by Jade Kerrion
Emitting two different mental patterns---one to interfere with Miriya's brainwaves and another to interfere with Tim's---was easier than he had expected. Chalk it up to a rough childhood, he reflected with irony. He had spent a great deal of time segmenting his life and his pain into small, manageable bits, maintaining a semblance of normality while pieces of him churned in agony. Segmenting his mind to handle two concurrent tasks was an extension of the same skill set.
He inhaled deeply and allowed the heavy pressure against his mind to settle. When his breath no longer caught with its weight, he reached for the cell phone and sent a message: Done.
Only then did he reach for his meal, the first one of the day. The sandwich was dry and tasteless, but he consumed it with relish and washed it down with water. His meal finished, he relaxed against the seat. True rest would elude him if he could not lower his psychic shields, but if he could close his eyes for a while, it would help. Even closing his eyes was difficult, though.
He looked out of the window. Cars whizzed by, headlights tearing through the falling dusk. It would be fully dark soon, but he had no illusions that darkness would make his rest any easier.
It struck him as damnably ironic that he was on the run from friends and enemies alike.
The memory of Zara's face, her violet eyes sparkling, flickered through his mind. He laughed quietly, a bitter sound. He had known Zara, Galahad, and Miriya for a little more than a week, and in that time, he had to be reintroduced to them, because his first memories of them had been ripped from his mind. He had been deluding himself. He must have imagined the warmth of growing friendship. No one had ever worked past the repulsive effects of his psychic shields. They were not his friends---had never been his friends.
All he had was Lucien, and maybe not even Lucien anymore.
Danyael swallowed painfully against the hard pressure on his chest. He stared at his clenched fists. What was he still holding on to? To Lucien? Or to his sanity? After all, he was an alpha empath. His greatest fear, his only fear, was emotional isolation. Without Lucien, he had nothing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Alex Saunders glanced at the clock on the wall. It was an hour to midnight; time to call it a day. He rose, shoved his laptop and files into his bag, and glanced up as a slight shadow fell across the doorway. "Xin?"
The NSA analyst looked pale and tense, unusual for her. "We must talk."
The preemptive tone was a change from her usual low-key and deferential style. He lowered himself into his chair. "When did you get back to D.C.? Miriya told me they took a detour, courtesy of a misleading cell phone signal."
Xin's smile was faint. "Technology can be a bitch. People too." She did not sit. Instead, she pulled out a laptop. "Miriya's not the only one with a hook in Danyael's mind. Tim Brown's attached too."
Alex's jaw dropped. "What?"
"When Danyael and Zara were on the run, they were hounded by common mercenaries who were uncommonly good at staying on their trail. That should never have happened, not with Zara guiding Danyael. I tried to track the mercenaries but hit dead ends, until Danyael ran into Tim Brown and his team a few hours ago."
"What?"
"Danyael's all right."
"Was anyone hurt?"
"Not permanently."
"How do you know?"
Xin tilted her head. "Technology may make me seem omniscient, but I'm not psychic, not really. I sent someone to check it out and to wipe the data from the security cameras."
Alex sagged in his chair. "Thank God. Danyael can't afford to kill anyone else. He's in so much trouble as it is."
"He's in much more trouble than you think. Tim's ability to home in quickly on Danyael's location was the final clue I needed. I managed to trace the mercenaries back to Tim. Do you understand what I'm saying? The Mutant Assault Group has been using mercenaries to harass Danyael. They're goading him, deliberately trying to push him over the edge."
"General Kieran Howard has made no secret of the fact that he wants Danyael working for him. But Danyael's not going to be any good to him if he's locked up in a mutant containment facility."
"It's far more than that. I sent...a friend...to chat up the leader of the mercenary group. They were responsible for Lucien's kidnapping too."
"The assault group was behind it?"
"Yes." Xin placed her palms on the edge of the desk and leaned forward. "Contrary to what the general is saying, he's not trying to recruit Danyael. He's trying to break Danyael. And now that they've taken Lucien from him, they may very well succeed."
