Succubus Ascendant: An Urban Fantasy (The Telepathic Clans Saga Book 4)

by BR Kingsolver

  “Do the other Clans know that?” Brenna asked.

  “They know that O’Donnell Protectors are elite,” Collin answered. “There are strong telepaths among our enemies, but on average a hundred of ours will kick ass on five hundred of theirs.”

  “And what good does that do us in a civil war?”

  “I’m hoping we don’t have a war,” he answered.

  ~~~

  The following day, word came that an O’Neill factory in Dumfries, Scotland, had been damaged by a car bomb. Over forty people were killed and a couple of hundred were injured. An hour later, another car bomb went off at an O’Byrne facility in Wales, with an even greater loss of life.

  In notes left at the scenes, Finnian claimed responsibility for the Scottish blast, and Andrew took responsibility for the Welsh explosion. The lists of demands contained in the notes were almost identical. Collin’s experts determined that the bombs were of identical manufacture. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Finnian and Andrew were working together.

  Security at all three Clans’ facilities in the British Isles was boosted to levels normally seen at military bases. It was difficult to conceal such measures in the large cities, such as London. It was even more difficult to deal with the English and Scottish police who swarmed over the bombed sites. And then there was the press, who broadcast news of the bombings and speculated that the IRA, or maybe Al-Qaeda or the Mafia, were responsible.

  The police were frankly baffled as to who would want to bomb those particular targets. Neither of the sites was the type of place normal terrorists would strike. O’Neill and O’Byrne corporate representatives were besieged by both the police and the press seeking answers.

  “We can’t have too much of this,” Collin said to a meeting of Brenna’s security officers. “It brings too much attention to the Clans.”

  “That may be what they hope,” Rebecca said. “But they can’t expect that we’ll meet those ridiculous demands.”

  “They’re delusional,” Thomas said. “Hugh might have some hope that he could succeed Brenna if she stepped down, but the Clans would never accept those two fools.”

  “Perhaps they’re hoping we’ll offer something to buy them off,” Brenna said. “Hugh may be hoping I’ll give him Scotland.”

  “That’s possible,” Collin conceded. “He’s obviously been building a base of support in Scotland for years.”

  “Hugh was the O’Neill in Scotland for the past twenty or thirty years,” Thomas said. “Corwin rarely traveled, and I doubt the younger people there have ever met him.”

  “Have we heard anything from him?” Brenna asked.

  “Yes, he’s said that he would allow you to exit gracefully,” Thomas said. “We’ve shut down two printers in Belfast that were printing up a manifesto to distribute. In it, Hugh says that O’Neill has never been subservient to O’Donnell, and it isn’t going to start now. It’s a call for rebellion.”

  “That probably has some appeal,” Brenna said.

  “Yes, it might,” Thomas acknowledged, “but the bombing in Dumfries throws a spanner into his argument. He can’t be happy with Finnian. No one in the Clan wanted this to come to bloodshed, and those spilling our own blood won’t be very popular.”

  “The statement you put out after the bombings has been very well received, especially in Scotland,” Jeremy said, referring to a statement drafted by Brenna’s advisors and posted in all O’Neill and O’Byrne facilities. It was also posted on the Clans’ websites.

  “Any support Andrew might have in Wales has evaporated,” Devlin said, “and your support in Dublin and Wicklow has grown. No one wants to get blown up, and Andrew made a mistake by claiming responsibility. Those who know him think even less of him now.”

  Jared spoke up. “Andrew made a major strategic mistake. If he’d waited until Lord O’Byrne stepped down, his actions could be interpreted as a strike against you. But by throwing in with Finnian and striking now, it’s rebellion against his father. Everyone likes Fergus, and in spite of his kindly country lord demeanor, he’s tough as nails. There’s a manuscript in the O’Byrne library that your mother wrote about the campaign he led in Italy during the Silent War. Very interesting reading.”

  “Yes, Andrew is a fool,” Devlin said. “Lord O’Byrne is mad as hell. He’s issued a kill-on-sight order against Andrew.”

