10 Fatal Strike

by Shannon McKenna

Even closed in the bathroom, locked in one of those apocalyptic hugs with Lara, Miles felt the change in the energy outside the door. His neck, his balls. Tingling in a nasty way.

  He knocked aside the tangle of broom handles. “Let’s see what’s going on out there.”

  There was a knot of agitated people around the bar when he emerged. He pushed closer.

  Davy was doubled over, his head resting on the bar, holding his temples. His eyes were squeezed shut. “Oh, shit,” he gasped. “Bad.”

  Davy being stoic almost to the point of insanity, that sight scared the living shit out of Miles. “What’s going on? A headache?”

  Davy slowly lifted his head. His face was gray, contracted. “We didn’t leave soon enough,” he croaked. “He’s here.”

  “Yeah.” Sean’s face was pinched, “I’m feeling it, too.”

  “And me,” Connor said, grimly. “Asshole. Squeezing us.”

  Miles looked around at the people in the room. Davy dragged in a sobbing breath, clutching his head.

  They were all here in answer to his call. He had dragged them into this, assuming as always that these exceptional people could handle anything thrown at them. But nobody could handle this crazy shit.

  “Got a sense of what direction he’s coming from?” he asked.

  Davy lifted a hand, wagged his finger “no.”

  “Just pain,” Sean muttered. Sweat shone on his forehead.

  Miles turned to address the room. “We’ll split up, and take all the vehicles. Nina and Aaro each drive one, with your shields up. I take Lara, and go south, Nina, you turn right and take Hauser Road north, Aaro, cut across the pasture and offroad until you get to the other side of the valley, and go east. Kev, you and Edie get your car out, too. Everyone. No vehicle can stay here for them to trace.”

  Val slapped Miles’ back, and held out two sets of keys. “I brought my motorcycle. It is in the back of our van. You might need it, no? Take the van.”

  Miles pulled out his own keys and handed them over. “Thanks, man.”

  He grabbed the bag by the couch that had the computer, the router, the smartphone, and slung it over Lara’s shoulder. He helped Aaro lead the staggering Davy out the door. He was slumped, eyes half closed, blood streaming from his nose.

  Once they’d heaved Davy into Connor’s vehicle, he muscled Lara into the van. Tam’s car, Nina at the wheel, was already barreling down the driveway at top speed. Connor’s vehicle, Aaro driving, tore straight across the pasture, due east. Tam and Val followed Aaro in Miles’ pickup, peeling off in another direction. Kev and Edie followed them.

  He made haste, wheels spinning madly in the gravel before they found purchase and propelled the vehicle, heaving and bouncing along the driveway and onto the road, southbound. Which is when he realized he’d left the goddamn gun upstairs, too. Christ. In mortal danger, with the woman he loved, and he was stark fucking naked. Unarmed.

  “Miles.” Lara’s voice was hollow. “Your friends won’t make it in time. The shape Davy’s in.”

  The dead tone to her voice scared the shit out of him. “They might,” he insisted. “Those guys are bad-ass. You would not believe what they have pulled off in the—”

  “It has nothing to do with toughness, or smarts,” she said. “He’s too close. He’ll track them down. And he’ll kill them.”

  “Fuck,” Miles muttered under his breath. “Fuck, Lara! So what do you want me to do?”

  “It’s something I have to do, Miles,” she said. “Not you.”

  He realized what she intended, and fear stabbed deep. “No, Lara,” he said. “Don’t. Don’t do this. Don’t you fucking dare.”

  “Listen carefully. I’m leaving the Citadel. If I offer myself up to him as bait, he’ll follow me, and the others will have a chance.”

  “Don’t! Stop, just a second, and let’s—”

  “When you’ve gone a ways, stop the car, and leave me. Just run. He’ll never find you, not with your shield.”

  “No! Fuck, no! I’m not leaving you!”

  “It’s the only way.” She looked at him, with terrible, quiet purpose in her eyes that drove him absolutely bugfuck. “Thanks for everything.”

  “Wait! Wait just a second! You can’t just—”

  “Goodbye,” she whispered. Words appeared on his inner screen.

  i love u

  And the bright place in his head went dark.

