“Don’t be stupid, man,” Dread said, taking a small step forward. His voice was smooth and even, but his hand still gripped his baton. “This is not a good idea.”
“You shut the hell up, big man. You take one more step, and I shove this scalpel in this little lady’s neck.”
He had the scalpel pointing blade downwards like a dagger, held below Mickey’s ear and ready to drive it in like an ice pick. He hunched down to keep his head as much behind Mickey as possible, so that nobody could shoot him out from behind his hostage.
Why is this happening to me? Mickey thought, trying to keep from passing out in panic. Of all the people he could’ve picked!
She could feel her captor’s arm trembling around her neck and upper chest. He was terrified; when she tried to look inside, she felt his mind was going a million miles a second. She couldn’t latch on to any one thought. Everything inside of his mind was popping and snapping like fireworks.
He’s scared too, she realized, and somehow, that calmed her down a little. If he had the knife, and he was scared, then maybe her situation wasn’t so hopeless. After all, she’d pulled her own fat out the fire twice today already… three times, if you counted pushing down Dread’s rage… there had to be something she could do.
Okay, so… what? What do I do? No way I can knock him out, she thought. Or try to shift his mind in any direction, make him think I’m a friend. Not fast enough, anyway. He’s too amped up.
She tuned back in to the standoff.
“I swear to God, man, you stay back, you just stay the fuck back. I will kill her, I swear I will…”
“It doesn’t need to be like that,” Dread said, his voice still smooth and steady, as if the timbre of his words could smooth out the tension tightening the air. “Nobody needs to get hurt here.”
“Yeah, fuck you, cop. You think I don’t know you? You think I don’t know who are you are? Piece of shit…”
Just a little further to the left, floated into Mickey’s mind. She had been scanning thoughts around the room and it took her a second to identify the source.
Cass.
Standing there like a Wild West gunfighter, hand on her holstered pistol, eyes looking like granite, Cass was on a hair trigger ready to let loose. Mickey could sense it in her. Her body was perfectly still, but Mickey could feel the focus in Cass’s mind. Her neural pathways for a quick draw, aim and fire were all pre-loaded and ready to go.
Mickey
Okay, quick lesson in Mentalism. Your thoughts and actions all share a common component… they’re neurological.
Meaning, they are the result of a series of electrical signals that travel down a web-like pathway of nerves. So why should I care about this when there was a crazy guy covered in prison tattoos shoving a scalpel in my ear?
Because once I sensed what Cass was doing, once I realized that she was warming herself up for a quick draw and shot to the head, I knew what I had to do.
I should’ve been more scared. I mean, I was scared, big time… like, Drop A Terror Deuce kinds of scared. But I don’t know… realizing that the guy who grabbed me was also scared, and that Cass was right there, ready to go to help me, kept a lid on the worst of the panic.
Maybe I was also drawing something off Cass’s mind. That happens sometimes, when you listen in on someone else’s thoughts or feelings… they can kind of rub off on you, especially if you let them. So this time around, I let them. I let Cass’s steely determination work into me, until I wasn’t scared completely out of control any more. In fact, I started to get a little pissed. I wanted to hurt this guy who grabbed me. I wanted to make him pay for scaring me like this.
And now I knew how to make that happen. I knew how I could beat him.
You see, your nerves aren’t an on/off switch. I won’t bore you with the physiological details of how a nerve works; suffice it to say, that you sort of chemically “ramp up” to a certain level, then once you hit a threshold, the nerve fires off and that starts the parade.
You’re experienced this yourself at some point in your life. Ever have a foot race? “Ready, set, go?” Your body chemistry was ramping up that entire time, pre-loading your nerves to be ready to jump off on a hair trigger. That’s what I’m talking about. There’s an actual measureable physiological change in the nerves as you edge closer to the threshold of “firing off”.
