Ascendant: The Complete Edition

by Richard Denoncourt

  He stole a glance to his right, then another to his left. His men were watching him, awestruck.

  “What are you staring at? Shoot them!”

  The men went back to their rifles. Dominic’s good eye went back to the scope.

  Michael cut down People’s Republic soldiers where they stood. He shimmered in and out of their sight, misleading their senses, clouding their thoughts, kicking out the backs of their legs so he could slash down at their necks. When he got to the end of the corridor where Arielle’s heart thrummed in the next room, he threw open the set of double doors between them, his wrists ringing with pain at the impact, and entered a chamber that reeked with the warm, metallic smell of blood.

  He was sweating. The room was long, empty, like a gathering hall. Pillars stood evenly spaced throughout. Overhead, the high ceiling was dark except for tiny electric red dots. The only significant light came from pale lamps in wall sconces. They had chosen this room for a reason Michael could not fathom.

  Then it made sense. The tiny red lights above him could only mean one thing: he was meant to be here. Surveillance cameras had been set up here to monitor the place. Kole had planned this moment from the start, since before his men had arrived in Gulch.

  Spotting Arielle, Michael broke into a run. She lay on a simple cot at the other end of the long room, her golden hair spilling over the sides, dressed in a hospital gown that was stained red with her blood. She was barely alive.

  As Michael reached her, a blast came from outside, muffled and distant. The building trembled. Arielle’s eyes sprang open and a look almost like relief came over her pale features when she saw him.

  “Ary,” he said, taking off his sweatshirt with fumbling movements. He covered her with it.

  She had lost a lot of blood. It was all over the place. There was a pool of it behind the altar, where the men had left their surgical instruments behind. He saw tracks where something had been rolled out of the room.

  “They put him in a machine,” she whispered. “Our—our baby. I saw him. He was a boy. A boy, Michael.

  Michael stroked her face, kissed her cold blue lips. “It’s okay,” he said, nearly sobbing. “I’m getting you out of here.”

  “It hurts,” she said, when he tried to move her.

  He left her where she lay. She looked fragile, so pale, almost like painted glass thin enough to shatter with a simple touch.

  “I love you,” Michael said, “so much.”

  Her eyes were unfocused from the pain. “Find him, Michael. Please find him and take care of him.”

  Michael wiped hair off her forehead. “I will. I will.”

  He began to cry, but Arielle remained calm. She reached up and placed a hand on his forehead.

  “It’s not your fault,” she said in her softest voice. Her eyes narrowed slightly in pity, even as the blood leaked out from where the baby had been cut out of her. She pitied Michael even as she lay dying in front of him. “There was nothing you could have done.”

  “Shhh,” he told her. “Let’s get away from here, okay? Come home with me.”

  As he spoke, his face and his eyes hid the wrath building within. That was for later. Now, he needed to take her away. Her body would die on this cold altar, but her mind would be warm one last time, in a place more peaceful than any they knew on this earth.

  Michael closed his eyes, slipped a hand over Arielle’s forehead, and together, they ascended.

  Dominic listened to metal slugs tear past his ears.

  The battle had thickened. He was in the process of strapping a charge to the generator behind the hospital when a group of soldiers dressed in black and carrying automatics emerged out of the darkness and into the light created by a flood lamp on the side of the building.

  “Freeze,” they shouted.

  Dominic finished typing the code into the charge and stuck it to the side of the generator. He side-stepped, avoiding several bullets, now behind the generator so half the soldiers wouldn’t have a line of sight.

  “Don’t fire! You’ll hit the generator,” they shouted.

  The soldiers in front of him ceased fire. Dominic came into view, leaped toward one of the men, grabbed him, and used him as a shield. The others aimed at him but didn’t shoot. Dominic readied himself for what he knew would happen next.

  “Shoot through him!”

  The bullets rained upon him, dozens at once. By then Dominic had disappeared into the dark, leaving only the soldier he’d been holding. The gunfire tore him apart.

