Driven

by Dean Murray

  Before I could ask him what he meant, Geoffrey walked over to a large floor-to-ceiling cabinet and unlatched it. The man inside of the cabinet was only about five-six and he couldn't have weighed much more than a hundred and ten pounds. If I'd seen him on the street, dressed differently, I probably wouldn't have given him a second look, but here, in a room that was so obviously constructed with the goal of breaking people, his white clothing proclaimed that he was the torturer.

  I didn't have the telepathic advantages that made Geoffrey so dangerous, but even without them I could still practically feel the rage radiating off of him. Geoffrey pulled the little man out of his hiding place and slammed him against the wall.

  "Was she here?"

  "Who, who do you want to know about?"

  The man's voice was a thin, weak thing that cracked at the end of his question. He screamed when Geoffrey spun and threw him down against the table. Moving faster than I'd ever seen him move before, Geoffrey snapped close the oversized metal restraints and then tightened the nylon loops that actually served to hold the tiny man to the table.

  "I'm not going to ask you again. Where is she?"

  "Which she? Which she does the man want to know about?"

  I stepped forward, intending on clarifying Geoffrey's question, but Geoffrey's eyes were already closed and the torturer had started shaking. I'd seen Geoffrey rummage through Jeete's memories, but that had been nothing like this. Jeete had hardly seemed aware of the fact that Geoffrey had been inside of his mind, but the little man's eyes had rolled back into his head and based on the blood leaking out of the side of his mouth, he'd bitten his tongue.

  "Geoffrey, you're pushing too hard!"

  My yell got through, at least enough for him to open his eyes, but it was like looking at a different person. Geoffrey's nose had started to bleed and his eyes had skipped right past bloodshot and gone straight to dark red.

  "Don't interfere or I'll let Ben die and I'll dance on his grave. This worm hurt her, she was here."

  My beast wanted to rip Geoffrey's head off of his shoulders, but I forced her back into her corner. I couldn't afford to cross Geoffrey, not when he was the only one who could save Ben. My claws slid out to full extension and I tore furrows into the steel tabletop, but I forced myself not to take that final step that would have put me within striking range of Geoffrey.

  Two more minutes passed before Geoffrey opened his eyes again and stepped away from the table. "He tortured her. His mind was too brittle, it shattered under the force of my attempts to access his memories, so I didn't get everything, but I know exactly what Puppeteer looks like and I know that Melody was here."

  "Where is she now?"

  Geoffrey wiped away the trickle of blood that was still leaking from his nose. "I don't know. That's one of the pieces that dissolved before I could access it, but he remembers seeing her walk away from him. She escaped somehow."

  "The door."

  His words were so faint that a normal person wouldn't have been able to make them out, but I leaned in closer to the little torturer to be certain that I'd be able to make out what he was saying around the coughs and gasps for air.

  "The door…the key. All shiny and thick like a bank."

  I reached for the closest ankle restraint and flipped the metal cuff open so that I could get at the nylon strap, but Geoffrey stopped me with a glare. I'd never seen him quite this furious before. I held up a calming hand, but I didn't step any closer.

  "We need to let him go or he's going to choke on his own blood."

  "Let him choke. You didn't see what he's guilty of. Death is too kind for someone like him. He's told us everything he's capable of telling us. Let's go find that door, it's close to here, I saw the way there in his memories. Did you get Melody's scent?"

  I wasn't the one who needed to fill my nose with her scent, but now wasn't the time to be telling Geoffrey that. I sucked in a lungful of air and nodded to Sally and Tyler. The scent of iodine was so strong that it even washed out Geoffrey's old-blood smell, but I thought I could make out someone else beneath all of that.

  Tyler didn't look very sure of himself, but Sally gave me an unmistakable nod, so I turned back to Geoffrey and waved him out the door. "Sally has it. I think I can smell it, but it's pretty faint, so we'll follow Sally."