"That makes no sense."
"The general isn't interested in Danyael as he is now. Danyael's power is limited because he rarely steps beyond the boundaries that the council has painstakingly trained him to avoid. If he breaks, if his restraint snaps, he's a natural disaster in the making. The general wants the Danyael without restraints, the Danyael who has broken his ties of loyalty to Lucien."
Alex shook his head. "I won't allow the general to succeed."
"You must."
His eyes widened. "What?"
"There's more. Unfortunately, a great deal more. The general has friends in questionable places." She turned the laptop around and pushed it to Alex.
He scanned the information on the screen and then looked at her. "You're accusing the general of treason," he said, his tone quiet yet bristling with tension.
Xin shook her head. "No, I'm not accusing him of treason, yet. I don't have evidence, just a whole lot of hunches backed up by very thin threads of logic. But his plans hinge on Danyael, I'm certain of it."
"And if Danyael never falls, we'll never be able to prove that the general is guilty?" Alex shook his head. "Do you know what you're asking? You want me to set Danyael up to fail, and hope that by the grace of God, he'll manage to find his way back? On his own? Without Lucien? He can't do it."
"You underestimate him."
"Even if Danyael finds his way back, you may not be able to find the evidence you need to prove that the general is a traitor. We would have broken Danyael for nothing."
"It is still worth the risk."
"It's Danyael's life you're gambling with here. I thought you were his friend. You were the one who stuck up for him when Zara, Galahad, and Miriya turned against him."
"I stuck up for what I believed to be the greater good, and Danyael's sanity is a great deal more important than Galahad's freedom. But my goal is always and only the security of this country. I will do anything to defend it, Alex. You can help, or you can get run over. Your choice."
Alex was silent for a long time. "That's what happens when we decide to play God and clone an ancient queen."
"Be grateful this queen has aligned her loyalties with her adopted country instead of the country of her donor's birth."
"There's that." Alex stared at the table. He felt oddly insignificant. He would never have imagined that it would be in the presence of a young Asian woman who was not even a mutant. "You're right, aren't you?" he asked quietly.
"Usually."
"What do I need to believe, to go along with what you're suggesting?"
Xin returned his steady gaze without the faintest hint of a smile. "Do you trust Danyael?"
"Yes." He did not hesitate. He had never hesitated on that point.
"Then that is all you need."
Alex nodded. "When we find Danyael, he'll be sent to a mutant containment facility where he'll be held until trial. With the evidence in his favor, no jury will find him guilty."
"We'll have to exacerbate the situation, then."
"There's a simpler way," Alex said. His conscience screamed a denial, but he forged on. "I can change his status from class-three threat level to class-five."
Xin's eyes narrowed. "He'll be sent without trial to a super-max for life."
"If you want to break him, that's probably the only way. Danyael's a great deal stronger than most people give him credit for. Several weeks, even months, in a mutant containment facility
will barely dent him."
"If I'm wrong, Danyael will, at the very least, be out of the general's reach forever, and if I'm right, placing Danyael in the super-max will escalate the stakes and force the general to show his hand. Either way, it's a win." Xin's brown eyes gleamed. "All right. Do it."
He had hoped she would at least hesitate. It would have given him a reason to back down, and he was close, so close, to not going through with it. He was signing up to destroy Danyael's life---Danyael, whom he had trained and mentored, whom he had observed with fatherly pride as the alpha empath built a life out of the ruinous despair of his childhood. Alex was going to take everything away from the one person who, more than anyone else he knew, deserved a chance at happiness.
Xin did not give Alex the out he had hoped for.
He had once considered General Kieran Howard the most ruthlessly determined person in his acquaintance, until he met Xin. The real Xin.
Danyael was trapped between them---pawn to their opposing agendas.