  ~~~

  Additional incidents involving snipers firing on Protectors and small explosive devices on roads to the estates in Wicklow and Tyrone occurred over the next week. They were more in the line of nuisance attacks, but there were no more large events that drew the press.

  By the end of the week, Protectors were staged around the village of Dunallen and the roundup of the mutineers’ families began. The blockade of the shipyard was put in place at the same time. Anyone wanting to leave the yard was taken into custody and shipped to Ireland. The families were shipped to warehouses that had been prepared to house them in Edinburgh.

  A majority of the five thousand telepaths living in the Glasgow area resided in Dunallen. That included shipyard workers and their families, as well as merchants and those who worked for other businesses in the Glasgow area. The town’s administration and constabulary were all O’Neill Clan members. All of the realty agents in the town were telepaths, and all home sales and rentals were only advertised locally.

  Rebecca was on hand to observe the operation as Brenna’s representative. The new Clan Chief was very concerned that none of the people involved were abused or mistreated in any way. Before her life with the Clans, Rebecca would have marveled at the quiet efficiency involved in evacuating most of a town. There was no shouting or arguing, no violence. Protectors drove lorries into a neighborhood, broadcast their orders telepathically, and people left their homes and boarded the trucks. The Protectors encountered only a few instances of resistance, and the troublemakers were surrounded with air shields and carted off.

  The names of all the mutineers inside the shipyard were known, and the locations of their family members were known, too. By the end of the third day, less than two thousand inhabitants remained in Dunallen. The number of workers remaining inside the shipyard had also shrunk. When the roundup started, three hundred people simply walked out to the Protectors surrounding the yard and asked to join their families. All of these workers were told to drop their shields and submit to interrogation. Two hundred were allowed to join their families in Edinburgh, the rest were escorted to a ship for transport to Ireland.

  Two of the workers abandoning the yard resisted. One used Neural Disruption against the Protectors and was shot dead. The other was subdued and transported.

  Attacks by insurgents outside the yard began the evening of the second day after the blockade began. These were hit-and-run attacks against Protectors and occurred at multiple locations all over the area. Interrogated captives revealed that some of the insurgents were loyal to Finnian, others to Hugh. It was unclear whether the two forces were coordinating with each other.

  A car bomb was stopped half a block away from the main O’Neill offices in the Glasgow city center. Unfortunately, the driver managed to detonate the bomb, taking out a block of the city that had nothing to do with the Clan.

  Rebecca had taken part in numerous small operations and tactical battles, but she’d never been in the middle of such a large operation before. She moved around the area, checking in with the evacuation forces, then traveling to the shipyard, and occasionally checking in with the operation’s headquarters at the town hall. Brenna checked with her every hour wanting to know what was going on.

  Finally, Rebecca told her sister, *Look, you’re driving me nuts. I’ll call you when I have something to report. Okay?*

  *I’m worried. I need to know that you’re all right,* Brenna responded.

  *I understand that. But you’re a distraction. Just cool your jets and I’ll stay in touch.*

  Brenna reluctantly agreed, but Rebecca found out later that she just switched her co
nstant badgering to Padraig O’Malley, the operation commander.

  The fourth morning, about two hours before sunrise, Hugh’s forces counter-attacked out of the shipyard. Seven hundred rebel Protectors hit the Clan forces at three points. With heavy equipment and air shields as cover, the rebels used telepathic and conventional weapons to drive their advance.

  One group contained a large number of electrokinetics. Drawing on the massive electrical capacity of the shipyard, they drove a hole through the blockaders’ line. A second group flooded the area outside the main gate with fire. Even an air shield couldn’t protect a person from the heat of the flames and fireballs if he was exposed long enough. The air inside an air shield could heat up beyond what a person could survive. The blockading Protectors were forced to retreat.

