Bach had finally emerged, looking pale and ill—similar to the way he still looked as he now came out of his bathroom.
“Sorry,” he said.
Anna stood up. “I think you need to take more time.”
“We don’t have time.”
“Just another fifteen minutes,” she suggested. “I can wait outside.”
“Lie down,” he told her. “Please. Nika’s going to wake up soon—if she hasn’t already. While I didn’t promise her I wouldn’t leave, I did say that if I had to go, I would try to get back as quickly as possible.”
Anna sighed and sat on the edge of the sofa. “You won’t be able to help her if you make yourself sick.”
“I’m fine,” he said, meeting her gaze steadily. He even managed to force a smile. “Believe me, this is nothing. I’ve felt far worse. Now, please, lie down.”
Anna was about to sit back, when someone knocked on the door. Knocked and then pushed it open and peeked in.
“I’m so sorry, sir.” It was Stephen Diaz. “But it’s urgent. It’s Mac. Her integration’s fluctuating wildly with spikes up to seventy. She seems to have … I don’t know, snapped.”
Mac pulled onto the Mass Pike and pushed her bike as fast as it would go, only vaguely aware of the streetlights burning out with a flash or even a surge of sparks as she passed them.
It wasn’t as hard as she’d imagined not to think about Shane. True, she’d back-burnered him, and she could feel her awareness of her loss, and the deeply gnawing heartache, but it wasn’t front and center.
Right now, she had one and only one thing front and center in her mind: walking into those rooms where Nika and all those girls were being held, and setting them free.
She focused on it, because if she didn’t, then even with the roar of her Harley’s engine, even with the whine of her tires against the pavement, she could still hear the horrible sounds that Caine made as he raped and murdered that nameless little brown-eyed girl that he’d chosen after walking around the room filled with girls strapped to hospital beds.
He grunted and he gasped and he giggled and he moaned and he clicked his teeth and smacked his lips. And sometimes he sang little bits and pieces of songs. And he liked it when the girl he was abusing screamed, but not half as much as he liked it when all of the other girls joined in. He was a showman and the screams were his applause. And he reveled in the power it gave him, and he got off on their fear.
And when he was in that place, in that time of abandon, his enjoyment was so … pure. It was absolute and practically childlike.
He had no sense of wrong or right, no concept of morality, no idea of empathy or compassion.
He did what he did because he liked doing it. He liked the way it made him feel.
But the people who hired him? The people who knew that he was so terribly broken, who were not only aware of what he did, but allowed him—no, paid him—to do it?
They were pure evil.
And Mac was going to find them. She was going to go through that entire list of places that Caine had visited, and she was going to find not just the girls who were locked in those rooms, but the people who’d locked them there and hired motherfuckers like Devon Caine solely for the purpose of keeping the girls’ adrenaline flowing.
Mac was going to find them, and she was going to rip their hearts from their chests.
And she wasn’t going to sing any songs while she did it, but it was going to feel fucking great.
Nika awoke with a gasp and a sense of emptiness.
Joseph?
No answer.
She tried again. Joseph, where are you? Are you still there?
But there was nothing. She closed her eyes and searched her mind, but the odd warmth and strange sensation of having someone else inside of her head was gone.
She’d been abandoned.
Nika panicked. And even though Joseph had been adamant that she never speak to him aloud, she started to cry, and as she cried, she called for him: “Joseph! Joseph, please, please don’t leave me here! Where are you? Please be real! Please, please be real!”
And the other girls in the room started crying and screaming, too—shouting at her, “Stop that! They’ll hear you, and they’ll send someone in!”
But Nika didn’t care—she just wanted Joseph back, even if he was just a figment of her disturbed mind. Maybe, if she kept shouting, he’d appear—if only to chastise her for breaking his rules.
But no matter how loudly she screamed, it was soon clear that he wasn’t coming back. And then Nika railed at herself for falling asleep—for letting him soothe her to a place where she could sleep, where she felt safe enough to close her eyes.
