Ascendant: The Complete Edition

by Richard Denoncourt

  “Yer damn right only one man could make that shot. It was Warren who did it, but it was me that found out that son of a bitch was a mole. I was the one caught him snooping by the barns.”

  Elkin bent down to kiss Arielle’s chest. William turned away, sniffling, on the verge of tears. He’d been so good, so brave. Arielle would have to commend him later for that.

  The unkempt, bearded man holding the knife to William’s throat smiled even wider at the scene. He’d been grinning like that for minutes now, like a perverted, wooden dummy.

  Elkin had lost himself against her skin, eyes closed, mouth open, tongue creeping over her in a way that almost made her scream.

  (…and all over Gulch, eyes widened in terror, or squeezed shut with disgust, as the vision of Elkin craned over a defenseless Arielle seared itself into their minds…)

  Now? The shadow asked.

  Now.

  The shadow broke away from the back wall and took form behind Toby and William. Toby’s head jerked around with a deep pop. The knife fell from his limp hand before he collapsed to the ground.

  A force pushed William down to his knees.

  Cringing from the pain, William looked over his shoulder to see the man who had been holding him. He was standing like before, arms hanging limply by his sides with the thumbs out.

  He looked strange, though. His face wasn’t where it had been before.

  It was too terrifying to comprehend at first, and then William finally made sense of what had happened. The man’s head had been twisted all the way around so that instead of a face, all that was visible now were the backs of his ears and a mass of scraggly brown hair.

  The shadow that had committed this horrifying act took human form for a moment—the eyes peered cruelly at William, orange in the candlelight—before disappearing to leave the man to topple into the boxes like a sack of dirty laundry.

  (A few streets over, a woman clapped in victory…)

  (John Meacham, seated behind the wheel of his parked truck, flinched before punching the steering wheel, causing a brief honk. “No,” he said. “God damn it, no!”)

  Elkin leaped off Arielle and pulled a hunting knife out of the back of his pants. He sidestepped toward the back door, half-crouched in a defensive stance. His eyes darted frantically as he looked around the room.

  The shadow positioned itself before Arielle as if it were guarding her. It was Michael Cairne, dressed all in black. Even his face was black, though the color appeared to be shifting, as if his skin was covered in a dense swarm of wasps.

  “You ment bastard,” Elkin said, gasping in shock. “You son-bitch ment bastard.”

  (“Do it,” a man said in the safety of his small house, his wife and children squatting behind him, eyes closed as they watched the skinny man with the jutting cheekbones cringe…)

  Instead of attacking, Michael’s eyes moved over Elkin with all the emotionless intensity of a camera, two fingers of his right hand pressed to his right temple, eyes as dark as before.

  “Say hello to Gulch,” Michael said as he approached.

  Elkin’s mouth moved of its own accord, even as his brain told him a confession would do him no good. For the first time in his life, he understood that this had been his own doing. It was his fault he would never leave this room alive. And yet his shivering lips poured out what he thought might save him, maybe just this once.

  It didn’t.

  Chapter 18

  Readying their automatics, the men gathered in the darkness behind the pink house on Silo Street. They didn’t need to be telepaths to know the girls were inside. Peter and Eli had gotten there quick enough, and there was only one reason those two punks would be in such a hurry to get to this particular house at a time like now. Warren let a malevolent grin slide across his face.

  “I’m seeing something,” one of his men said.

  “Me too. It’s Elkin.”

  Warren lost the grin.

  He closed his eyes and let his mind relax, to see if he could catch a glimpse of what his men were seeing. Next to him, Charlotte sighed. They had bound her wrists together with rope, and one of his men held a pistol to her temple. Any telepathy out of her and she’d be dead in a second. She knew this. Therefore, whatever this vision might be, it was coming from somewhere else.

  The vision unraveled in his mind with all the terrifying realism of a nightmare. There was Elkin, looking like a scared fool, his face growing larger at the approaching view. Michael was advancing on the man, and Warren watched through Michael’s eyes, unable to turn away as his best friend from childhood turned into a quivering coward.

