by Jade Kerrion
Her eyes flashed open. She recognized Alex Saunders first and sighed with relief. He had come, and brought with him Jake Hansen, one of her closest friends and a fellow enforcer, an alpha telepath and telekinetic.
Thank God you’re here. Your timing was perfect. I owe you.
Jake Hansen chuckled. Yes, you do. I was having such a great dream when Alex hauled my ass out of bed and told me to hop into the car. If you’re really serious about owing me, you can give us our first-born son.
You’ll have a long wait coming, Miriya said, a smile in her voice now that she knew the crisis was under control again.
Strong little bastard. Jake winced at the crushing weight of Danyael’s emotions as the empath’s shields collapsed entirely. The next time I make fun of an empath, remind me about today, will you?
Remind you? Hell, no. As far as I’m concerned, no one is ever going to hear of this absolutely mortifying moment. Not that anyone will ever believe that it took two alpha telepaths to contain an empath.
An alpha empath. At this point, the words alpha empath are the only words salvaging what’s left of my dignity and pride. Bloody hell. He’s so damned unhappy. How does he get through each day without slicing his wrists?
By having more courage and compassion than anyone else I know. He focuses on others to keep from being crushed by his own pain. How long do we have to keep the shields up?
Until Mrs. Crenshaw saves his life. Jake looked up and nodded as an older woman, dressed in a bright pink and purple floral blouse and matching ankle-length skirt, scurried in through the open door. The woman was out of breath and panting from the effort of keeping up with Alex and Jake as they had raced through the corridors of Pioneer Labs. She looked like someone’s grandmother. Wavy gray hair framed a round, cheerful face. The sparkle in her brown eyes became determined as she knelt beside Danyael and placed both hands on his chest.
She’s not an empathic healer, is she? Miriya asked, alarmed.
No, fortunately not. Empathic healers absorb the injury, which is why they usually have trouble working with brain and heart injuries. In her file, she claims that she aligns the frequency of the body with the core frequency of the earth.
Miriya summarized it in four words: New age mumbo jumbo.
It sure beats saying ‘How the hell do I know,’ which is what most mutants say when asked to explain the basis of their powers. At least she’s stabilizing him.
Miriya could sense it too. She did not know exactly what Mrs. Crenshaw’s healing powers were doing to Danyael, but whatever it was, they worked. Danyael’s heart started beating again, falteringly at first, and then with increasing steadiness. The flow of blood reduced to a trickle and then halted. His skin was still cool to the touch, and he had lost a great deal of blood, which no amount of mutant healing powers could fix, but with a bit of care, he would make it.
Danyael. Miriya sent a quick mental jolt into his mind, hoping for a response.
Jake frowned at her. Will you just let him rest, Miriya? He’s had a crappy day.
Too late for that. He’s waking.
Danyael stirred, not fully regaining consciousness, but the jolt had been enough to kick his limbic system back into full gear. He flawlessly pulled his psyche back together; his internal psychic shields reformed and strengthened until he was once again carrying the full burden of shielding his own darkest emotions. His external shields, which required conscious effort to maintain, would remain lowered until he fully recovered, but it was no burden for a skilled telepath to shield him as long as he or she did not have to simultaneously support his internal shields.
Alex nodded. His face was expressionless, but his eyes betrayed his relief. “Nice work, everyone. Lucien Winter?” He extended his hand toward Lucien. “I’m Alex Saunders, director general of the Mutant Affairs Council. With your permission, I’d like to take Danyael back to the council headquarters in D.C. We have a team standing by to care for him until he fully recovers.”
Lucien glanced over at Jason and Roland Rakehell and then looked back at Alex. “Danyael’s not all right, is he?”
“That’s what we’ll have to ascertain, and it’ll be a lot safer for everyone, including Danyael, if he’s surrounded by people who understand his abilities and his limitations.”
