Six hours later, Rebecca withdrew from the man’s mind. “I think that’s all I can do today. We’ll check it out tomorrow, make sure it’s okay and I didn’t miss anything, then trigger it. I’ll call Collin and have someone come feed him.”
They trudged upstairs and met Callie in the hall. “How’s it going down there?”
“I’m done for the day, and I could definitely use a drink,” Rebecca said.
“Why don’t we go down to Father’s study and fill him in on your progress? We can hit the good stuff in his office.”
They trooped into Seamus’ study and while Rebecca and Brenna slumped into a couple of chairs, Callie went to the side board and poured whiskey into glasses. “Make mine a double,” Rebecca requested.
Seamus watched Callie with a dour expression. She turned and handed him a glass. “Why, thank you, my dear, how thoughtful of you.”
She gave him a big smile, then bent over and gave him a quick kiss. She carried the other glasses to the two young women and sat down. Rebecca took a deep swallow of her drink and sat back in her chair.
Collin and Kallen walked in and Seamus waived to the sideboard. “Help yourselves, everyone else does.”
Collin raised one eyebrow, but went to the sideboard and poured drinks for himself and Kallen.
“You know,” Seamus remarked, his gaze fixed on Brenna, “You told me you don’t drink very much, but for some reason my Midleton’s has been disappearing at an alarming rate since you came on board.”
“Oh,” she looked at Rebecca, “did you bring it?”
“It’s in the box with the chocolate and other essentials.”
“I’ve got a bottle,” she said brightly. “I’ll bring it to you. God, it is expensive though.”
Seamus laughed. Turning to Collin, he said, “I hope you’ve made some progress in finding out who’s behind this.”
“Not really,” Collin said, shaking his head. “Whoever it is, they’ve been very careful. We searched the apartment of the guys who attacked Brenna. We found some useful information, but nothing to lead us to their control. We have their phones, so we’ll have to hope Gless tries to contact them.”
Rebecca filled them in on her progress. “Tomorrow, I just need to check everything over, make sure I didn’t miss anything, and if it looks good I’ll trigger it. If it holds through the day, then I can gel it tomorrow evening and the next morning we’ll see who he is. In the meantime, we just keep him sedated and feed him through a tube.”
Brenna spoke up, “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I find the fact they’re targeting succubi rather disturbing. What kind of protection do you have on Cindy?”
“I doubled it right after we finished with our friend downstairs. She is particularly difficult to cover. Collin, see how many men Mike has credentialed and determine if we need to increase it.”
“Why is she difficult?” Brenna asked.
“Because she works inside the Capitol. Our men can’t take weapons inside, and in order for them to go everywhere they need to, they either need lobbyist credentials, or preferably be on the Capitol security staff. “
“Or get elected,” Collin said dourly. “Maybe we should try that route, Kallen for Congress.” Kallen smiled and toasted him with his glass.
~~~
It was eerie listening to Callie call the university, identify herself as Brenna’s aunt, tell them she’d been in a car accident, and had been in surgery all night. She also said it would probably be the end of the week before they knew whether Brenna was going to make it. Callie was very convincing, getting a catch in her voice at times. Brenna found herself feeling bad for the poor girl and her family.
Rebecca came in and switched on the TV in the corner. “It’s on the news.”
There was a red car, horribly mangled by a truck that had hit it on the driver’s side. Brenna looked at it, not really understanding, until the words of the newscaster filtered through. “The driver of the car, Brenna Morgan of Baltimore, was airlifted to St. Brigid’s hospital in Charleston where she is in critical condition. The cause of the accident is still under investigation, but state police said there is no indication alcohol was involved.”
“That’s my car? Shit, you destroyed my car.”
“It’s very difficult to have a car wreck without a car. Don’t worry, we’ll file for the insurance,” Callie said.
“They’re not going to give me crap for a ten-year-old car with 150,000 miles. Oh, well, I have some money, I can get a new one.”