If she’d stayed awake, he would still be here, and she would be in that warm, hopeful place that included the possibility of her escape.
She would still be in that amazing place where she was something special called a Greater-Than, where she would be rescued from this nightmare and go to a special school called the Obermeyer Institute, and she would learn—with Joseph’s help—to move objects with her mind. She would learn to read people’s thoughts and to use telepathy to put her own thoughts into people’s minds, even across great distances—the way Joseph told her he was doing even as they thought-spoke. She would learn to heal her body from all injuries and diseases. She might find out that she could predict the future, or develop exceptional strength, have amazing athletic ability …
But the first step, he’d told her, was for her to learn how to embrace a place of complete and total calm. She had to seek serenity and inner peace—and only then could Joseph help her unlock the mysteries of her powerful mind.
So now she tried to stop crying, and even though she couldn’t still her sobs or the tears that ran down her face, she pushed them away and focused, instead, on the breathing exercises that Joseph had taught her.
Maybe if she did them and worked hard enough to be peaceful, she would demolish the blocks that Joseph said she’d erected in her mind. Maybe that’s why he’d disappeared. Maybe—unconsciously—she’d pushed him away.
So she breathed. And breathed. Calm blue ocean …
She breathed as some of the younger girls continued to cry.
And even though Nika had started their noise with her own outburst, the despondent sound started to drive her crazy. It permeated, despite her attempts to shut it out, and it kept her from achieving even a remote sense of peace.
“Shut up! Shut up! Just shut up!” she screamed, and the surge of frustration and rage that gripped her shocked her with its power, and for an instant the lights flickered, and she froze.
Was that her? Had she done that?
None of the other girls seemed to have noticed, so she tried it again, only it wasn’t all that easy to work up that kind of anger. Except maybe it was. She thought of Zooey—the little girl that the scar-faced man had killed. She thought of the nightmare of having to select her disgusting kidnapper’s victim—although right now the little girl who was simultaneously crying and hiccupping was a good candidate for that. And now she aimed her anger and disgust at herself—and the people who’d locked her here and forced her to have such uncharitable thoughts.
Nika didn’t know who they were, but one thing she knew for sure? If she ever did get out of here, she was going to devote her life to hunting them down—including that stupid cow of a pregnant girl who …
The world seemed to slip and stutter and skip, and suddenly Nika was no longer strapped into a hospital bed in that roomful of girls. Suddenly she was lying on her side, with her eyes closed, and when she opened them, she was back in a hotel room. But it was nothing like the room where she’d awakened and tried to write an SOS in catsup on the window.
This was no impersonal, generic room. Two of the walls were covered with posters and colorful tapestries and the biggest flatscreen TV she’d ever seen in her life. Music was playing softly, and something that smelled vaguely soup-like was simmering on a stove—another entire wall was
a kitchen filled with shiny appliances.
She sat up, because the fourth wall was covered by a curtain. And even though she knew the window probably couldn’t open, she went over to it and pushed it aside.
It was dark out—it was night—and the city’s light sparkled and danced, but that wasn’t what made her stare. It was her reflection in the glass …
Her face was round and full and not her own. And her body … She looked down, and sure enough, her stomach poked out, round and smooth and hard and weird. And she felt something moving inside of her and it was the strangest thing she’d ever experienced.
As she looked back at the reflection of that face, she realized it belonged to the girl who hadn’t told Nika her name—the pregnant girl, with the ocean-colored eyes.
And just as she realized what she had done—that she’d somehow managed to propel her mind into the body of this stranger—she felt the girl—Rayonna, somehow she knew that her name was Rayonna—wake up with a gasp of shock.
Nika pulled back—fast—and the world shifted and tilted and spun again, and she found herself back in the room with all of the other girls, still strapped to her bed.
She was breathing hard, as if she’d just run a mile, and she realized that, in her anger, she’d been thinking about that pregnant girl.