  The third group used a combination of Neural Disruption, Empathic Projection and Dominance to clear a path to the River Clyde. Reaching the docks, they commandeered two ships and sailed away downriver to the sea.

  The offensive was preceded by an attack on Clan headquarters in the town hall. Between fifty and one hundred fighters shut down all electric power to the hall and used a combination of conventional and telepathic weapons to breach the main entrance doors.

  Clan Protectors on the roof and inside the building held off the attack until help could arrive, but while the loyal commanders were distracted, the breakouts from the shipyard occurred.

  Rebecca missed all the action, being asleep in a spare bedroom in the Dunallen Mayor’s home. Carrying a take-out cup of coffee, she arrived at the town hall at sunrise. Workers were fitting heavy metal panels to close off the gaping hole where the main entrance doors had been blown off their hinges. The area around the building looked like a war zone, with scorch marks, two burned out cars, and a lot of debris.

  Shaking her head, she entered the building through a side door and encountered the Mayor and Padraig speaking to five representatives of the Scottish national police. Although no bodies were present, Rebecca could see at least three large smears of blood on the floor. The building foyer was a shambles.

  “Something happened here,” the lead policeman was saying. “You can’t bloody tell me you have things under control. Just look at this place.”

  “Shit. We don’t have time for this,” Rebecca said, and took control of the man’s mind. Then she moved into the minds of the other four policemen and controlled them, too. The Mayor and Padraig turned to stare at her.

  “What in the hell are you doing talking to them?” Rebecca asked. “You can’t explain something like this.”

  “We have police and press all over the place, and at the shipyard, too,” Padraig said, his bearing stiff. He hadn’t said anything during the past three days, but he’d made it obvious enough that he resented a young girl looking over his shoulder.

  “Bloody hell,” Rebecca said. “Call your O’Donnell commanders and tell them to implement damage control around the shipyard. Find some people with more than half a brain who can think and assign at least one to every press crew you can find. Block off all entrances to the battle zones and blur the minds of anyone who approaches. This is Containment 101. Don’t you people in Ireland prepare for this kind of crap?”

  She held up her hand to forestall any answers and pulled out her phone to call Brenna.

  “Sis? We have a major clusterfuck in Glasgow. I need at least one, preferably several, containment teams here ASAP.”

  “What’s happening there?” Brenna answered. “We’re getting reports of a major battle.”

  “Call me,” Rebecca said and hung up. Immediately, she heard Brenna’s voice in her head.

  *What the hell’s going on?*

  *We had at least two battles. We have Scottish police and press. The people on the ground here are bloody incompetents. They were trying to talk to the Goddamn police!*

  She showed Brenna the scene in the town hall.

  *I need people here who know how to deal with a public problem. I need them now, and I don’t care how they get here,* Rebecca sent.

  *I’ll call Nigel and Callie,* Brenna sent and then broke the connection.

  “Okay,” Rebecca said, turning to Padraig, “what’s our status?”

  Red faced, he gathered himself and said, “We had an attack here that we fought off. There was a three-pronged breakout at the shipyard. Heavy casualties. Hugh’s forces captured two ships and took them to sea. Hugh has several hundred men loose in the Glasgow area.”

  “Wonderful,” Rebecca said. She gestured toward the police, still standing in the middle of the room and staring into space. “What are they doing here?”

  “There was a police helicopter that witnessed the battle at the shipyard and reported it. These men showed up a few minutes ago wanting to know what’s going on,” the mayor said.

  “Why are they here and not at the shipyard?” Rebecca asked.

  “They showed up and some idiots let them into town,” Padraig said.

  “Idiot is right. Find out who it was and ship them to Ireland. I wouldn’t bet that they weren’t working for Hugh.”

  The looks on the Mayor’s and Padraig’s faces showed sudden shock.

  Rebecca ran her hand through her hair and thought furiously.

  “So, what’s our story? The town hall was hit with a meteor? An industrial accident at the yard? Alien invasion? I know there were containment plans included with this battle plan. Haul them out and let’s figure out what we’re going to plant in these guy’s minds.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Rebecca received a spear thought from Brenna.