Rebecca frowned. “You’re not going to be driving. Why do you need a car?”
“What do you mean I’m not going to be driving? I like to drive.”
“Uh, protection, remember? You’re a member of the back-of-the-limo club now.”
“If I want to go dancing some evening, I’m going in a limo? With Protectors? Shit. I don’t even know any places where people show up in limos.”
Callie looked up from the report she was reading and gave her a fake-sweet smile. “Consider it an opportunity to bring a little class into your lifestyle. Now, if you two are through bothering me in here, I suggest you go finish your construct, figure out what Brenna’s taking with her to the estate, and talk to Seamus about trainers and a training schedule.”
“Callie? I have a few friends that might be worried about me. Is there any way to let them know I’m all right, or at least going to be all right?”
She sighed. “Give it a couple of weeks, okay? Then you can send them emails letting them know you’re still alive. Will that work?”
“Yeah, I guess so. Thanks.”
They went downstairs and Rebecca checked the construct, made a couple of minor adjustments, then showed Brenna how to trigger it. When it was done, Helmut was gone and Gottfried Braun was born. Rebecca gave orders to end the sedation and allow him to wake. They went to sort Brenna’s belongings.
That weekend, they loaded up a van with Brenna’s life, crawled into another van with several Protectors and headed to her new life at the estate in West Virginia.
~~~
Chapter 1-14
The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them. - Robert Graves
Brenna settled into life at the estate with a full schedule of training with various people five days a week. On weekends she practiced.
There wasn’t much to do for a young woman in the middle of the mountains. She asked Callie if there was a swimming pool.
“I’m sorry, Brenna,” Callie said. “There’s a pool, but it’s outdoors and we just drained it for the winter.”
"I feel like I'm not getting enough exercise. In Baltimore, I swam three times a week. I guess I'm a little bored too."
"We talked once about sparring, have you been practicing?"
"Yeah, I do kata in my room in the mornings."
"You know we have a full dojo and a gym in the basement, don't you?"
"Oh sure, Rebecca showed me that right away and we've been working out together. It's not really fair to spar with her though, but I've been teaching her some."
They made an appointment to get together and work out every Tuesday and Thursday mornings at six. When Rebecca was told, she went to Callie with a warning.
"Stay away from her breasts,” Rebecca said, “it super pisses her off. She sort of changes if you hit her there."
Of course, any inside information of weakness in your opponent is going to be exploited. The breasts are one of the most sensitive areas for a woman. Callie sensed that Brenna might have a weakness in her defenses. The first morning they sparred she looked for an opening to take advantage of this.
Reeling back from a hard punch to her right breast, Brenna's anger and pain were evident, "Hey, stay away from the boobies, okay? That hurts like crazy."
"If you don't want to get hit there, protect them. You're creating a hole in your defenses by thinking that way," Callie smirked. The two women were fairly evenly matched although Callie's reach with both hands and feet g
ave her an advantage.
"Oh? You think I have holes in my style? Okay, if you want to play match rules, that's fine with me."
They squared off again. Callie immediately saw a change in Brenna's attitude, and along with it the speed of their match. Good God she's fast. Brenna had Callie totally on the defensive in seconds and with a kick-feint from an unconventional foot set had her blocking low when Brenna's fists exploded into both her breasts almost simultaneously. Callie staggered and fell, her chest on fire.
"It's a lot more civilized if we just agree to leave the breasts alone, don't you think?" Brenna said.
Callie took a deep breath, damping down pain receptors. "Yeah, I see what you mean."
~~~
Sparring with Collin introduced her to an entirely new style of karate, the telepath style. After a few routine passes feeling each other out, she made a sweeping pass, then backed into him at a much faster speed than she had previously shown him. Caught off guard, he lashed out with his telekinesis and swept her feet out from under her.
"Hey, that's not fair."