Maybe—just maybe—she had to get angry again, and this time think about Joseph. Maybe instead of bringing him to her, she could go to him.
And Nika closed her eyes and instead of breathing slowly and calmly, she breathed hard and fast. And she let her anger churn and burn and build.
Shane sat in the back of the car, as Stephen Diaz sped through the darkness of the crumbling Boston streets.
He could see the GPS screen on the dashboard, and he knew they were close.
Bach was riding shotgun, looking grim as he turned to glance back at Shane. “When we get there, stay in the car.”
Shane considered just not answering but that seemed too disrespectful, so he said, “Sir, I will not.”
Diaz spoke up. “We have no idea of the danger—”
“She won’t hurt me,” Shane said.
“She came very close to hurting me,” Diaz reminded him. Shane had seen the Security tape of what Mac had done in the lounge—the exploding bottles and the sparking lights.
“Very close is not the same as hurting you,” Shane pointed out. “In fact, I’d argue that if she’d wanted to hurt you, she wouldn’t have missed.”
In the front seat, the two men exchanged a look, and Bach said, “Jokers have no attachment to anyone or anything but the drug. Mothers murder children. Husbands kill wives.”
Shane sat forward. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he asked, adding a belated, “Sir? Are you trying to tell me that Mac’s been taking Destiny? Because I know for a fact that’s just dead wrong.”
“There’s never been an instance of a Greater-Than jokering naturally,” Diaz said. “But that doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Mac had a recent traumatic experience. By surrounding herself with Devon Caine’s memories and fantasies—”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Shane said again. “You let her do that …?”
“Nobody lets Dr. Mackenzie do anything,” Bach said quietly.
And then—shit—there she was. Standing beneath the streetlight in front of an industrial-looking building on a street that paralleled both the Mass Pike and the commuter rail, looking smaller than he’d remembered. Slighter. Shorter. And very female—but no less a warrior in the manner in which she stood.
But as Shane watched, the streetlight fizzled and popped and went out, plunging her into shadow.
Bach must’ve had some kind of hand scanner with him, because he announced, “She’s still in serious flux. I’m picking up spikes of seventy-one now.”
Shane unfastened his seatbelt and pushed himself forward, manuevering around Diaz’s broad shoulders to lean on the horn in the middle of the steering wheel.
Mac turned at the sound and saw them, and held up one hand. And shit, even though Diaz was braking and they were no longer moving all that fast, it was as if they’d hit a wall. The front of the car crumpled and the airbags deployed. But Shane wasn’t belted in, and by all rights he should’ve shot forward and gone right through the front windshield, headfirst.
Except he didn’t. Something—or someone, namely Mac—held him safely in place.
Diaz and Bach, though, both got facefuls of the car’s airbags, as the sound of an explosion ripped through the night.
Whatever that was, blowing up? It couldn’t have been good.
The force that was holding Shane released him and he kicked the car door open and scrambled out onto the street—to see Mac crouching on the sidewalk, one hand down and bracing herself, as if making her body less of a target for the heat and force waves from the blast. Or maybe she was just surfing the damn thing.
She’d used her power and blown more than one hole through the front of the building. Flames were shooting up and out as smoke billowed and dust rained down, pinging on the hood of the car, and bouncing off the leather seat of her Harley.
“Is there anyone inside?” Diaz shouted, and Shane turned to see that both he and Bach had gotten out of the car, too.
His question was answered by a man with an ancient but clearly operable rifle, who leaned out of a second-floor window.
“Hey!” Shane shouted, trying to draw the man’s fire, but he’d already aimed at Mac—who hadn’t seen the gunman. His first shot connected, hitting her in what looked like her left shoulder and spinning her completely around.
Shane raced toward her, remembering what she’d told him—that her ability to shield herself from bullets was not advanced. “Shield, Mac! Damnit, shield,” he shouted. She’d told him that she had to focus—only—on protecting herself.
