Kaitlin's Tale

by Christine Amsden

  “Sh, sweetheart. Not now. This is important. We need to go.”

  He twisted and writhed, trying to reach the TV or the remote control, and as always he was too strong for Kaitlin. He fell out of her grasp and started banging his fists on the ground.

  Oh God, what now?

  “Jay, please. Sh. Sh. That’s a good boy. We have to go bye-bye. We have to go outside.”

  Jay quieted slightly, and Kaitlin tried to remember what she’d said that might have appealed to him. “Outside? You want to go outside?”

  He stopped crying and slowly – too slowly – stood.

  “That’s right, Jay, we’re going outside. We just have to run downstairs to get Hideyuki first. He’s coming with us. You like him, right?” She opened her arms to him and Jay flew into them, letting her pick him up. Hitching the backpack more securely on her shoulders and grabbing the diaper bag in her free hand, she tore out of the windowless underground room without so much as a backward glance.

  Down four flights of stairs, they arrived at the ninth level and burst out into the corridor to see Matthew, Hideyuki, and a tired-looking black man who had to be Devon standing outside the doors to Alexander’s quarters. He wasn’t the only one who lived here – his inner circle also had rooms on nine, as well as a few other very important people. Matthew’s own guest suite was on this level, which might have made his presence there unexceptional were it not for the fact that he stood in front of Alexander’s room, scrutinizing the door as if trying to figure out how to blow it down. Kaitlin couldn’t use magic; she couldn’t see it, but she imagined a thrum of it around him, humming loudly enough to attract every sorcerer in the place.

  She wasn’t up to speed on this part of the plan. She had to trust Matthew, to hope that he knew some way past the most powerful wards in the compound to get inside these quarters without the permission of its owner.

  Hideyuki didn’t seem to be part of this phase of the operation either. He stood against the wall on the opposite side of the hallway next to the man she assumed was Devon, who slumped to the ground even as she watched. Then Jay twisted out of her arms and ran for his hero, who caught the small boy up in a strong embrace. When Jay had hugged Kaitlin that tightly, her ribs had cracked, but she found herself envying Hideyuki even so. Then she focused her attention on Matthew.

  Beads of sweat trickled from his forehead as the full force of his concentration fixed on something about that door. The sweat couldn’t be good. She’d been around sorcerers long enough to suspect that it indicated some kind of overreach or drain, but how could that be when he had barely gotten started? What had happened to make them twenty minutes late? And what did it say for their chances of getting out of here?

  Kaitlin wanted to ask Hideyuki, but she feared posing any questions or even making noise. Someone had to know they were here. Matthew’s distraction – she didn’t know the plan but there had to be a distraction – couldn’t be this good.

  “What took you so long?” Hideyuki whispered when Kaitlin stood next to him.

  “Jay resisted,” she whispered back. “How long have you been here?”

  “Ten minutes. Matthew got distracted and forgot about the signal.”

  “Oh.” So at least some of that worrying had been for nothing. What had happened? She wanted to ask but now wasn’t the time. “Is it supposed to take this long?”

  “I have no idea. Breaking into places isn’t what I do.”

  “Is it what he does?” Kaitlin jerked her head toward Matthew.

  Hideyuki didn’t respond, but Kaitlin had an idea that she knew the answer. Matthew might need someone with more muscle. Or a locksmith. She almost laughed, thinking how ironic it would be if he was spending all that time fighting magical wards when all he really needed was a bobby pin. Too bad she didn’t use any in her hair. No modern woman she knew did, unless she was fixing her hair into a fancy updo for a party or something.

  It wasn’t funny, not really, but it relieved some of the tension. She started to look at the situation more carefully, studying the players, the door, the hallway, and even the doors to the stairs and the elevator.

  “What happens if someone comes down here?” Kaitlin asked.

  “Problem,” Hideyuki replied.

  “Couldn’t you just smash open the door?” Kaitlin asked.

  “Not through those wards. I’ve never seen anything stronger.”

  Five more minutes passed, and now sweat ran freely down Matthew’s face, but as far as Kaitlin could see nothing had changed. By her count they had been down here for fifteen minutes – ten minutes before she’d arrived and five minutes after. Someone was bound to come down here, if only coincidentally to return to his rooms at the end of a long day. This couldn’t continue.

  Kaitlin studied the door. It was a solid piece of gold-trimmed wood, beautifully carved but otherwise just a door. If there was magic on it, she couldn’t see it. That didn’t mean it wasn’t there, but still... she thought of the story of a woman who called into tech support for help with her computer, only to find out that she didn’t have it plugged in. Maybe the analogy wasn’t perfect, but Alexander was a mind mage. Maybe he only made people think there were insanely powerful wards on his door.

  Kaitlin pushed herself off of the wall, took three long steps across the hall, put herself in front of Matthew, and touched the doorknob. Nothing happened. She twisted. It gave easily, and a second later she had pushed it open.

  She looked back at Matthew in triumph, but he was staring at her in horror.

  “What did I do?” she asked.

  A moment later she had the answer without the need for Matthew’s reply. A siren went off, the sound seeming to come from the walls themselves. It was deafeningly loud, forcing her to put her hands over her ears to escape the pain.

  “What do we do now?” Kaitlin asked, not sure if anyone could hear her.

  Matthew didn’t answer in words. He simply ran across the threshold, grabbing Kaitlin’s arm and pulling her behind him. Jay and Hideyuki came in later, the pair of them supporting a lopsided Devon. Then Hideyuki kicked the door closed.