  *Visualize a landing spot for me.*

  *What? You can’t come here. It’s a Goddamn war zone.*

  *I’m not staying long. I need to bring you some help.*

  Rebecca looked around and then sent the image of a large clear space in a nearby hallway. Almost immediately, Brenna appeared holding Collin with one hand and a slender woman in a Protector uniform with the other. Rebecca recognized Shia MacDonald, one of the Clan’s strongest distance communicators.

  Brenna looked around. “This is a mess,” she said.

  Then she noticed the Scottish police. “Collin, what are we going to do with them?”

  “We’ve been discussing that,” Rebecca said. “I don’t know how to explain this.”

  “Don’t try,” Collin said. “When you have a disaster this big, go for the big lie. Implant in their minds that nothing happened here. They came out, found everything normal, had tea with the mayor, talked about football, and went home again.”

  “What about the press and the helicopters?” Rebecca asked.

  “Same thing. Wipe out everything everyone saw.” He looked at the mayor. “Have your people at the news organizations and the police stations crash all the computer systems, wipe out everyone’s memories of this morning, wipe all the recordings. Don’t worry about inconsistencies or lost time.”

  “And the helicopters?” Rebecca prompted.

  “How many distance communicators do you have?” Collin asked Padraig.

  “About fifteen or sixteen,” the operations commander answered.

  “Set them up in shifts around the clock,” Collin said. “If any helicopters or small planes fly over, take over the pilots’ and passengers’ minds, and send them into the bay.”

  “Collin, they’re innocents!” Brenna protested.

  “No, they’re threats,” he said, his face hard. “Treat them like enemy combatants. They could destroy us all. The last thing we need is global attention to a telepathic war.”

  He looked at Shia. “Do you have any problem with that?”

  She shook her head, her face totally expressionless. “No. I was in Ecuador. I doubt anything we do here will match that horror.”

  He reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “We’ll do our damnedest to avoid that.”

  Collin pulled Brenna to him and kissed her, then said, “Get out of here. Tell Nigel to get me those containment teams and to monitor everything co
ming out of this area.”

  “Okay,” Brenna said. “Padraig, do we know if Hugh is still in the shipyard? Some communications we monitored indicated that he may be on one of those ships they stole.”

  “We don’t know,” Padraig said. “We know he was still in the yard yesterday.”

  Brenna nodded and disappeared.

  ~~~

  Chapter 7

  I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it. - George Bernard Shaw

  Collin immediately took charge. After assessing the situation, he called Shia to him and had her link him to Brenna.

  *I need about half a dozen of your Druids,* he told her.

  *I’ll talk to Morrighan. What do you need Druids for?*

  *I can’t believe we allowed the shipyard to maintain electrical power. I want to cut it all off. And never put Padraig in charge of a major operation again. The man is a good soldier, but he lacks any kind of imagination.*

  Of all electrokinetics, the Druids were the most adept. Their ability to detect and manipulate electricity went far beyond that of any other telepaths.

  *Aren’t we closing the barn door a little bit late?* Brenna asked.

  *Perhaps, but I doubt that all of their electrokinetics broke out last night. Most, if not all, of the welders and electricians employed at the shipyard are electrokinetics. Besides, if we want a siege to be successful, we cut off all of their resources. No lights, no refrigeration, no electricity to draw on as a weapon. I’ve already given orders to cut off their fresh water.*

  *Gotcha,* Brenna sent. *I’ll get you some Druids. Anything else?*

  *Magnetokinetics, cryokinetics. People who are strong in Empathic Projection. Hugh was very creative in putting the force together that stole the ships.*

  *Sounds as though you need more than a half-dozen Druids,* Brenna sent.

  *The more the merrier. You know as well as I do what a Druid can do.*

  By that evening, Brenna had teleported twenty-five Druids to Glasgow.