  He howled, swerved madly to avoid a fencepost, fishtailed on the gravel in his panic. “Goddamnit, Lara!”

  But she was already past hearing him. Here eyes were wide, staring at nothing, hands to her temples. She gasped for breath.

  Miles took a sharp curve on screaming tires, yelling obscenities as her convulsions started.

  “Stop the car!” Greaves barked. “Turn. Go back!”

  Silva braked abruptly. “But the others are—”

  “I don’t care about the others!” He squeezed his eyes shut, lunging for her. She shone in the mist like a pearl. He lunged for her, again, with desperate, slavering eagerness.

  And he had her. He wound himself around her, psychically immobilizing her. Exulting. “Lara Kirk is south of us. Turn!”

  But it took too long for Silva to do the maneuvers on the narrow road. Halfway through, Greaves lifted the vehicle and its inhabitants two feet off the ground, spun it a hundred and eighty degrees, and let it drop with a teeth-rattling thud to the roadway. “Drive!” he snarled. “Tell the others to follow!”

  Silva obeyed. The other car would lose the scent of the other men without Greaves’ guidance. They weren’t close enough for Wilcox’s hunter talent to lock onto a target. But Lara Kirk and her rescuer were more tempting. And considering the state in which the mysterious ogre had left his staff the last time he visited, six people might by no means be too many to deal with the man.

  Miles veered around the hairpin, fishtailing on loose gravel, perilously close to the sheer edge. A dry streambed on the hillside that fed into a big culvert under the road caught his eye. Further on, a logging road switchbacked sharply uphill once again, in the opposite direction.

  It wasn’t a plan so much as desperate impulse. He braked on the curve, leaped out. Hauled out Val’s precious Ducati, and shoved the gleaming machine into the huge culvert, along with the dirt, the gravel, the drifts of dead brown scrub oak leaves and pine needles. He tossed his computer bag in, too. Back to the van. Lara was gasping for breath. She had slid down, crumpled half on and half off the passenger seat.

  He revved the engine, whipped it around the sharp turn on two wheels, and bounced and rattled up onto the logging road, lurching and tipping and swaying on the deep ruts.

  Lara was terribly silent. Her body swayed with the centrifugal force, hitting the gearshift, then the door. Limp and flopping.

  Where to stop was an artibrary decision, based mostly on the fact that he could not listen to that silence for another second without exploding. He jerked the vehicle to a stop. Raced around, and extracted Lara’s rigid, shaking body. She was still breathing, but her eyes were wide, dilated to vast black pools.

  He couldn’t feel her, couldn’t find her.

  He loaded her onto his shoulder, and took off through the trees. Not that there was any point in running while Greaves had a telelpathic fix on her. The first flat, grassy place he found, he let Lara’s body slide down, and laid her gently on the ground.

  She stared up at the sky, breath shallow, heart racing. Her body trembled, as if she were lifting a weight that was too heavy for her.

  He slapped her cheeks. “Lara! Goddamnit, Lara! Do you hear me? Get back inside! You can’t do this to me!”

  Fucking duh. Could, too. The world did what it wanted. It knocked people around with no regard for their feelings or wishes.

  Still, he shook her. Bellowed and pleaded. Bawled into his hands, like a child. Hit the ground until his hands bled. He was so fucking furious, he was having a tantrum, slapping at the tree branches.

  Jesus, just let h
im do this for her. Let him go and do the mortal combat with that evil motherfucker on her behalf. Let him be the one to get trashed, for God’s sake. He’d been totaled already, so what the fuck, why not? What else was he good for? Throw him out into the ring, let him freak out, crush everything that came his way. Mayhem Miles.

  He’d do anything, if she’d just open her eyes and come back.

  He held her in his arms, his face wet. He would follow her, but where was she? How the fuck did she get to that place in her head? She was the active one, the seasoned psychic traveler who made the wild flights into the otherworld. He just huddled inside his shield.

  Unless . . . he didn’t.

  Bone weakening fear thrilled through him at that thought.

  If he opened his shield. If he even could at this point. If he went out into the dark, naked as a newborn in that other dimension where his logical brain could not guide him. Could he find her?