  “Where’d he go?” one soldier shouted when the gunfire had stopped. He must have seen the charge a moment later: “It’s gonna blow! Get out of—”

  The explosion blew apart the generator, the flood lamps overhead, and all the men that had been standing there. The fireball rolled upward toward the sky like an asteroid in reverse, shrouded in smoke. It left the compound in darkness.

  And that suited Dominic just fine.

  He unslung the automatic hanging from his shoulder and dropped it. A knife was in his hand a moment later, its rubber grip cool against his palm.

  “Wish you could be here with me,” he said aloud, picturing Reggie’s grinning face, rugged from battle.

  Scouting for his first victim, he licked his lips and began to hunt.

  Louis Blake ran forward in the dark, led by his flashlight beam, Ian and Peter following closely behind.

  Ian still couldn’t believe the vitality in the old man or the degree to which his old battle spirit had awakened. A taste of death had apparently brought out the madness, the old lust for blood. Blake had gone through this entire fight with his teeth bared, clenched tightly together, knuckles white around his rifle.

  Unlike Blake, however, Ian felt no lust for battle tonight. He wanted this to be over. Part of it was Michael’s role in all of it. He’d acted on impulse, been reckless and emotional. Harris Kole had set this up as a trap, and they had walked into it willingly—and for what?

  All of this was for nothing. The soldiers standing before them were weak, mere pawns Harris Kole had sent here to slow them down. It didn’t matter which side won tonight.

  The snap occurred at just that moment, as if Ian’s subconscious mind had willed it. At least the feeling had been a snap, though it was probably just a sprained ligament. He went down like a sack of bricks, pain shooting up from his ankle in sharp, red blades.

  He clenched his teeth, trying to keep silent as Peter ran ahead, trailing after Blake and the other NDR soldiers on their team. But he and Peter were connected through their training, and Peter had sensed Ian’s pain, apparently. Peter turned back, wild-eyed.

  “Can you walk? Come on, can you walk?”

  Ian shook his head. “Go without me.”

  “Ian.”

  “Just go.”

  Someone approached from Ian’s left. Peter shone the flashlight in that direction, illuminating Dominic, who approached as if he had all the time in the world. He was covered in blood, his bandages completely soaked. He’d been using the knife.

  Ian’s stomach clenched.

  “Leave me here,” he said. “You know it doesn’t—”

  His last words were cut off when Dominic suddenly yanked him up from the ground. His ankle screamed in protest.

  “You twisted it pretty bad,” Blake said, coming out of the darkness to stand by him. “You’ve got to find a safe place until this is over.”

  An automatic coughed out a string of gunfire. Dominic, in a single flash of movement, yanked Ian’s back-up pistol out of the back of his pants and shot at the men coming toward them.

  The gunfire stopped as five soldiers fell at the same time. Dominic clicked the safety back on and put the pistol where he’d found it. Ian winced in discomfort at having Dominic touch him, especially as the man was covered head to toe in someone else’s blood.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Ian said.

  With their help, he stumbled toward a mass of dark trees. Peter provided cover fire.

&n
bsp; “Hide,” Blake told Ian. “We’ll come back for you.”

  Ian knew the old man was telling the truth. His own father, John Meacham, would have left him here, but Blake and Dominic actually cared about his survival.

  “I’ll stay here,” Ian said, locking eyes with Blake. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.”

  Blake patted Ian’s shoulder with affection, and then he was off toward the hospital’s main building. The others followed, Dominic lingering long enough to smile at Ian with the good side of his face.

  “Today we win,” he said, and Ian caught a flash of the man’s pointy teeth before they all ran off into the dark together.

  Ian nodded. “Victory,” he whispered.

  The word felt like salt on his tongue.

  Chapter 21

  Michael opened his eyes. Arielle stood before him, surrounded by the blue and green of the sky above the canyon, Gulch beyond her shoulders. She was smiling sadly.