"I'll do it right now," he said. A few simple keystrokes altered the course of Danyael's life. Alex slumped in his leather seat and closed his eyes. He laced his fingers over his chest to keep them from trembling. May God forgive me for what I've done, because Danyael never will.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
It was the witching hour, not that Danyael believed in witches and werewolves. It did not even matter if they were real, when the horrors they could inflict paled in comparison to what common mortals did to each other daily.
Damn, he was getting bitter. If he kept it up, he would be a crotchety old man by the end of the week.
The Greyhound bus that left Orlando, Florida, empty pulled into the terminal at Savannah, Georgia, filled with passengers. Few people stood when the bus rolled to a stop. Most were asleep, slumped in their seats, heads propped against frosted windows or on a neighbor's shoulder. Danyael pulled stiffly to his feet. His left thigh was a throbbing mass of pain from hip to knee. The jarring agony had kept him awake for most of the journey. He needed to check on the injury, but the tiny restroom on the bus did not permit it.
He hobbled down the aisle and carefully stepped off the bus. A sudden migraine spiked shafts of pain through his skull. Next to him, shadows shifted. He glanced sharply in the direction of the motion as an arm snaked around his waist. A needle plunged into his arm. Stinging chill emanated from the point of contact. Drugs swarmed into his body.
Danyael gasped and pulled away.
"Relax, I've got you," Zara's voice whispered into his ear. He caught a glimpse of Miriya and Galahad standing behind her.
Danyael stumbled against the bus, his head reeling. Could he fight all three while drugged? And win? He did not think so.
"What's happening here?" the bus driver asked as he emerged from the vehicle. He looked at Zara. "Don't you see the sign? There's no soliciting near the station. Get away from the bus."
Had the bus driver mistaken Zara for a prostitute? Danyael would have chuckled, if he had not thought the effort would exacerbate the echo pounding through his skull. He glanced up and struggled to focus through the haze. A crowd of young men, ranging in age from late teens to early thirties, loitered outside the bus terminal. The men said little to each other, but there was a great deal of social interaction nonetheless. Danyael had lived in Brooklyn long enough to recognize a gang, even without gang colors. His empathic senses sized up the young men, identified the leader, and constructed the gang's hierarchy based on the flow of emotions.
They were unshielded.
Danyael braced himself as he dropped his external shields. The reaction was instantaneous. Heads swung toward him as his unchecked empathic powers coiled heated desire through them. Their lust sickened him, but he fought the revulsion as he deflected their emotions. Their attention shot toward Zara, Miriya, and Galahad.
"Oh, shit," Miriya took a step back.
"What?" Zara asked.
"Trouble," Galahad said.
The young men prowled closer, the lazy boredom in their eyes replaced by sexual intent.
Zara leaned in and pulled Danyael close. It might have been a lover's caress, if not for the edge of the blade pressed against his jugular. "Turn them back," she ordered.
"No," he whispered, fighting to stay conscious.
"More trouble," Miriya warned. "The assault group just showed up."
Zara breathed out a curse. "It's Tim Brown. Is his team human or mutant?"
"Human, but they're shielded. How do you propose we split the workload?" Miriya asked tensely. "You want the wannabe sexual offenders or the armed, psychically shielded humans?"
Behind Danyael, the bus rumbled, its engine revving. His one chance to escape. He tore away from Zara. The blade would have sliced through skin and vein, if she had not yanked the dagger away the moment she felt him move.
He lunged up the steps of the Greyhound bus. "Damn it, Zara," he heard Galahad curse as the bus pulled out of the terminal.
Danyael drew his psychic shields over his mind and emotions. He reinforced them with the remnants of his rapidly fading strength---could not risk their dropping when he finally lost consciousness. He stumbled into an empty seat. Only then did he permit the drugs to drag him down into utter darkness.
* * *
"We had him. Why did you let him go?" Galahad demanded. His body shifted into motion, ready to defend or attack, but his mind was still wrapped around Danyael. His ticket to freedom; he had almost held it in his hand.
"Because we've got bigger issues," Zara said. "There's no point capturing Danyael if Tim and his men take him from us. Miriya, shield me."
