The Amplifier Protocol (Amplifier 0)

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  We’d left San Francisco in the early-morning hours without even returning to our rental apartment. We washed off the blood and changed clothing at a highway rest stop a couple of hours later, then slowly made our way north along the coast, across the Canadian border, and into Lake Cowichan. Zigzagging through small town after small town in the Mustang.

  For weeks afterward, I’d been convinced that the Collective was only a step behind us. I was still waiting for them to catch up.

  Christopher smiled. “You worry too much, Socks.”

  “I’m not worrying.”

  He laughed quietly, blinking at me. The white of his magic clouded his eyes. “Paisley.”

  I waited a beat, knowing that Christopher was seeing a few minutes ahead. I was out of practice and had missed the transition. That was the reason for his comment about my worrying — what he had seen of my immediate future, not what my present thoughts had been.

  The demon dog wandered around the corner. She was slicked with mud, eyes glowing softly red.

  “Well,” I muttered. “Mud is better than pigs’ blood.” Or human blood.

  Christopher touched my cheek without warning. His fingers were chilly and damp with rain. I flinched.

  He blinked away the magic obscuring his sight of the present, frowning at my reaction.

  Again, I was out of practice. I scowled at myself. Then I reached over and took his hand.

  He nodded.

  Paisley ambled away a few steps, then glanced back at me.

  “Hannah Stewart,” I said, stepping toward the mud-slicked demon dog. “I’m going to find Hannah.”

  Paisley took off at a fairly steady clip, cutting across the drive toward the empty pens. I followed, tugging Christopher with me.

  And for the first time, I genuinely believed that I was going to find the shy, sweet woman who seemed to enjoy setting aside items she thought I’d like at the thrift shop. Even though there was no way she knew me … not enough to like me.

  With Christopher and Paisley with me, there was actually no doubt I’d find Hannah Stewart. And I fervently hoped that she’d be alive when I did.

  No one confronted us as Paisley led us all the way across the property, pausing at a broken fence post far from the main house. Either the elder Grant was still occupied in town, or he was so drunk he didn’t notice trespassers on his land.

  That second option wasn’t a factually based assessment. Just my instinctual, immediate dislike of the man, and the conclusion that seemed most likely as a result.

  I would have preferred a confrontation. Instead, I pushed my hood off my head, glancing back toward the main house, sitting practically on the other side of the property. Then I visually traced a direct line across the wet, muddy ground between the house and where I was standing.

  I looked in the opposite direction. Hectares of forest spread out beyond the fence. I hunkered down, peering at a scrap of dark-blue fabric snagged in the crumpled fencing wire only partially attached to the broken fence post.

  “Paisley’s trail ends here.” I spoke out loud unnecessarily, just in case Christopher’s magic was listening.

  “Which means she’s sensed the presence of blood.”

  I nodded. The rain should have washed any trace amounts away. Unless some had been protected from the elements, possibly in the torn jean fabric attached to the wire fencing. “Why flee for the forest?” I grumbled. “The road was just as close.”

  “It’s harder to run someone down in the woods, Socks.” Christopher’s tone was kind but remote. His words were laced with magic.

  And I was dithering. I knew that my actions, even my unvoiced intentions, would trigger Christopher’s next vision of the near future. But I desperately, idiotically, wanted to deny that future at the same time. “Please be alive,” I murmured. Then I reached out and plucked the piece of fabric off the fencing wire.

  Magic shifted around me, concentrating on the blood tattoo on my spine.

  I uncrumpled the fabric. It was smeared with what appeared to be a trace of blood. As expected, but not as I’d hoped.

  “Hannah,” I whispered, once again purposefully directing, focusing Christopher’s power until it prickled along my spine and up my neck. Even without actively amplifying the clairvoyant, we were so tightly bound that a mere decision on my part could alter what he saw of the immediate future. My future. Hannah’s future.

  He sighed. “You’re in the forest. Deep. It’s dark. Moving steadily.” He lifted his arm, allowing his magic to point the way.