  “I wish we could stay here forever,” she said.

  Michael bit back a pained sob and reached for her. She fell into his arms.

  It didn’t last long. Michael noticed when she pulled back that something about the place was different. The lake still smelled like moss and water, and the waterfalls still made their shushing sound as they hit the pool. The grassy land around them, however, was filled with four-leaf clovers, each one as tall as a man and stooped as if in a posture of mourning over a grave.

  The clovers’ giant stalks swayed in the breeze, the leaves flapping. They moved as if they were breathing in and out. They seemed to be watching Michael as he tightened his hold on Arielle. Watching him like plant demons with invisible eyes.

  “Look at me, Michael,” Arielle told him. “I love you.”

  He stroked one side of her face. Her color was draining fast.

  “I love you, too,” he said before pulling her close.

  “I’m dying.”

  “Stay with me. Please just stay with me.”

  A shivering spell came over her. “I didn’t like that building they put me in at all.”

  Michael rubbed her arms and back to keep her warm. He knew it didn’t matter, not in this place; heat and cold were irrelevant. And yet he couldn’t stop himself. He wrapped his arms around her and clutched her tightly to him.

  “Our son,” she said. “They cut him out of me, but I saw him before they put him in that machine. He was a boy, Michael. A little boy. He was so pink, I was afraid.”

  She was crying now, her face pressed to his chest. “You have to save him. You have to.”

  “I will. I promise I will.”

  The sky darkened as the clouds transformed into thunderheads. It happened so fast, as if ink had spilled into them. Raindrops fell, making the grass at their feet gleam like plastic. A pattering sound against the water, the smell of wet soil. The mountains didn’t look right; they appeared to be melting in the rain like sand.

  “It’s coming,” Michael said, looking into her eyes. “It’s happening.”

  “Don’t let it.”

  “I can control it now. The death whisper. I could kill them all with just a word. Then we can get out.”

  “It’s too late for me. You have to run.”

  He shook his head, having to rake in each breath. “No.”

  Arielle gave him a sad look. By now her eyes were a pale blue, the color of glass held against the morning sky. The rest of her looked gray and dead. Her eyelids drooped.

  “I have to go,” she said and took a step back from him.

  Michael cupped her face with his hands. Her hair was almost white, the color of old age and approaching death. He couldn’t believe it was happening this fast. He was going to lose her.

  “No, no, no,” he said, panicking. “Come back! Don’t go back there!”

  She stepped backward toward the lake, motioning for Michael to stay back.

  “It’s not your fault,” Arielle told him. “Remember that.”

  “Oh God! Come back!”

  “Save our son,” she said.

  Thunder roared. A fierce wind had picked up, laced with an icy, spitting rain. It lashed at him. Arielle was only a few feet away from the lake.

  Michael lunged at her, but by then she had fallen in, the splash so subtle it seemed she had slipped like a blade straight through it. He tried to jump in after her. The water had become a hard surface, impenetrable and unyielding, like thick glass. Something he couldn’t shatter no matter how hard he tried. She was gone.

  Michael looked around at the four-leaf clovers. They had gathered around the lake, leaves shivering in the wind. A growl of thunder made them duck like scared children.

  Michael pounded his fists against the lake’s solid surface. He was screaming and crying her name, trying as hard as he could to break through.

  When he came out of the illusion, he was no longer screaming. He was holding Arielle’s limp body in his arms.

  The room smelled of blood and death. Standing, holding her in his arms, the body nearly weightless from all the blood she had lost, Michael was aware of her beauty, and of the silence around them.

  Arielle looked up at the ceiling with glassy eyes. She was dead, and yet the look in them was almost one of urgency, like she was pleading with him to keep going. He nudged her eyelids shut.

  “I love you,” he said and kissed her forehead. “I’ll be with you someday.”

  He looked up, sensing the minds of men approaching.

  “But not yet,” he said.