Cass was doing that now… pre-loading the pattern of nerves that would allow her to draw and fire her pistol to shoot the psycho that was holding me hostage. But the problem was, he was pre-loading, as well. His mind was swirling like gangbusters, but I could still feel it in him, that pre-loaded neurological pattern going from his mind down his arm to get ready to stab that scalpel into my neck and sever everything that’s important.
That’s when it came to me. I might not be able to render him unconscious or bend his will to mine, but maybe I could dial down his neurology. I mean, if a nerve could be ramped up to fire off more quickly, surely it could be ramped down, deadened, made slower to respond… right?
I guess I should mention that I’d never done this before. But hey, this was turning into a day for a lot of firsts.
I just hoped Cass was as good as her reputation.
***
Just a little to the left, Cass thought. If she moves her head a little to the left, this cocksucker is mine.
Cass, came into her head, and she stiffened a bit. That thought was not her own. Something foreign was knocking around inside of her mind and the shock of it startled her as if she were in a quiet room, thinking she was alone, and someone behind her suddenly said her name aloud.
Don’t freak out, Cass, it’s me, the voice said. It’s Mickey. I’m a Mentalist.
Get out of my… Cass began to think.
I’m sorry, there’s no time. I can slow down his reflexes. When I count down, I’ll duck, and slow his nerves down. It’ll give you maybe a second. Maybe a little more.
Even in her mind, Cass’s thoughts sounded like steel. I won’t need that long.
Cass could see the terror in Mickey’s eyes and the voice in her mind sounded terrified.
Okay, okay. Here we go.
There was a pause.
Be cool, kid, you got this, Cass thought, hoping Mickey would hear it. Just focus on your part, and I’ll do mine.
Right. Right. Here we go. Three. Two. One.
Things happened fast. Mickey’s eyes closed and her legs seemed to turn to water underneath her as she dropped. Her captor’s eyes drifted down to her briefly, and as he realized what she was doing, his face hardened. A split second later, his murderous expression turned confused and his eyes shifted to the scalpel held in his hand, which for some reason wasn’t obeying his thoughts, but felt like it had been held in freezing cold water for an hour and now it couldn’t move.
Then, red mist blew out of the back of his head and there was the sound of close thunder. He died with the same look of confusion on his face, knees buckling, and his lifeless body fell forward on top of Mickey, pinning her to the ground.
The rest of the room exploded into violence.
One of the gangbangers leapt toward Dread, stabbing downward with a shiv. Dread caught his arm easily, smashing down on his clavicle with the baton. There was a snap and the man’s face turned pale as he dropped the shiv from nerveless fingers and sank to the floor.
The other two tried to jump Lysette, perhaps thinking that they could take the slender woman hostage to try to get themselves out of this mess. It turned out to be a vast underestimation on their part.
Her expression never changed as she spun and sidestepped the closest attacker’s attempt to grab her, punching underneath his guard and cracking his ribs. With another tight spin, she rammed her other hand up underneath his chin, forcing his head backwards so far and so fast that he lifted up off the ground and his neck broke audibly.
His partner came on with the shiv, stabbing, but Lysette moved with a fluid speed that seemed to defy physics and twisted her
torso just enough to let the shiv go harmlessly past her. Before the first attacker with the broken neck had dropped, she grabbed on to the second man’s arm to control his shiv, using another spin to crank his arm upward and backward at an anatomically impossible angle.
He screamed and dropped the shiv, which Lysette deftly plucked out of the air and drove into his neck down to the spine. She didn’t wait for him to fall; she yanked the shiv back out and turned towards the man who had attacked Dread.
Dread saw what she was doing, saw her murderous intent and stepped in the way, holding up his baton. “He’s down.”
She looked at him with annoyance. “He’s alive.”
“Yeah. And he’s done. It’s over.”
Lysette stared at Dread for a moment. “You really shouldn’t get in my way like that.”
Dread was about to respond, but a shriek from Mickey interrupted him.
“Oh, God! Oh, shit! Get him off, get him off of me!” Mickey shouted, shaking like a leaf.
Cass returned her smoking pistol to its holster and helped Dread pull the body off her. “Relax, kid, it’s over. You’re fine. You did good.”