  “God damn it,” Warren said. “Elkin, you dumb shit.”

  It took about half a second for Elkin to give his blubbering confession. “It was Warren—he shot Reggie. I’s—I’s told him not to, told him it was a bad idea. But John said—John said…”

  A pair of hands flew forward and grabbed Elkin’s neck. Warren shut his eyes, but that did nothing to halt the vision of his friend being strangled to death. Served him right, the yellow bastard.

  “We’re going in,” he told his men. “Jacob, you first.”

  Jacob, with his flat, bulldoggish features, nodded and took the lead. He tried the back door, found it locked, and kicked it open with a single, powerful blow. Chirps sounded from a few crickets trapped within. Total darkness inside.

  Jacob hesitated.

  “Get in there,” Warren said through clenched teeth. He held Charlotte in front of him just in case and thrust his pistol against her temple.

  Jacob passed through the doorway. Something snapped, triggering a shotgun blast. The sound was like a bomb going off in the room.

  They all ducked. Charlotte screamed as Jacob staggered back, his boots clapping against the porch floor, his left arm swinging wildly as though he were swimming against a current. His other shoulder had been blown apart, and his right arm hung loosely, attached to his body by a strip of skin and shirt fabric and nothing else.

  His body toppled onto the stairs and slid down with heavy thumps. He died almost upside down, his head resting on the dirt, eyes turned up to a black sky.

  Warren cursed. “Let’s go.”

  “You mean get out of here?” Julian said. He was a small, ratty guy with a mullet and a goatee. “Like, let’s go back?”

  “I mean like I’ll shoot you in the balls if you ask another dumb question. We ain’t going back. We just make the girl go first this time.”

  “Oh, right,” Julian said, looking back at the other three men with them. “The girl sets off the booby traps.”

  Warren rolled his eyes and pushed Charlotte through the door, making sure to keep a firm grip on the back of her shirt.

  “We got your girl,” he shouted into the house. “Charlotte is here, and I’m making her go first, so you got any more of those booby traps, you better let me know. You hear me, Rivers? You and your tubby boyfriend are under arrest. You come out here now or your little ment girlfriend here is gonna get it.”

  He kept the pistol pressed to the back of Charlotte’s head as he moved forward.

  Warren was a real idiot. Charlotte almost couldn’t believe the man had lived this long.

  She proceeded across the back porch, taking small steps, reassured by the voice inside her head urging her along, not sure how much this was going to hurt.

  As she approached the door, she could only guess what she would find inside.

  Warren whispered in her ear. “Now you open that door, y’hear me?”

  Charlotte reached out, an inch at a time.

  Behind her, the men watched closely, ducking off to the sides to avoid a possible gun blast. Everything was quiet so far except for the chirping of the crickets. She turned the knob and began to push the door open, inch by inch, sensing that the men behind her were squirming with anticipation and fear. Good. To hell with them.

  The door opened to expose the well-lit kitchen just past the mudroom. Beyond it was the dining room, with its
broad table of polished oak, only the end of which was visible.

  A clock ticked.

  Charlotte took a single, tentative step onto the strip rug at her feet. Neither Warren nor his men asked why such a rug, so obviously out of place with its beige color and delicate, furry texture, had been placed in this particular spot. It was clean, too, as if no one had ever stomped a pair of boots on it after coming in from the back yard. No one in her right mind would put a rug down in this spot.

  Unless she were hiding something.

  I’m going, she sent to the others. They kept pushing her; she knew what she was doing.

  She turned to face Warren and his men. Warren gave her a poisonous scowl.

  “Get in there,” he whispered fiercely.

  Smiling, Charlotte lifted her bound hands and flipped up her middle finger.

  “Kiss my pretty ass,” she spat at them.

  She stepped backward, and with a flapping sound she disappeared, taking the rug with her.