  Footsteps rang out as Harris Kole’s men approached from every direction. They came in through the side doors, aiming rifles at him, screaming orders, taking cover behind pillars, and creeping along the walls.

  “Put the girl down and get on the floor! Put the girl down and get on the floor!”

  “Down, now, now, now, on your stomach! Hands behind your head!”

  Michael watched them gather, Arielle’s body now cold in his arms. The power flowed through his veins like hot water, warming his thoughts. He glanced up at the darkened ceiling and saw the glint of camera lenses there like the eyes of lurking bats. He nodded so Harris Kole could see it.

  By that point, the tears had begun to flow, and yet no emotion touched his face. When he tipped his head forward to glower at the soldiers, the blood-tears streamed down his cheeks with a tickling sensation and dripped off his chin to spill against Arielle.

  Something stung him in the neck. Then another, this time on his leg. Tranquilizer darts. They weren’t here to kill him but to capture him, as he had figured. He pushed away the drug’s effect, kept his thoughts in line, and walked forward among them.

  “Get back, drop the girl, get on your stomach and put your hands behind your head now!”

  The men raised their guns, obviously confused. They must have been wondering: why hadn’t the tranquilizer worked? What were they supposed to do now?

  They did the only thing they could; they fired warning shots above his shoulders and at his feet. Michael ignored the slugs sinking into the space around him and stopped.

  He spoke. “Drop your guns.”

  Rifles fell in a chorus of loud clatters.

  “Pain. You feel incredible pain.”

  The soldiers groaned and clutched their heads. They blinked and clenched their teeth, heads jerking and swiveling like the heads of dogs trying to tear a carcass apart. Useless motions and gestures that would do nothing to relieve the pain tearing through them.

  Clutching Arielle ever more tightly, Michael resumed his walk toward them, his eyes narrowed into slits. He could smell the blood on his cheeks. The tears had stopped. His mental voice entered them like a dagger puncturing flesh.

  Tear yourselves apart.

  The men gouged out their own eyes, howling and falling to their knees. Blasts from outside as Blake and the others tried to enter the hospital. Michael tipped his head back, raised Arielle up near his shoulders, eyes on the cameras overhead.

  “You’re next,” he
said.

  And then he spoke a single command to the men around him, each word slipping out of him like a burst of invisible fire.

  “Drop dead.”

  The men shuddered before dropping to the floor. Michael stepped over their lifeless bodies on his way out of the room.

  “What’s happening?” Peter shouted over the gunfire.

  Blake couldn’t believe what he was seeing. All over the yard, enemy soldiers were dropping like gassed flies, some of them gagging and blinking, trying to resist; the others simply going limp and tipping over, or sliding down the walls against which they’d been seeking cover.

  “It’s Michael,” Blake said, though he wasn’t sure anyone heard him.

  He closed his eyes and used his telepathic voice instead.

  We’re saved. Cease fire on enemies not attacking you. Let them fall on their own.

  A moment later, the gunfire stopped. The town was silent except for the crickets gradually easing their music into the smoky night. Blake took a moment to look up at a black canvas of glittering stars. The other men had reason to be thankful, but not Louis Blake; he hadn’t expected to live through the night, and as a result, all he felt now was a cold, empty space inside his chest. He didn’t know where it could go from here that would be any good.

  Michael emerged from the hospital, carrying a pale body in his arms. His face had hardened into a mask of calm hatred. His soldiers were speechless. The ones directly in his path moved to get out of his way. Michael ignored them and kept walking. He was dressed in a plain white T-shirt, his sweatshirt draped over Arielle’s body. It was the same black sweatshirt he’d been wearing when Blake had first met him only two years before. Back then Michael had been a nervous boy of seventeen. Now, with blood from his recent attack drying on his face, he was something else entirely.

  “The death whisper,” Blake said, feeling a coughing spell surge up from his lungs. He bent over his knees and hacked away. Blood shot from his mouth, forming webs against the cracked pavement of the hospital’s driveway.