“I’m bleeding! I’m bleeding! He got me!”
“I said, relax. It’s not your blood… oh, wait. Yes, it is.”
“What? Am I dying? Did he cut my throat?”
“No, no, it’s just a scratch. He cut you a little as he fell, but it’s nothing. Jolly can fix it in two seconds. Right, Jolly?”
Jolly shook out of the shocked daze he’d fallen into while watching Lysette tear apart her two assailants. “What? Um, yeah, sure, come on over here and sit down. No problem.”
Dread gave Cass a look as he heaved the dead man off Mickey and helped her to her feet. “That draw was pretty fast, Cass.”
Cass shrugged. “Guess being stuck in here hasn’t dulled my edge, after all.”
“I mean, the fastest I’ve ever seen you draw.”
Cass didn’t respond, but took a pair of handcuffs off the guard’s belt she was wearing and said, “Lys, take these and cuff the guy with the broken collarbone. He’s not going to cause us any more trouble… are you, tough guy?”
The last surviving gangbanger looked from Cass to Dread to Lysette, as if not sure which one to be the most terrified of, and nodded quickly. “I ain’t going to do nothing.”
Cass nodded. “No shit, you’re not. Dread, get the vest off of that douchebag who grabbed Mickey and give it to Jolly.”
“You don’t want it?” Dread said.
Cass shook her head. “Jolly needs it more than me. Besides, if he goes down, who heals him?”
“Right,” Dread said, grunting as he pulled the body armor vest off the dead body. “There’s just one thing we need to get sorted out before we go on.”
He stood once he had recovered the vest and stepped over to Lysette, who had cuffed the last attacker and was now leaning up against a gurney.
“Dread…” Cass said.
“No, Cass, I need to know what’s up here,” Dread said. “What is your deal, Lysette? I mean, you’re wearing the blue uniform of a User, and Cass seems to think you’re okay, but then you go to execute this guy when he’s already down.”
Lysette shrugged. “I’m not a cop.”
“Clearly. So what are you?”
“She’s an Adept,” Cass answered for her. “Physical Mage.”
“An Adept?” Dread said. “So you’re kind of strong and all that?”
Lysette sneered at him. “Kind of strong? You’re the one who’s kind of strong.”
Dread shrugged and held up his hands. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you, it’s just…”
“Just.”
Lysette stood directly in front of him and held up an arm. Dread looked at her, confused, and then raised an eyebrow when he realized what she wanted to do.
“Arm wrestle me? Are you serious?”
Lysette simply stared at him. She raised an eyebrow of her own, as if to say, any time now.
Dread looked over at Cass, who shrugged and said, “It’s your funeral.”
“Cass, this is ridiculous… oh, fine,” he said, turning to Lysette and taking her hand in his. “Look, I’ll try not to hurt you, okay?”
“Yes, try,” Lysette said, and her grip clamped down on Dread’s huge hand.
Dread began to press down, slowly at first, wary of hurting this lean ballerina of a woman. Yet, even as he began to increase the pressure, her arm never moved. It was like trying to arm wrestle a tree trunk.
This wasn’t possible. Dread could practically wrench a grown man’s arm out of its socket while arm wrestling him, but this woman’s arm wouldn’t budge, no matter how hard he tried. He kept ramping up his efforts, harder and harder, dangerously hard now, setting his teeth and breathing heavily as he strained. Veins began to bulge along his forearm and then on the side of his head.
And then, the truly impossible. His arm began to bend backwards. Slowly, inexorably, his massive arm began to twist under Lysette’s grip.
Dread threw everything he had into it, almost panicked at the helplessness he felt. He couldn’t remember the last time that he’d met a man who could physically match him for strength, much less a woman. He felt his muscles straining to maximum, straining to the point of snapping, and then Lysette stopped toying with him and pressed his arm down until he had to concede defeat.
“Really?” was all he could say, breathing heavily.