  Straight ahead.

  Well, I’d known that was coming, hadn’t I?

  I curled my fingers around the wet fabric, feeling anger welling, warming my chest. By the mess of tracks in the mud between the house and where we stood, Hannah Stewart had fled the house and been chased into the woods. She’d ripped her jeans, scratching herself deeply enough to bleed, when she’d tried to climb over this section of fencing. I glanced at the post, the break looked new. Then, sometime later, Tyler Grant had been seen racing away from town.

  Constable Jenni Raymond was ridiculously useless. A shapeshifter should have been able to find Hannah hours ago, despite the rain.

  I took a couple of steps away from the fence. Christopher followed. I bent down, tightening the laces on my boots until they were almost uncomfortable.

  Christopher did the same, his magic completely obscuring his eyes.

  “If she’s dead,” I said, speaking to that magic even as I made the request to the clairvoyant, “I’ll need you to lead me to Taylor Grant.”

  A smile flitted across his face. “And what will you do to him, Emma?”

  I settled my gaze on the thick swath of trees beyond the fence. “I’ll chase him through the forest until he dies of terror. Then I’ll feed him to his father’s pigs.”

  I sprang forward. Touching down with my right foot, I leaped the fence. Paisley appeared at my side as I landed, having jumped almost at the same time as me. My feet shifted in the muddy wild grass, but my ankles didn’t twist.

  Christopher landed next to me. His magic brushed against the side of my face, keeping tabs on me.

  With Paisley slightly to my side and Christopher tight at my back, I jogged steadily toward the trees. Then I was within their depths, swallowed by evergreens that had stood for hundreds of years.

  One tree had fallen over another, creating a high barrier in front of us. A blockage that would be best skirted.

  But Hannah had fled in terror. She would have gone —

  “Over,” Christopher murmured.

  Spotting two footholds, I leaped the barrier, landing in a bed of moss and dried needles on the other side. The rain barely penetrated the thick evergreen boughs overhead.

  Paisley leaped over me, landing two paces beyond the trees. She looked back at me with glowing red eyes, snorting her impatience.

  Slightly slower, Christopher followed.

  “Straight?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  I took off after Paisley, picking up my pace and darting around any obstacle that I doubted Hannah could have easily climbed. Keeping to the path she’d most likely taken, as best as I could guess.

  After about fifty paces, Christopher spoke. “Left. Three trees. Right. Five. Then …” He trailed off.

  I darted left, counting three fir trees. Then I cut right, counting five more fir trees and instantly spotted what Christopher hadn’t articulated.

  A small clearing held the remains of a building and evidence that someone had camped there recently, or at least built a fire with a ring of rocks. The building was decrepit. Rotting wood siding, no glass in the windows or door in the open frame.

  I had no ability to process evidence and estimate any sort of timeline, but I knew what the signs of a struggle looked like. Some sort of fight had taken place in the clearing, scuffing the dirt and moss, trampling the ferns around the edges.

  I darted forward, investigating the decrepit structure. It was empty of people. Or bo
dies. Thankfully. Various names and initials had been carved or burned into the wood frame of the door over many years. Melted candles collected rain in the windows. Empty beer cans were scattered around dark corners. I didn’t bother peering into the dark any longer than was necessary to determine that Hannah wasn’t trapped or tied up within its depths. I wasn’t certain what the building’s function had originally been, but it wasn’t any sort of shelter now.

  I stepped back into the clearing.

  Christopher was standing by the makeshift firepit, gazing out at the forest. “Something bad happened here,” he whispered. “Can you feel it?”

  “Magic? Or with Hannah?”

  Christopher shook his head. “Not Hannah. But I feel exceedingly blessed that I wasn’t given the ability to see the past when my genes were magically spliced in a test tube on level five.”

  I waited to see if he would elaborate further, shoving the echo of our shared past — destroying the compound within which we were created — from my mind as quickly as it had surfaced.