  "Fine, she can go first then. Once we're back out in the corridor, we turn left to find the door he was talking about."

  I nodded in agreement, but once we were back in the hall Sally turned a couple of circles and then whined softly as she looked back the way we came.

  "Sally says that Melody went the other way."

  Geoffrey shrugged as he pushed past us and started down the unexplored section of the corridor. "This door is important somehow. I can't explain it, not completely, but we need to get there and soon."

  Geoffrey led us at something very close to a run, which meant that it took us less than five minutes to make it to the large circular door.

  "It's just like that other vault we found."

  Geoffrey nodded. "I know, which means that it's designed to hold werewolves. The metal straps are designed to hold them when they are in werewolf form, while the rubber compression ring holds them in place when they are in human shape."

  I was astonished that I hadn't seen it myself. "The table in the room where they were keeping Melody had the same kind of mechanism. It used nylon straps instead of those heavy rubber bladders, but the principle is the same. Why would they…"

  Geoffrey cut me off. "They probably have that kind of setup in every spot where they might need to restrain someone. It's not like cost is a consideration for Puppeteer, so it only makes sense to make sure all of his facilities could restrain humans or werewolves."

  Before I could respond, Geoffrey reached up and unlocked the heavy door. It was the last thing I expected him to do, but in hindsight I could see why he might have thought that the werewolves would still be restrained inside of the manacles fasted to the walls. He was wrong though. No sooner did the bars inside the door slide back than the massive plate of metal was hit by the combined mass of three or four werewolves.

  The door flew open with a speed that I wouldn't have believed possible, hitting Geoffrey on the side of the head with enough force that he collapsed like a rag doll. The werewolves that had thrown the door open were all on the ground, stunned from the force of their impact with the door, but others were lined up behind them and the first row jumped over the top of them in order to get at Geoffrey and me.

  I yelled for Sally and the others to run, but instead of joining them, I stepped forward and grabbed Geoffrey's ankle. Without Geoffrey there wasn't any point in going back to Ben.

  I meant to throw Geoffrey over my shoulder, but the first werewolf was too close for that. It was all I could do to tug Geoffrey out of the way of the massive foot that otherwise would have crushed his chest. Then the fight was on.

  I knew I couldn't win, but neither my beast nor I was ready to just give up and let them kill us. I managed to knock the first slash wide and then ducked another one from the werewolf that was next to my main attacker, but the first werewolf was already bringing his hand back around in a backfist and I had almost zero chance of ducking under this blow.

  I dropped down anyway, hoping that I'd be able to get my right hand far enough up to divert the claws headed straight for my head, but then, moving with a speed that left my head spinning, the front three werewolves turned around and started pushing against the flow of werewolves still trying to get out of the vault. It was impossible, but I didn't stay around to wait and see how long it would all last.

  I slung Geoffrey over my shoulder and then started back down the hall at a full sprint.

  Chapter 21

  Jasmin Bianchi

  Sixty miles outside of Fort Loudon State Park

  Tennessee

  I was dreaming. I knew that much, but I couldn't seem to recall anything else. There was something about a big fight on the very edge of
my consciousness, and I had vague memories of running back to a Jeep, but no matter how hard I tried the details just floated away into deep space.

  I'd been worried about someone, someone important, someone who had something to do with Ben, but those details were likewise inaccessible, so instead I took stock of my surroundings. I was underground, in some kind of cave apparently, which felt right on some levels, but wrong on others. The sheer amount of ice was astonishing. I'd heard of ice caves before, but I hadn't ever realized that there could be so much ice associated with them. The cavern I was in was almost as big as a football stadium, and when I looked down at the floor the ice was clear enough for me to see that it was at least three or four feet thick, except that I shouldn't be able to see anything because it should be dark.

  My breath fogged the air in front of me as I bent down and tried to chip away at the ice with my claws. That gave me pause for a second, I couldn't remember shifting forms, and I'd been a human just a second or two before.