Lysette patted him on the arm. “Don’t feel bad, big guy. You did okay… I guess.”
Dread’s arm was on fire. He was pretty sure something was pulled or torn in there, but he refused to show it, picking up the body armor vest and walking over to Jolly and Mickey without another word.
Cass sighed. “You could’ve played nice, Lys.”
Lysette’s expression was characteristically blank. “That was playing nice.”
“I’m being serious. We all need to work together…”
“Oh, he’ll be fine,” Lysette said. “You said he was in the Marine Corps?”
“Yeah.”
“So he’ll be fine. It’s like when I was with SOCOM. All those beefed-up alpha males play a little rough. They look at me and even though they know what I am, their eyes tell them I’m just a slender little girl that they could push around with one finger. So I have to knock each of them on their ass once to let them know what’s real. He’ll get over it. They always do. They’re good like that.”
Across the room, Mickey and Jolly watched the show with interest, suddenly looking away and pretending to be in a conversation when Dread approached.
“All set,” Jolly said.
“Really? Already?” Mickey said, touching at her neck experimentally and looking at where the scratches had been on her arm.
“Dude, they were like, little baby scratches. Took two seconds. How about you, Dread? How about I fix those cuts you’ve got all over, maybe work on that arm too?”
Dread shot him a look. “There’s nothing wrong with my arm.”
“Well, I mean, yeah there is, I can tell there’s a pretty substantial muscle strain…”
“I said,” Dread repeated slowly, stepping close to Jolly, “there is nothing wrong with my arm.”
Jolly swallowed hard and took the body armor vest that Dread held towards him. “I’ve, uh… been wrong with my diagnosis before. Must be mistaken this time, obviously.”
“I’m going to try that phone,” Mickey said, leaving Jolly to fix Dread’s wounds. “See if it works.”
Jolly stayed silent for all of five seconds while he sealed up the lacerations on Dread’s face and chest and arm. “So what did all this?”
“Ghoul.”
“Oh. Wait, what? A ghoul? You mean, like an actual ghoul, like a death magic ghoul?”
“Yes, like that.”
Jolly sat back on the gurney. “Jesus. What the hell is going on out there?”
Dread nodded. “Yeah. It’s pretty bad. Are you finished with… Jolly?�
�
Jolly stopped, pausing in the act of filling the pouches on his tactical vest with candy bars and other treats he had stashed in a nearby drawer. “Yeah?”
“What are you doing?”
Jolly looked at his vest and the candy bars sticking halfway out of the pouches. “I like snacks. These pouches in the front are good for soda cans.”
“They’re supposed to be for tear gas grenades.”
“Yeah, well,” Jolly said, “now they’re for Dr. Pepper, because that’s my favorite. You want one?”
Dread stared at him for a second, and then shrugged. “Sure, why not?”
They sat and drank their sodas in silence for a bit, watching Mickey fiddle uselessly with the phone on the wall. After a while, Dread leaned over toward Jolly.
“Jolly?” he said, in almost a whisper.
“Yeah?”
“Could you fix my arm for me? I’m going to need it if there’s another fight.”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Don’t,” Dread said, pulling Jolly close and staring down at him, “don’t tell the others. Especially not Cass. Especially not Lysette.”
“The thought never occurred to me.”
Across the room, Mickey shook her head and hung up the phone. “This thing is not working at all…. Oh!” she said, as the phone rang twice as soon as she hung it up. “Did I do that?”
She picked the receiver back up. “Hello?”
“Mickey,” Cass said, gesturing for the phone.
“Right. Right. You should probably…” Mickey said, handing over the phone. “Right.”
Cass
It was the warden on the phone, calling from the prison’s central hub. He didn’t hesitate; he dove right in to being a complete asshole.
“We saw the whole thing on the cameras here. You just killed three men. You and your conspirators. Not to mention the other three bodies you left behind in…”
“Peck, for the love of God, shut the hell up.”
“What did you just say to me, inmate? You listen to me…”
Mage Hunters Box Set Page 29