  Christopher didn’t elaborate, though.

  “He caught up to her here,” I said, gesturing at the scuff marks all around us.

  “Very likely.”

  “Why stop?”

  “She’s hurt.” Christopher stepped to the side, indicating a smaller set of footprints. Every second one was preceded and followed by short drag marks. “Limping.”

  Paisley snarled quietly, calling my attention to a rock that looked as though it had rolled to the edge of the clearing.

  “Blood?” I asked Paisley.

  She tapped the ground once.

  Though we’d been teasing earlier, that apparently meant ‘yes’ now.

  “Can you track it?”

  She tilted her head, then glanced back in the direction we’d just come — toward the property and the house.

  That didn’t make any sense. Unless …

  “It isn’t Hannah’s blood?”

  Paisley lay down and started grooming her left foot.

  “She got a piece of Tyler.” I laughed huskily. “Then she continued to run. He gave up the chase.”

  “Or she knocked him out of it.”

  “Where did she exit the clearing?”

  Christopher brushed his fingers against my cheek, his magic flooding his eyes. “Where does Socks exit the clearing?” he murmured.

  He pointed to our left, past the decrepit structure. Then he pressed a small flashlight into my hand. I turned without another word, stepping back into the forest.

  After thirty or forty more minutes of being directed by the occasional soft murmur from Christopher, I spotted evidence that someone had crawled through the underbrush. Paisley led me along that trail for another ten minutes before I found Hannah Stewart.

  I swept my flashlight across her, not completely certain she was actually still alive. She was curled up in the shelter of a fallen tree, huddled under a lined plaid jacket that was too large for her.

  A fierce pride rippled through me. She’d taken Tyler down, then stolen his jacket.

  “Hannah,” I whispered, not wanting to spook her. The day had already been gray, but now that the sun was near setting, the forest was encased in a deep gloom. “Hannah?”

  She didn’t answer.

  Paisley padded out of the darkness, brushing against my leg. I stepped forward with Christopher beside me. Hunkering down, I brushed my hand over Hannah’s shoulder.

  She mewed softly in her sleep.

  I exhaled in relief, rotating the flashlight in my hand so it pointed upward, illuminating us. I didn’t want to blind her. Then I touched her shoulder again.

  Hannah opened her eyes, blinking up at me. But it was Christopher hovering over my shoulder who she saw first. Pure awe spread across her scraped and bruised face. “Oh …” she sighed. “Am I dead then?”

  Christopher chuckled.

  “Not yet,” I said.

  Hannah’s gaze flicked to me, then back at Christopher. “But … but … you … you aren’t angels?” She got her arm untangled from the jacket, reaching a shaking hand toward me. Then recognition dawned across her face. “Emma?”

  “Yes.”

  Her eyes darted over to Christopher. “I thought … I thought … you were glowing.”

  Christopher stepped away, just in case she was picking up the magic that had taken up permanent residence in his eyes.

  “It’s just the flashlight,” I said, covering. “Can you walk?”

  Hannah’s face crumpled. She shook her head, then gasped in pain. She’d been beaten. Badly. “My ankle is broken, or sprained, I think. And my arm … I guess I shouldn’t have kept running.”

  “You always keep running, Hannah. Always. You make whoever is after you kill you in order to take you down.”

  She looked up at me, her eyes filling with tears.

  “You were magnificent,” I said. “You were brave and fierce, Hannah Stewart.”

  Her chin trembled. “I waited too long … too long to say no.”

  “You’re here, aren’t you? You made it.”

  “Yeah …” Her voice firmed. “Yeah, I made it.”

  “I’m going to carry you.”

  “You …” She glanced toward Christopher. “You’re going to carry me?”

  “Yeah. We’ll trade off if necessary.” I passed the flashlight to Christopher, then took Hannah’s arm, placing it over my shoulder. “I’m sorry. Every step is going to hurt.”

  “It’s okay. I can handle the pain.”