But as she blew another hole in the building, it was clear that she was still vulnerable. And God, the gunman fired again, and something must’ve happened. Bach or Diaz must’ve intervened, because instead of blasting a hole in her head, the bullet that was fired only grazed her temple. Still, she fell, hard, to the ground.
And Shane hit the sidewalk in a hell of a stealing-home move that was going to hurt later, as he used his body to try to shield Mac, as Bach and Diaz approached the building with as much stealth as the Redcoats marching on Lexington. They were front and center, just walking right up in full view of any potential adversaries, and drawing the gunman’s fire.
Jesus, there was a frightening amount of blood on Mac’s clothes and pooling beneath her on the sidewalk. Along with that glancing head wound, she’d been hit in her left shoulder, but Shane didn’t have time to check exactly where—he could only pray that that bullet hadn’t come too close to her heart.
She was unconscious, which wasn’t helping as far as the scaring-the-shit-out-of-him went.
He had no idea how many gunmen were inside that building, or how long Bach and Diaz could keep them distracted, so he picked Mac up and carried her back toward Diaz’s crumpled car, as up on the second floor, the rifleman’s weapon jammed. He threw the thing aside, then pulled a sidearm from his pants, and Shane shifted his pace into triple-time, aware as hell that his back made a very large target. But the handgun misfired into the gunman’s face—obviously not by accident—and he went down.
As Shane gently lowered Mac onto the street behind the car, he glanced up and saw that a second shooter had just appeared in another window. He shouted a warning, but Diaz had already seen the guy. Diaz pointed to the gunman and made a pulling motion with his arm, and both weapon—it looked like some kind of modified Kalashnikov—and man came flying out of the window, and hit the pavement hard.
God, Mac was bleeding badly. But only now could Shane dig beneath her leather jacket to search for the wound—which, thank God, was far enough from her heart that he could cross her imminent and instant death off his things-to-worry-about list. She had an exit wound, too, which—good news—meant the round wasn’t still in
side of her.
The bad news was that an exit wound meant she had two places to bleed from. Shane pulled off his jacket and his T-shirt beneath, in order to use the soft cotton as a pad to stanch the flow.
“This is going to hurt,” he told her even though she still hadn’t roused, as he held his shirt in place and, wincing for her, applied pressure.
That got her attention, and her eyelids fluttered and her mouth moved, and she whispered, “Shane.”
And yes, she said his name, but it probably didn’t mean anything. It certainly didn’t provide significant cause for celebration, and yet he found he was celebrating, because … she’d said his name.
“I’m here,” he said through a throat that suddenly felt thick with emotion. “Honey, I’m right here. What do you need, Mac? Tell me what you need.”
But then she grabbed him, and her eyes—those incredible eyes—opened, and she said, “It’s a drug lab. I can smell it. You’ve gotta tell Bach and D to get out—it’s gonna blow.”
He was staring at her stupidly, he knew that he was, but he was hypnotized. And she said, “Go. Tell them!”
But then she pulled his head down and kissed him, and God, it was sweet.
And he thought it was a test, so he pulled away despite the fact that he wanted to stay right there, kissing her, for-fucking-ever. He said, “Hold that thought,” and he went screaming out from behind the car, telling Diaz and Bach to get down, get down, get down, the place is going to blow!
They weren’t moving fast enough, so he tried Mac says it’s a drug lab and it’s going to blow!
And as he watched, Diaz looked at Bach and Bach looked at Diaz, and then they both looked at something over Shane’s left shoulder, and he turned to see the taillights of Mac’s bike vanishing into the distance, accompanied by the roar of her bike. He couldn’t believe what he’d just seen, couldn’t believe it was possible, so he ran back behind the car and …
Mac was definitely gone.
“Destiny labs don’t explode,” Diaz told him, as a van from OI pulled up, driven by none other than Charlie Nguyen. “Meth lab’s’ll blow, but … Not this one.”
Born to Darkness Page 41