  It scared him to death. He’d tried so hard to block all that stuff out, hold it away from himself. The whole concept of psi offended his logical ideas of the way the world ought to be, so he hid from it, like a kid hiding under the covers with a flashlight.

  But Greaves was coming. And Lara was dying.

  He could hear them already, with his enhanced senses. The vehicle on the road below was slowing on the hairpin turn to come up the hill. The engine hummed and labored as it climbed. Two cars.

  Worst case scenario, it killed him. No biggie. His life was worth nothing anyway if he didn’t try.

  Blood trickled out of Lara’s nose, splitting into twin rivulets.

  He called up his parent’s faces in his mind, and he offered a silent plea for forgiveness for being so distant. For not saying goodbye.

  He wiped away tears and snot with his sleeve. Grabbed Lara’s cold hand, with his own grubby, bloody one. Tried to open the shield.

  It wasn’t wired to open from the inside. All his efforts had been aimed at automating the mechanism, making it stay shut without having to think about it. He had put no effort at all into automating a reverse process. Each time he tried, he froze, and choked.

  Not until he held the image of Lara’s beautiful face in his mind did he make any progress. Those shining eyes, the soft, shy smile. Her hand on his chest. Pressing his heart. Their lovemaking.

  And he got it. The softness. Opening.

  It was slow, awkward. Gears grinding, sparks flying, the shriek of metal against protesting metal, big wheels rolling, big bolts retracting.

  Darkness swirled in, chilling him. Filling him. An infinity of . . . he had no way to frame it, other than darkness. Other-ness.

  He moved through it like a swimmer in a dream, reaching out. Casting a huge net, like he did when he was fishing for ideas, but he was fishing for her. He was a flare in the darkness, a beacon fire.

  Lara. Lara. Lara.

  It didn’t take long. He was bound to her. They were like a rubber band stretched out, poised to snap back together.

  He sensed her presence, and her struggle. She was wrapped in a strangling, consuming darkness, like shadowy spider-silk. Fighting it.

  He gathered his energy into a ball, and hurled it like a bolt of blinding light, straight at that amorphous thing that was clamped around Lara. Surprise jolted it loose . . .

  Get back inside, now now now, he wanted to scream, but he had no voice, no interface. He wanted to bellow his frustration but he had no throat, no body.

  And suddenly, like a light flashing on, she was inside. His shield snapped shut like a clam instinctively against the attack from outside.

  Energy battered against his shield. He hunched over her, panting, with deep, rasping breaths. Stinking with fear sweat.

  He opened his eyes. She was looking up at him.

  wt the hell were u doing? goddamn it why didnt u run?

  if u have 2 ask he snapped back. cmon lets go

  Cant move im done pls go without me run run run

  fine then give up if you want 2 watch me die tnx 4 caring

  go! fuck off!

  no

  Her body shuddered and arched as she suddenly dragged in a breath, like she’d been underwater. “Goddamn you, Miles,” she croaked.

  “You’re welcome,” he said. “Move.”

  He made a move to pick her up. That roused her right away.

  She pulled out of his grasp, and followed along in a staggering run, with much stumbling and a terrifying amount of noise. Periodically Miles stopped, held her tight against him, listening around the racket of her panting breaths, and her thudding heart for Greaves and his team.

  His perceptions kept spreading, wider and wider. He didn’t feel any limits to them. He was amped up to the max. Information organized itself into a topographical grid, with his attackers as bright moving points of energy. No self-doubt. No stressing about making some dumb-ass mistake and paying with Lara’s life. No time to play out the worst-case scenarios. He was in the zone. Everything was channeled into the algorithm that crunched data and churned out an array of continually shifting strategies. Taking their opponents out, doubling back down to the road, and hauling ass while Greaves still assumed they were on foot, that was their best bet, at this precise second.

  He dragged Lara into a grove of young trees, pushing her down into the wild rose bushes. “You stay there,” he said. “And stay inside the shield. Got me?”

  Her eyes looked haunted. “Where are you going?”

  “To clear a path,” he said.

