookcase across from the security booth. I tipped it over, using it to hold the door shut and ensure that nobody would be able to leave, and then I stalked forward into the suite of rooms.
The stink of vampires was too strong to pick out individual scents, human or otherwise, but that was a blessing. I tore through a blur of bodies and tried not to notice any of the myriad signs that would have told me whether a given victim was human.