  The ice proved impossibly hard, my claws skittered off of it without even leaving a mark, but before I could examine it further I felt the air move behind me and I spun around just in time to avoid losing my head.

  The thing I was fighting was like a werewolf, but bigger, faster and stronger. I ducked away from another slash and suddenly realized that my opponent seemed to be eating the light around us like he was some kind of living shadow.

  I tried to dance away to one side, tried to work my way around so that I could use his own bulk against him, but it was like I was moving through molasses. I was smaller than him, I should be more nimble, but instead I screamed as he sank the claws on his right hand into my chest.

  "I've got an appointment with one of your friends, little wolf, but maybe if you prove to be enough of an entertainment I'll give your friend the night off and just stay here with you instead."

  I got my right leg up between us and jammed it against his chest, blooding him for the first time, but more importantly throwing myself backwards and ripping his claws back out of my chest. Even that seemed to happen in slow motion, and as I hit the ground I looked up to find that my enemy was already waiting for me. He'd crossed the distance between us so quickly that I hadn't even seen him move.

  He slashed down across my leg and I screamed in pain as hot blood splashed out of that wound to join the growing pool beneath me from my chest wound. I rolled back to my feet, ignoring the muted pain signals from my leg, but it was obvious that he was toying with me. I couldn't do anything without him allowing it to happen.

  I'd never been so outmatched before in my life. Even when fighting Alec or Isaac, even when fighting the enforcers that Agony had brought to Sanctuary months ago. I'd never been at such a disadvantage because he was violating the laws of physics, laws that I'd spent my life learning to exploit right up to the ragged edge of what was possible.

  It was a dream, I told myself that again, and again, but it was hard to believe. My injuries hurt, and I couldn't ever remember a dream like this, a dream where I'd experienced pain that hurt even more than it did when I was awake.

  It took everything I had to strengthen that belief as I slowly backed away from the monster in front of me, but I forced my belief into something almost tangible, and as it grew into a certain knowledge I could feel the threads of liquid shadow that were restraining me.

  I reached out and sheared through the dark cocoon surrounding me. It wasn't easy, but my beast woke at the last second and threw her efforts behind mine. I tore my way out and stepped forward into the attack that the monster had just started launching at me.

  He was still fast, but no faster than a normal hybrid and he hadn't been expecting me to move at anything even approaching a normal speed. A thought strengthened my claws, making them even sharper than they were normally, and I tore through ribs and muscle like they weren't even there.

  As the monster went to his knees I took his throat in my claws and shook him. "Who are you?"

  "Don't you know?" The words came out choked and scratchy, but before I could respond he vanished and reappeared behind me. The pain as he cut through my spine exceeded anything I'd ever felt as a human, exceeded anything I'd ever thought was possible to withstand, but somehow I was still conscious as I dropped to the ground.

  The monster kicked me, rolling me over, and then cocked his head at me. "I'm the Dream Stealer, but then you already knew that. Congratulations, your recent exploit was finally sufficient to make me exert the effort required to find your dreams. You're lucky that I have bigger fish to fry, but I can promise that I'll be back later. You're obviously going to be a lot of fun. Don't worry, it only gets worse from here."

  Chapter 22

  Geoffrey

  Stekensbridge House

  Duluth, Minnesota

  When Geoffrey finally opened his eyes he wished he hadn't. The light hurt, not the kind of excruciating pain that was a symptom of a concussion, but it still hurt. It was almost like his eyes had gotten even worse at adjusting to daylight than they'd been before.

  Geoffrey managed a croak which alerted someone to the fact that he was awake, and they correctly interpreted the way that he was squinting to mean that the room was too bright. A second later the blinds had been drawn and the room was dark enough that he could open up his eyes without them tearing up.

  "Where am I, and how long have I been out?"