  She gave him a short nod. b careful

  He moved silently down the hill. Maybe his shield had a component like Nina’s. They didn’t seem to sense him at all, but he could clearly feel the closest three opponents, moving steadily uphill. All enhanced up the wazoo, but in distinctly different ways. One was a telepath. Miles had enough experience with telepaths to recognize the vibe. The guy—somehow, he knew it was a guy—was scanning for Miles’ thought waves, but his probes just slid over his shield like it was oiled.

  The other guy, a little further downhill and moving fast in Lara’s direction, was using a different part of his brain, a more animal part. Sniffing, feeling with instincts, using his brain stem. More like the cougar Miles had met up at the Forks than his fellow goon.

  One more was farther down the hill. Coercion. Then there was Greaves himself, plus two more, near where the vehicles had stopped.

  Greaves was the brightest spot on that topographical grid. A red, toxic throb of energy, battering Miles’ shield like hurricane wind.

  Yesterday, he might have hesitated to use deadly force. Seeing Lara on the ground with blood running from her nose had burned that hesitation right out of him. Those evil scumsucking motherfuckers had hurt her, and now they were going to die.

  He pulled out his blade, and moved in on them.

  “Sir? Sir, are you all right?”

  “Get your hands off me!” Greaves’ blast of telekinetic energy flung Silva six meters through the air. He thudded to the ground, stunned.

  Greaves put his hand on the door handle, dragging himself to his feet. The other hand touched the stream of blood that had burst in his nose, around his eyes, and probably on his sclera, as well, leaving what was sure to be unsightly red spotches in the whites of his eyes.

  The sneaky little bitch! She had led him into a trap and suck-erpunched him! He was so angry, he almost squeezed Silva’s hiccuping lungs closed, but that would be wasteful.

  Levine stood in the clearing, frozen still, eyes wide. Afraid to speak or move. God, was it always to be his fate to be surrounded by cowards who shit themselves at the faintest whiff of difficulty?

  If she did not move or say something in five seconds, he would kill her, too, and never count the cost. Five, four, three—

  “A tissue, sir?” She dug in her purse, handed him a packet.

  He plucked one out, pressed it sullenly to his bleeding nose.

  Lara Kirk and her ogre were on foot. No way could they be outside his range. Which meant Kir
k’s shield was fully as strong and impervious as Geoff’s, and that she could lower it and raise it at will.

  Greaves did a telepathic check of his enhanced commandos, all drawn from his own elite security squad, the ones who traveled with himself and Geoff at all times. None of them had engaged yet.

  He gestured impatiently toward Silva. “Get him up. Get out there and help look for those two. Both of you.”

  Miranda’s eyelids fluttered, and her gaze dropped to her houndstooth pencil skirt, the sheer black hose, the costly four-inch heels. Vain, useless bitch. “Me, sir?”

  “Of course, you,” he said, pitiless. “Both of you. There’s a lot of ground to cover.”

  Silva struggled to his feet. He wore dress shoes, and his Armani suit was somewhat the worse for wear, with mud on his knees and chest. He and Miranda headed into the forest with gingerly steps.

  Greaves tried again to scan for Lara Kirk. The flat silence felt like Carol’s punishing silence. Like Geoff’s . . .

  Like Geoff’s. Of course it did. Of course.

  He composed himself to stillness, and brought the crazy-making quality of Geoff’s silence clearly to his mind. The heaviness of it, the feeling of constant rebuke. His son’s silence was a mirror, highlighting his father’s sins, flaws, crimes.

  It was painful to dwell upon, but he kept grimly at it, until something like Geoff’s shield began to shimmer on the edge of his consciousness. Almost there . . . and he lost it again.

  He tried again, making his mind soft . . .

  Yes! He’d felt it. Not exactly like Geoff, but similar, and he—

  Sir? It was Miranda, pinging him telepathically. There’s a—

  I AM CONCENTRATING! He punched the sharply articulated thought back at her, together with a punishing stab of mental energy that was liable to affect her sleep and digestion for days. Stupid cow.

  I know, sir, but this is SERIOUS please come

  He gave in to the inevitable, following the beacon of Miranda’s mental signature. He reached out to monitor the rest of his staff . . .

  And found nothing.

  He came upon Miranda. She pointed, her face white and stiff.