  I gathered her legs, then straightened with her cradled in my arms. She moaned, stifling her reaction.

  “You’re so strong,” she murmured.

  “Yes,” I said. “Maybe don’t mention it to anyone?”

  She laughed quietly. “As long as you don’t tell anyone that I thought you were angels.”

  “Deal.”

  It was fully dark, but the rain had stopped by the time Paisley led us to a logging road. From there, we headed back toward Meadow Lane Farm. Even with Hannah possibly traumatized, I wasn’t leaving the Mustang any longer than I needed to.

  Finding he had a weak cellular signal, Christopher texted Officer Raymond.

  About ten minutes later, he wordlessly turned back to me, reaching for and settling Hannah between us with one of her arms over each of our shoulders. It was a much more painful hold for her, but it wouldn’t make it obvious that I was capable of carrying a fifty-five-kilo woman over uneven ground for so long.

  There was nothing we could do about Christopher’s eyes. They still glowed. And the way Hannah kept darting awestruck glances his way might have indicated that she could see the manifestation of his magic. It also might have meant that she was simply enamored by the first person she’d set eyes on after imagining her own death.

  She didn’t have to articulate that. I knew. There was no way she’d dragged herself through that forest only to collapse exhausted without imagining she was slipping toward death.

  It wasn’t my first time rescuing someone. Just as I, too, had been rescued on the brink of that abyss.

  The flashing lights of an RCMP cruiser appeared on the road ahead.

  We stepped off to the side, waiting for Officer Raymond to catch us with her headlights.

  The cruiser screeched to a halt. The flashing lights hurt my eyes, too bright after walking in the dark for almost an hour. Officer Raymond barreled out of the vehicle, leaving the door open as she ran toward us.

  “Thank you, Emma,” Hannah whispered. “Christopher. Thank you. And Paisley.”

  Then the shapeshifter practically tore the injured woman out of our arms. “You are pressing charges,” she growled at Hannah, hauling her toward the cruiser without a glance our way. “This time you are pressing charges.”

  Hannah didn’t answer, most likely because being moved so roughly was a painful process. I tamped my mouth shut. It wasn’t my place to admonish an officer of the law.

  Christopher smirked at me.

&nbs
p; Officer Raymond got Hannah situated in the front passenger seat, where she laid her head back wearily. Though her gaze still rested on Christopher. He must have appeared otherworldly illuminated by the headlights, despite having his hands stuffed in the pockets of a perfectly ordinary navy-blue Gore-Tex jacket.

  The shifter shut Hannah’s door, jogging back around the cruiser. “What are you waiting for?” she barked at us. “Get in. I’ll drop you on the way to the hospital.”

  When neither of us answered or stepped forward compliantly, she finally looked at us. She flinched. “Jesus.”

  So that answered the question about Christopher’s eyes. He bowed his head and started walking. I followed. Though still mostly overcast, the evening was just bright enough to mark the edges of the road. Paisley skulked alongside in the dark ditch.

  “Wait,” the shifter called. “I need a statement. How you found her … I mean, how you used the dog to find her, and —”

  “Hannah knows where to find us,” I said over my shoulder. “If she wants to press charges.”

  “That is unacceptable. You are in my —”

  I spun back, leveling a look her way. “You asked for our help, Jenni Raymond, without imposing conditions. You’ll take what we give. We are bound to do no more than that.”

  “I’ll take what you give? Or what?”

  I smiled.

  Christopher laughed from somewhere in the dark behind me.

  Doubt flickered over the shifter’s face.

  I cast my voice low, though I was fairly certain Hannah was probably already asleep. “Use your nose, shifter.”

  Her nostrils flared. Then she glared, as if angered that she’d obeyed my command. And yes, that alone should have reminded her who was the alpha in our relationship.

  Me.

  “Smell the magic now?” I asked mockingly.

  Then I turned away without waiting for an answer. I had my Mustang to collect, hopefully before Christopher crashed.