He grinned at her, "All's fair in love and war, sweetheart. If you've got it, use it. We don't teach nice match etiquette here, we teach people to survive and win."
They faced off again and she managed to dodge a couple of his telekinetic blows, but distracted by a physical attack, she was unprepared when he knocked her off her feet with his mind. Lying on the floor and increasingly angry, she hit him with a surge of telekinetic power that pushed him back against the wall and held him there two feet off the floor. He fought to free himself but she was too strong. Other than Seamus, his telekinetic teacher, he'd never met someone stronger than he was.
Brenna started to get up when a weight hit her in the back, pushing her down to the floor. She pushed back and fought free but in doing so lost control of him. Facing off again and getting kicked in the ribs on their next pass, she covered herself with a close-fitting air shield and teleported behind him, punching him in the back just above the kidney. He spun and kicked her in the stomach then let out a cry and fell to the floor.
"Oh crap, I think it's broken."
Brenna hurried to him. Scanning his foot she found it was broken in two places. She immediately blocked his pain receptors in the area and pushed the bones back into alignment with her mind. While she helped him to the clinic, he told her, "Honey, covering yourself with an air shield is something we teach for combat, but it's off limits in the dojo. I guess I should have mentioned that."
~~~
Brenna hadn’t spent much of her life out of the city or the suburbs. At first she chafed that she couldn’t hit a bar or go shopping.
But after a few days, she began to find the quiet very comforting. The leaves were turning, and the mountains were a spectacular riot of color. She could take off from the main house, walk in almost any direction and be alone in a few minutes, totally quiet except for the wind and the songs of the birds. A sense of calm began to settle into her, and the horrific chaos of her last week in the city began to fade.
Even during her self-estrangement from the family, she had continued the exercises Seamus had given her. She’d gotten bored moving a pen around the room and tried other things. With a plastic pitcher, rather than the crystal that was ubiquitous in the O’Donnell households, she learned to pour herself a glass of water. From there, she moved to opening the cabinet, taking out a glass and setting it on the counter, opening the refrigerator and taking out a bottle of juice, unscrewing the cap (that was a lot harder than she’d thought it would be), pouring juice in the glass, screwing the cap back on (you’d think that once you unscrewed something it wouldn’t be so hard to screw it back on again), opening the fridge, putting the juice away and closing the fridge door.
There was a jumble of rocks up against the hill behind the house. It was far enough away that you couldn’t see much of it from the house except from her third-floor window.
She’d started with small rocks, picking them up and throwing them, and moved to larger ones. She didn’t understand why she could throw a rock the size of her head the same distance as one the size of her thumb; physics didn’t explain it. She came out here and played with the rocks a lot. She found it sort of funny that a girl with a PhD in the intricacies of the brain could be so amused by playing with a bunch of rocks.
Seamus ran into Callie in the hall. “Do you know where Brenna is?”
“No, I haven’t seen her since lunch. Do you want me to call her?”
“No, I just thought if she wasn’t busy we might go for a walk. I wanted to introduce her to some of my friends.”
“A walk?” Callie’s puzzlement showed on her face, then understanding dawned. “Oh, you mean Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Chipmunk?”
He smiled. “Among others.”
“Just a minute.” Rebecca, do you know where Brenna is?
She went for a walk. Try that big pile of rocks northwest of the house.
He topped the rise and looked down on the rock fall in the swale at the bottom of the hill. She was standing, staring at a boulder half the size of a pickup truck partly buried in the ground. As he watched, the rock began to shake, then rose in the air. It floated about two feet above the ground, then moved to a clear, grassy spot to her right, rotated in the air, and set down with its flat side up. She turned her attention to a rock about half the size and floated it over and set it on top of the first one, then did the same with a rock about half the size of the second. Hands on hips, she studied her work.
Building a snowman?