  "You're back in Duluth. You've been out for nearly two days and I had just about lost hope that you were going to wake up on your own. I even drew some more of my blood and fed it to you via a tube, but that didn't seem to make any difference in your condition. We're leaving again in an hour or two, we had to come back for Ben and Jeff, but it's not safe for us here any longer."

  Geoffrey's eyes had finally adjusted enough for him to make out Jasmin standing on the right side of his bed.

  "You shouldn't have done that. I appreciate it, but you look terrible, like you gave too much blood and nearly killed yourself."

  "No, that wasn't it. Would you believe I had a bad dream?"

  Geoffrey started to shake his head and then winced in anticipated pain, but moving his head didn't actually hurt.

  "That must have been some bad dream."

  "Yeah, you could say that. What do you remember from our trip to Tennessee?"

  The question brought everything roaring back, and Geoffrey started to sit up in the bed. Jasmin made as if to stop him and then reconsidered and helped him by putting a pillow behind him.

  "What happened? Did you guys find Melody?"

  "No. I'm sorry. For a few minutes there I didn't think that we were going to ever have this conversation. There was something like two dozen werewolves inside of that vault. They should have torn through me like tissue paper, but at the last second they stopped and the ones in the front started trying to force the rest of them back into the vault."

  "Why would Puppeteer want to save you?"

  "I don't know, but it makes about as much sense as everything else that happened that night. I grabbed you and hightailed it out of there, but I could hear them behind us nearly until we made it back out of Puppeteer's complex."

  "You never found him then?"

  "No, but we didn't finish exploring everything so it's possible that he was still in there somewhere just hiding away until we left. I figured that following Melody's trail was more important than trying to assassinate Puppeteer."

  Geoffrey nodded. "Agreed, especially since even if you had found him you probably would have been facing three or four werewolves. You couldn't have won that fight."

  "Right. So anyway, Sally followed Melody's scent trail and that led us through an entirely new section of tunnels and rooms. It…well, there were humans down there, but they'd all been butchered by werewolves. They must have come in behind Melody and killed everyone. Sally said that Melody's scent trail wasn't noticeably older than the one the werewolves left, so she must have only been a minute or two ahead of them."

  "It soun
ds like she was lucky that there were all of those people there to distract and slow down the werewolves."

  Jasmin shrugged. "I guess. Do you think that she knew they were there? Do you think she's coldblooded enough to lead a pack of werewolves down there knowing that she was buying her own freedom at the cost of all of those deaths?"

  Geoffrey wanted to bristle at the question, but it was obvious that Jasmin wasn't trying to provoke him.

  "I don't know. A few months ago I would have said no, but being held captive changes a person, and if they really tortured her then that would have just compounded the pressure on her."

  "Yeah, I expect that you're right. If that's the case is she still someone that you want to find?"

  Geoffrey didn't even have to think about that one. "Of course she is. The only reason that she ended up inside of that complex was because of me. I was the one who led Puppeteer to her and I owe it to her to do whatever I can for her."

  "We lost her trail a hundred yards into the forest. I'm sorry, Geoffrey. We spent a couple of minutes fanning out in an attempt to reacquire it, but it wasn't any use. We would have stayed longer, but the fighting hadn't stopped outside and I kept expecting for a dozen werewolves to come boiling out of the caves at any time."

  The wave of disappointment that crashed through Geoffrey was almost completely debilitating, but he forced himself to respond.

  "I understand, you did everything you could. Any sign of whatever had Rachel so freaked out?"

  "I'm not sure. We didn't actually see anything concrete, but right before we headed back to the Jeep there were these weird flashes—only they weren't light, it was like pulses of darkness."

  Geoffrey shook his head. "That doesn't make sense. Darkness is just the absence of light. How can an absence pulse?"

  "I can't explain it, but there was something out there and it was the darkness that was pulsing, not the light. I thought maybe that one of Puppeteer's hybrids was still alive and fighting the werewolves, but even that doesn't make a lot of sense because we didn't see those flashes until after we came out of the caves."