  John Meacham drove south toward the edge of the Hollows, his headlights washing over the empty streets. When he began to feel a slight dullness in his mind, he pulled the vehicle over and got out. No ment asshole was going to cause him to wreck his new truck. He was better on his feet anyway, as long as he had his gun.

  Except it wasn’t just any gun. It was a fully-restored M16 assault rifle with a mounted, high-powered tactical flashlight, set for three-round bursts, just waiting to be unloaded at mutinous sons of bitches like Louis Blake and his boys. The People’s Republic newspapers were right; Blake was a terrorist if Meacham had ever seen one, ready to shit all over the integrity and safety of Gulch just to get his own way.

  Liberty, my ass. If he wants war, he’ll get it.

  Meacham ran toward a group of buildings nestled against the foothills, which now rose darkly before him like ships approaching a bay at night. The IceHouse Lodge & Condominiums complex—leftovers from an age when this town had been a winter resort—formed a C-shaped mass of buildings, the windows dark holes against the brick after so many years of neglect.

  He gripped the M16, glad to have its reassuring weight in his hands. Its flashlight guided him as he crossed the plaza in front of the building. Rubble was strewn all over the place, loose bricks and empty beer bottles with the labels worn off. The place was infested with crickets. Their cacophonous chirping was enough to drive a man insane, with visions of insects crawling all over his body. He went straight to the back door, where a familiar stench of pinecones and urine greeted him.

  This was the place.

  He shot apart the lock and chain, each burst deafening in the night, the flashes so bright, and kicked open the door into darkness. Dim moonlight filtered in through the grimy skylights, and Meacham could see the place was empty and covered in dust and spider webs.

  He set the rifle on a windowsill with the flashlight pointing into the room. Then he lit a lantern he’d hung on the wall once, back when he and a team of his men had first inspected the place for supplies. Those were the good old days, when Gulch had been a treasure trove of old, prewar furniture, medicines, and canned foods. He pulled out the small kit he’d brought with him, the one he had spent nearly a tenth of the town’s annual budget to get from the last caravan.

  He hoped it was worth it.

  Out came the small glass bottle and a syringe. He pulled the plastic sheath off with his teeth, stabbed the needle into the bottle, and sucked out a third of its contents. After squeezing the air out of the needle, which produce a few glistening drops, he found a vein in his arm and injected the drug into himself.

  Selarix. It was so new, it didn’t even have a street name.

  The effect settled over him at once. It was not a euphoric one, and because of that you wouldn’t find much of this stuff on the black market of any city. Instead of pleasure, he felt his thoughts speed up, zip zip zip, like a merry-go-round spinning at fifty miles per hour. An unpleasant feeling, but it would keep Louis Blake out of his head. Most telepathy was useless against this stuff, which meant that he and Blake would be on the same footing; man to man, gun to gun, none of this combat telepathy bullshit.

  Finally.

  Chapter 19

  “Wake up, Dietrich.”

  A man’s voice, so familiar and so like the voice of a father that it made him feel like an infant being lifted by strong hands.

  Dietrich Werner opened his eyes to blurry patches of light, some brighter than others. Fluorescent strip lighting; he hadn’t seen that in years. A machine beeped nearby. Silhouettes stood at the outskirts of his vision; faceless, shadowy forms bending over to study him, making the lights dim momentarily.

  He blinked and tried to roll away from them. As he moved, pain flashed over various parts of his body, outside and inside. He felt like an injured bird, so fragile and weak. His mouth was bone dry and tasted terrible, and there was a medicinal smell in the air that burned his throat whenever he breathed in. All of this was too ugly, too clinical, to be any sort of afterlife. Unless he was in hell.

  “You’re a very lucky man,” Harris Kole said.

  Dietrich blinked until he could make out the features of his boss, a man he had never actually met. Kole looked different in person; smaller, more frazzled, not like a god at all. His hair wasn’t as neat as it always was in the pictures, and the skin around his face was a little droopier than it looked on TV. The man’s eyes were beady and tight, set in a pillowy but otherwise well-groomed face.