“It’ll be fine, Lucien,” Miriya promised. “I’ll watch over him, and I’ll let you know when he wakes and asks for you.”
“We’re leaving now, unless you think you’d need some help with that.” Alex looked over at the five abominations waiting patiently in the corner of the suite, looking like a pack of well-behaved monsters.
“They’re not a problem; they’re with me,” Galahad confirmed, glancing at them. The abominations returned his gaze, looking as innocent as it was possible for anything with massive fangs and claws to appear.
Alex looked over at him, a faint smile passing over his face. “Ah, Galahad.” He extended his hand. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. You have some excellent genes in you. Take good care of them.” Alex nodded toward Jake. “Let’s go.”
Jake’s formidable telekinetic powers lifted Danyael from Michael’s arms and carried him as if on an invisible stretcher, maneuvering him through the shattered window. “It’ll be easier not to have to go down corridors,” he said with a quirky grin.
Mrs. Crenshaw frowned at the jagged edges of broken glass framing the windowpane. “I’ll take the conventional route and meet you at the car, if you don’t mind,” she said as she headed toward the door.
Zara chuckled softly. “She brings a dying man back to life, and she’s nervous about cutting herself on broken glass?”
Miriya shrugged. “Healing others isn’t in the same class of mutant powers as accelerated self-regeneration. Most healers can’t heal themselves. Danyael can’t. Neither can Mrs. Crenshaw, though I suspect the reason she doesn’t want to climb over broken glass is because she’s worried about snagging her pantyhose.” Miriya gracefully clambered over the broken window. She glanced over her shoulder at Lucien. “Stay in touch,” was all she said as she shot him a winsome smile.
Zara visually traced Danyael’s departure until the mutants turned around the corner of Pioneer Labs and vanished from sight. It took several minutes longer for the lump in her throat to dissipate. Fortunately, she did not have to speak since Lucien took charge of the situation.
Lucien leaned down and pulled Jason Rakehell to his feet. “You’re going to tell me what the hell happened. What did Danyael do to you?”
“I…I don’t know.” Jason looked over at his father, genuine confusion in his eyes, and then back at Lucien. “I don’t feel it anymore.”
“Feel what anymore?” Lucien demanded.
“Feel anything,” Jason struggled to sort through what he could only sense but could not explain. Confusion reigned. His scattered emotions drifted through the odd emptiness he felt somewhere in the deepest recesses of his mind and his heart. Every attempt he made to wring some sense out of them only tossed the emotions up again like autumn leaves to the wind. They fluttered, disassociated from context, from memory. He knew why he had been angry. He remembered why he had hated his father and Galahad, but those reasons no longer summoned the anger and hatred he had lived with all his life.
“And Danyael. What do you feel about Danyael?”
Jason’s brow furrowed as he concentrated. “Nothing,” he said finally, “I don’t feel anything.”
Lucien sighed, releasing Jason and turning away. “I guess that’s something to be grateful for anyway.” He slumped into the rattan chair, leaned over to rest his elbows on his thighs, and buried his face in his hands.
Jason persisted, following Lucien. “What did Danyael do to me?”
“I don’t know for sure,” Lucien admitted, dropping his hands away from his face. He looked up at Jason. “I’m guessing he absorbed your emotions. It’s just the kind of stupid thing he would do if he thought he was going to die.”
“And he wouldn’t have d
one that if he thought he would survive?”
“Probably not. It’s easier to live with someone hating you than you hating yourself. Danyael tried to explain it to me once. If the emotions are too deep-seated, he can’t change them, and the only way to get rid of them is to absorb them from the other person. That means that everything you and your father once felt for him, he now feels for himself. If that doesn’t completely screw him up, I don’t know what else will.” Lucien looked over at Galahad, his smile faint, but relieved. “What are you doing here? We thought we lost you when the ceiling caved in at Purest Humanity.”
Jason gaped. “The ceiling caved in?”