She started, looked around and spotted him standing on the rise above her. Yes
He walked down and appraised the stacked rocks. “Not bad. But, Brenna, don’t play with anything any bigger than that, preferably nothing larger than that middle rock. Too much weight can strain you. Wait another ten years before you try to move mountains, okay?”
“Okay. That one was pretty difficult.” She brightened, “Want to see what else I can do?”
“What happened to playing with the pen?”
“I can make the pen dance the polka. I got bored.”
He chuckled. “Okay, show me your other tricks.”
She turned, and a rock the size of her head rose into the air, then a second, and a third. They started moving, settling into a juggling pattern. She added another, then another, until she had nine rocks dancing in the air. “I haven’t tried more than nine. It gets kind of confusing trying to keep track of them.”
“The pattern you’ve got going is confusing the hell out of me.”
One of the rocks floated to the ground, then, one by one, four more settled close beside it in a circular pattern. Then she floated three more in a triangle on top of them, and finally topped her pyramid with the last rock.
“Pretty neat, huh?” She smiled brightly at him.
He couldn’t help but smile back. “Yes, that’s pretty neat.”
“One more trick.” The top rock floated up, and up, and continued up, following the rise of the hill behind them, and finally settled on a rock about a hundred yards up the hill. “Come see,” she said, and disappeared, reappearing next to the rock she had moved. He followed her.
“Now we see how precise I was.” The rock floated up about a foot, and she peered beneath it. He bent over, and saw an X marked with chalk on the rock beneath it. “Off by a couple of inches, but I’m getting better. I can hit it every time teleporting it, but the telekinesis isn’t quite as exact.”
“And your father used to spend money on toys,” he said dryly.
She laughed. “I guess I’m rather easily amused.”
“Do you want to continue playing with your rocks, or would you like to come take a walk with me? I’ll bet I can show you something almost as interesting.” The teasing promise in his voice caught her immediate attention.
“Sure.”
He took her along the foothills until they passed all the stables and the barns, then veered out into the mea
dows that made up the broad expanse of the valley. They walked for about half an hour, enjoying the quiet and serenity, not speaking, just enjoying the beauty of their surroundings and a comfort with each other.
“Brenna, extend your consciousness and tell me what you feel.”
“With my mind?”
“Yes, with all your senses.”
“With my body, I feel the breeze, and the sun on my skin. With my eyes, I see the grass, the hills in the distance, the trees, how the colors of autumn turn everything so beautiful. With my ears, I hear the wind blowing through the grass, through the trees in the distance.”
“And with your mind?”
She concentrated, trying to understand what he wanted her to see, to feel. “There are sparks of life energy, here and there. Some are so tiny that they’re barely discernible, others are like candles in a darkness. None are as bright as a person.”
A quiet smile crossed his face. “Very good. Can you isolate one of the larger ‘candle flames’?”
She turned, pointed, “Over there, in that clump of bushes.”
“Reach out and touch that mind. It’s an animal, so he doesn’t have language, and his thoughts are very different than ours. Be gentle, he’s prey, so he’s very skittish. Read his thoughts, feel how his mind works.”
She did as he said, and the mind she touched was very foreign and very simple. The complexities that consumed humans just didn’t exist. As she listened, she became aware of his hunger, his fear, but also his enjoyment of the moment. The sun warm on his back had lulled him to drowsiness, but hadn’t dulled his awareness of danger. It was a simple life he led, but in a way very foreign to humans he was happy and life was good.
“Now, I think Cindy has taught you about the succubus Talent of Influence?”
She nodded.
“The Talent I want you to employ is very similar. Call him to you. Be gentle, and be patient. Don’t bludgeon him like you would a man,” he gave her a crooked smile, “he’s not as dense as a man.”
That brought a smile to her face, and she reached out, and coaxed, rather than commanded, the life force to come to her. After about a minute, she saw a rabbit crawl out of the brush and look warily around. He stopped and looked at them and she held her breath.
The Telepathic Clans Omnibus Page 17