  “What happened, sir?” Dietrich said.

  “You were shot three times in the chest.”

  “How did I get out, sir?”

  “Another agent, embedded in the Legion just like you. He pulled you out of there.”

  “Sp-spying on me?”

  Harris Kole chuckled high up in his nose. “You know better than to ask that question.”

  “Who was he?”

  Harris Kole pulled a handkerchief out of his breast pocket and held it to his face as he tried to stifle a laugh. He glanced at the other men standing around the room, doctors in white smocks and men in black coats, all of them now trying to stifle laughter as it was customary to mirror any actions performed by the One President.

  Kole lowered the handkerchief and spoke in a near-whisper. “I want you to guess. Of all the people you encountered during your time in Praetoria, which one would’ve been the most difficult to turn?”

  His face beamed with pride. Dietrich knew his response would have to be a careful one. Kole didn’t ask these sorts of questions to fool around; he would inevitably judge Dietrich’s loyalty based on whatever he said next. It had to be someone who would’ve been nearly impossible to turn, someone who was—or at least appeared to be—completely loyal to Roman.

  Or…

  “It was Roman,” Dietrich said. “He’s one of yours.”

  Harris Kole let out laughter so strong his head tipped back and his mouth opened wide. His chest shook. The people around him glanced at each other before emitting short bursts of nervous laughter. Their eyes remained flat and empty as they made sure to mirror the One President’s gestures without overdoing it.

  “Can you believe it?” Kole said. “All I had to do was threaten him with a nuclear bomb. People in the Eastlands are so scared of that. And can you blame them?”

  Dietrich coughed, and the pain in his chest was so great that he saw stars in his field of vision.

  “There now,” Kole said, patting him on the shoulder. “A few more weeks with my doctors and you’ll be good as new. We have the best in the world, remember that.”

  Dietrich warmed at the thought of being in one of Kole’s private hospitals. The doctors here, though technically state employees like everyone else, were well compensated and highly trained. And, of course, the fact that he was here meant he would not be punished for some infraction he might have committed out in the Eastlands. Instead, he would be pampered like any other Party member. He hoped.

  “Put him out,” Kole said.

&n
bsp; Without hesitation, one of the doctors stuck Dietrich with a tiny syringe.

  He drifted off into a warm and fuzzy sleep, his last vision a memory of a strange boy staring at him with eyes like microscopes.

  A Type I. He had forgotten to ask the One President about that Type I back in Praetoria.

  Maybe that boy was the real reason Dietrich was still alive.

  Chapter 20

  In an upstairs bedroom inside the girls’ house on Silo Street, Fran, Rocio, and Sally cowered between the bed and the window, their sights set on the door. Peter had given Rocio a pistol and instructed her to shoot anyone who came in that wasn’t on their side. Since then, Rocio had remained on her knees with her elbows on the mattress, the gun in both hands pointing at the door.

  “Oh God,” she kept saying. “Oh God, oh God…”

  “It’s okay,” Sally said.

  A blast went off downstairs.

  The men were coming for them.

  There had to be something wrong.

  The fact that Louis Blake couldn’t sense John Meacham’s presence within the IceHouse Lodge meant one of two things: either Blake had lost his knack, or John Meacham had gotten hold of Selarix, the new drug being produced in the NDR that sped up the mind while blocking any attempts at telepathic intrusion. The caravans coming out of the NDR had started carrying it.

  But for one of them to bring it this far into the mountains was unbelievable.

  It had been discovered by accident; a genius drug dealer trying to cook meth in a personal lab decided to try a different recipe. When the police brought along a telepath to interrogate him, the dealer—still stoned on his own junk—found his mind conveniently locked against the telepath’s efforts at scanning him. Now the stuff was all the rage in the NDR, where “Ment paranoia” was just as strong as in the People’s Republic.