Zara smiled viciously. “Right. You didn’t stick around to see it, but yes, Purest Humanity is now a big pile of rubble. I’m guessing your insurers aren’t going to be pleased.”
“What happened?”
“The abominations showed up, killed a couple of people, started a fire, and then the building came down,” Lucien summarized, an undercurrent of irritation in his voice. “It’s the hottest news story since the burning of Pioneer Laboratories. Ironically, many people consider it due justice.” He shot a quick glance at the abominations. “You took away their building, they take away your building.” His gaze shifted back to Galahad. “How did you survive?”
Galahad gestured toward the abominations. “They gathered around me, sheltering me from the debris as the building came down and then dug me out. I concluded then that they weren’t trying to hurt me, so I brought them back here, hoping to search the lab’s computers for information about them.”
“You managed to get all the way back here unnoticed?”
“Well, not precisely unnoticed,” Galahad hedged carefully. “Let’s just say we weren’t reported.”
“Right.” Lucien smiled ironically.
“And that’s when I saw Danyael. I came in to get him out, but my escape plan from Pioneer Labs was obviously less well formulated than Zara’s.”
“I’m just grateful you tried.”
“What do we do now?” Zara asked quietly as she looked around the room. Technically Galahad was the property of Pioneer Labs, but with the abominations standing behind him, she did not think anyone was going to enforce property laws just then. Roland Rakehell and Michael Cochran appeared flabbergasted by how easily Galahad seemed to keep the abominations in check. Perhaps it was time to renegotiate a change in the terms of their relationship with Galahad.
“We could wait out in the car, give Galahad a couple of minutes to finish up here, and then he can join us at the parking lot,” Lucien said indifferently as he pushed easily to his feet.
Jason’s jaw dropped. “You’re going to let him kill us?”
Lucien’s temper, usually perfectly controlled, flared into white rage. He grabbed Jason by his shirt and hauled him close, staring him down. “You started this bull crap when you and your mob of fanatics burned down Pioneer Labs. Scores of people are dead because of you. Just to round out your list of accomplishments, you shot my best friend, and you would have killed him, if his mutant friends didn’t show up in time to save his life. And now, he’s got to live with all the shit he absorbed from you and your equally screwed up father. All in all, I’d say that if the only thing that happened here is that Galahad turned his abominations loose on you, you’d have gotten off way too easy.”
Zara interjected, “In fact, I’ll give you a choice.” She glanced toward the abominations. “The painful way or my way, which I promise will be fast and as painless as humanly possible.”
“Zara, we were engaged.” Jason’s voice mirrored his incredulity.
“That’s why I’m offering you an option out of consideration for our past relationship. What will it be?”
“No, wait,” Lucien said sharply. “Danyael can put them back.”
Zara glanced at him. “Put what back?”
“The emotions he absorbed from Jason and Roland. Danyael can transfer them back.”
“Are you sure?”
“He’s an empath; it’s what he does. I can convince him to transfer the emotions back. I have to.” He shook his head, disbelief still echoing in his voice. “He just can’t live with that kind of self-hatred.”
“So what do you want me to do here?”
“No fatal accidents, Zara.” The instruction was curt, pointed. “But as long as they’re alive enough for Danyael to undo what he did, I don’t really care what else happens here. I just want to get back to Danyael and make sure he’s all right.”
“We’re not going to be able to resolve this within the next five minutes,” Zara said reasonably. “And you need to get to Danyael. Why don’t you go? I’ve got my own car; you don’t have to wait around for me.”
Lucien inhaled deeply, then nodded. “Fine, if you’re sure you’re going to be okay here.”
“Absolutely.” She placed a hand lightly against his chest, a lover-like gesture. “How much of your money can I spend, Lucien?”
If violence wasn’t an option, try bribery.
“Try to keep it to quarter of my net worth. He’s more than worth it.” Lucien stepped over to Galahad and extended a hand of friendship. “You came back for Danyael, and for that, I’m eternally in your debt. Thank you.”