"I've got you," Miriya confirmed, turning to follow Zara. Remember Alex's instructions. Don't alarm the public.
"It's a little late for that." Galahad's gaze swept over the gang. Nineteen against one, enough to make it interesting, not enough to make it a challenge.
They did not come at him with guns, knives, or fists. "You're a pretty boy, aren't you?" one of them murmured as the group encircled him. Accents were softer in that part of the country. They would have been alluring, if the words did not turn his stomach. "Good thing we're the sharing type. We'd hate to have you miss out on us."
In spite of all the experiments inflicted upon him during his twenty-five years at Pioneer Labs, Galahad had never felt more like a thing than when the men closed in. Hands reached out, grasping, caressing. Bodies pressed against him. The gentle friction became insistent, then desperate.
Damn you, Danyael. Galahad inhaled deeply and pushed hard, clearing scant inches around him. Inches were enough. He reached for the twin daggers Zara had given him.
The circle of men fell back. For a long, silent moment, the gang, still confident in its numerical superiority, assessed him. Its leader spoke again. "So, you like it rough? We can oblige. Guys? Let's see who gets to carve a pretty heart into his cheek." Their weapons came out---switchblades and hunting knives.
Dagger in either hand, Galahad leapt out and dropped to the pavement, spinning like a dervish. Serrated blades sliced out as he whirled, cutting through denim and leather. The gang fell back, collapsing in upon itself as its members scrambled to get out of his way, their legs bleeding from multiple cuts.
"Get him!" the gang leader roared.
Don't hurt them, Miriya warned. Too much, she amended as one collapsed, his hands pressed to the bleeding wounds in his lower abdomen.
He'll need kidney dialysis for the rest of his life, but at least he's alive. Galahad drove his dagger into another man's chest. And that one still has one lung left to live off. If he doesn't bleed to death first.
Galahad... Even Miriya's mental voice sounded exasperated.
He gracefully sidestepped. The gang leader stumbled forward, his balance thrown off by his thwarted attack. Galahad drove his elbow into the man's back and sent him sprawling to the ground. Galahad then pressed one knee into the gang leader's lower back and pulled his head up. The man's struggle to break free ceased when
Galahad slid his dagger gently along the tender skin at the neckline. "You can fall back and take your injured to the hospital, or we can continue this, and more of you will die."
"Get back, get back," the leader implored.
The well-trained gang retreated. Its members stood around mutinously as Galahad pulled the gang leader to his feet and shoved him toward his friends. "Now get out of here," he said, turning his back on them.
Miriya screamed. Watch out!
Galahad spun and dropped to one knee as a bullet slashed through the air, missing him by a hairsbreadth. He reached over his shoulder and flung forward. A dagger flew through the air, flipping end over end as it raced toward the gang leader. With a sneer on his face and the pistol in his hand, the gang leader sidestepped out of the flight path of the dagger, and directly into the path of another.
The second dagger sank deep into his heart. The pistol tumbled from his grasp. His hands closed weakly around the dagger hilt as the mocking smile melted off his face. He dropped to his knees and with a soft sigh, fell forward. His gang scattered. The ones who could still run vanished down the block, followed by the injured. Their dead leader was left behind.
Galahad retrieved his daggers and rejoined Miriya.
"Like your new toys?" she asked dryly as he wiped blood off the blade.
"I can understand why Zara enjoys them. They are much more visceral and satisfying than a gun." He surveyed the scene with a faint smile. The ten humans in Tim's team lay on the ground. Most were unconscious. The rest groaned in pain, their hands clutching at their heads. "That didn't take you long."
"Tim's not very good at multi-tasking. Most men aren't. He could not keep their shields up when Zara pounced him. Without psychic shields, his men were easy pickings."
"What's she doing now?" he asked. "Why is she sitting on top of him?"
"Playing. She's probably trying to make him pee in his pants," Miriya said with a snort of disgust. "Stop mucking around, Zara. We need to catch up with Danyael."