“It was the least I could do,” Galahad said quietly.
“I hope you realize that you’ll always have a friend in me,” Lucien said.
Got to give him credit, Zara concealed a smirk. He’s got style. Lucien’s affirmation of support was not intended just for Galahad. It was not-so-subtly directed to all listeners present—a public declaration that if anyone decided to mess with Galahad, he would have to take on Lucien too.
Zara waited until Lucien left and then sat down in the rattan chair he had vacated. Her voice shifted from cool and businesslike to a warm, feline purr. She wore a smile to match, but her eyes were icy violet, coolly assessing, and dangerous. “I think we have a great deal to talk about, don’t we, gentlemen?”
Despite his stated urgency to get to Danyael, Lucien sat in the parking lot at Pioneer Labs for a long time, leaning his hands on the steering wheel and staring moodily out the windshield. He would have cursed, but there were no curse words adequate to the task of describing how he felt.
He had dragged Danyael into this nightmare, against Danyael’s will and better judgment, and Danyael had been right. His past would have been better left buried, undisturbed. What had he gained? The added heartache of knowing how much his family despised and hated him, and the added burden of carrying their absorbed emotions.
Lucien clenched his hands on the steering wheel until his knuckles were white. He owed Danyael an apology; hell, he owed Danyael a whole lot more than that, but Danyael never called in the favors owed to him anyway.
What could he do now? What could he possibly say to tell Danyael just how wrong he was?
He released a pained sigh and reached for the key in the ignition, but stopped short when his breath caught on a choked sob in his throat. He reached for his cell phone, stared at it for a brief moment, and punched in a now-familiar number.
Xin picked up on the other end even before the phone completed its first ring. “What happened? Is everything all right?”
She must have been going crazy waiting at his home for someone to call with the latest news, but her voice was calm despite the urgency inherent in her question. Her voice was an instant balm to his soul. He inhaled deeply, and for the first time since he witnessed the horror of Danyael being shot, he felt like he was breathing clean air. “Everyone’s alive, including Galahad, who appears to be on excellent terms with the five abominations. Somehow they all survived the collapse of Purest Humanity.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah, that’s just about all the good news we have. Danyael was shot. I think he’s going to be okay, but for a while, we didn’t think he’d make it.”
“Is he all right? Are you all right?”
Odd that she would think to ask about him as
well. “He’s fine…well, he’ll survive,” Lucien amended. “Fine is still debatable at this point.” Sighing softly, he started at the beginning, relating the bare facts of everything that had happened.
Xin listened in silence, and when he finished, she spoke again, her voice soft with compassion. “I’m sure Danyael is in good hands now. How are you doing?”
He shook his head in confusion. “Why are you asking about me?”
“Well, Danyael is one of your closest friends. Seeing him get shot and almost die must have been a huge shock for you. I know you well enough to suspect that it is tearing you up inside. Do you want to talk about it, or do you just want someone to be with you when you visit Danyael at the council headquarters?”
She amazed him and humbled him. “I can be there in about an hour.”
“I’ll see you there, Lucien. Drive safe.”
Lucien turned the key in the ignition and pulled his BMW out of the parking lot. He was about five miles down the state road when he saw the first in a long series of military vehicles, including some of the latest APCs that were more tank than truck.
He bit back several choice curse words, grabbed his cell phone, and dialed Zara’s number. “Get out of there,” he ordered the moment she picked up the phone. “The game is up; a military convoy is on its way to the lab. You’ve got five minutes to make a run for it.”
“Got it.”
“Get to Leesburg Executive Airport. I’ll have a private jet standing by.”
“Will do.” She hung up on him.
He made one more call to Phillip Evans with instructions for the private jet. Downshifting, he accelerated, driving at near reckless speeds through the winding country roads that would take him from rural Boonsboro to the urban jungle of Washington, D.C. He had to get to Danyael.