  The noise didn’t stop.

  Seconds. They had seconds. If they were lucky. Kaitlin spun, searching the room. She quickly found the illusion masking the secret escape tunnel and, after pointing it out to Hideyuki, set him to work figuring out how to open it.

  Mathew shouted something, but Kaitlin couldn’t understand what. She stared at him, trying to read his lips as he repeated whatever he had said. She still couldn’t catch it, but she could guess. “Where’s the blood?”

  * * *

  Matthew stared around the opulent suite, focusing his telepathy on Kaitlin’s pain-filled mind, which echoed his own. He had his hands over his ears to block out the wailing sound of the sirens, but he kept looking around, trying to draw a contrast between what his own eyes saw and what Kaitlin’s eyes saw. He could almost see through her eyes, but only to the extent that she paid attention. She needed to pay more attention. He saw the illusion covering the escape tunnel but ignored it; Hideyuki could work on that while they searched for the blood.

  Kaitlin shut her eyes for a moment, opened them again, and set her mind to her task. She gazed around the living room, not seeing anything out of place except for the escape tunnel – unless you counted the white walls where Matthew saw snow-capped mountains. There were no secret doors, no hidden safe.

  Seconds, she thought. We might have seconds to find this.

  Matthew wasn’t sure they had that long, but there was no sense borrowing trouble before it came. He followed her down a short hallway leading to four rooms – a bathroom, a private study, and two bedrooms. Kaitlin began in the private study, thinking that made the most sense. Unless he’d hidden his blood under his bed or something so it was there when he slept.

  Now wasn’t that a morbi
d thought? But she might be right. First, though, she went into the private office and looked around.

  Matthew’s heart sank. This room was a maze of illusions. He could hardly separate what he saw from what Kaitlin saw. There were so many differences that it looked like one of those children’s logic games – find twenty differences between picture A and picture B. Some were obvious, like the walls again, but others took time to pick out. The real desk had an extra drawer. Matthew opened it, finding paperwork inside that he had no time to peruse. There was a wall safe –

  The alarm suddenly stopped.

  Tentatively, Matthew and Kaitlin both lowered their hands from their ears. They still heard a ringing sound, but they could just make out the sound of Alexander’s voice from the front room.

  Kaitlin, thinking of her son, fled back into the living room. Matthew followed more slowly, but he knew there was no use hiding in the office. They had been caught. The only way out of this situation now was a one-on-one battle of wills against Alexander. A battle he had lost before, had been slowly losing over the course of the past few days, and would surely lose now. After all, he was wrung out. The battle with Todd and the effort against the warded door had him so exhausted that his first thought was surrender.

  At least half of the battle with the warded door had been fruitless, too. Matthew never would have gotten through had it not been for Kaitlin, even if she had set off the alarm. There had been mental blocks on the door that went above and beyond normal wards. Blocks that said, You can’t do this. And he couldn’t. But Kaitlin could.

  To Matthew’s surprise, Alexander waited in the living room alone. Devon lay unconscious on the ground – asleep or knocked out, it was hard to tell. Hideyuki stood in a corner, clutching Jay. Kaitlin had gone to stand beside them, trying to get her son out of the hunter’s arms.

  Matthew ignored them. He had eyes only for Alexander.

  “Oh, Matthew,” Alexander said with the air of a disappointed father. “What is this?”

  “What does it look like?” Matthew countered, trying to think fast. He had precious little power left in him; if he won, it would have to be with subtlety.

  “It looks like you came into my compound to rescue a convicted magic thief from prison.”

  “Wrongfully convicted,” Matthew threw back.

  Alexander’s eyes narrowed. “What would make you say that?”

  “I was there in New York.”

  Alexander was quiet for a moment.

  “You didn’t know that, did you? Your head of security told you it was just Evan who had gone to fetch Devon, but I was there alongside him. I saw him suddenly blank out and forget everything. I knew what it had to mean.”

  “You don’t know anything,” Alexander said, and in a rare unguarded moment it sounded almost as if he were trying to convince himself. “You still don’t understand. It’s like I’ve been trying to tell you – you’re me, thirty years ago. You still think the world can be seen in black and white.”

  “So shade it in for me,” Matthew challenged. “You convicted an innocent man in order to protect your secret, because you knew he knew, and you knew he would come to me.”

  “I didn’t know anything; Todd took care of it.”

  But Matthew didn’t believe it. There were a lot of things Alexander didn’t know, but the man wasn’t stupid. And he wouldn’t have allowed Todd access to the blood store in the first place without a good reason. No, Alexander knew some of what was going on, even if he didn’t know all of it.

  Alexander turned away from Matthew, and the deliberate insult didn’t go unnoticed by anyone, except perhaps Jay and the unconscious Devon. He turned to Hideyuki and spent a moment looking the warrior up and down.

  “I’m surprised at you. I thought you wanted to be Hunter One someday.”

  “I want the men I train to be alive when that day comes,” Hideyuki said evenly. “I’ve told you before that Mr. Quinn’s strategy isn’t working.”

  “Yes, you want me to make friends with the vampires. I don’t think so.” Then Alexander looked at Kaitlin. “And you? What is your stake in all this?”

  “I just want to go home,” she whispered.

  “You’re not a prisoner.”

  Kaitlin didn’t respond, and no one else spoke for a long while.

  “The real question here is, how did you get into my rooms? Someone among you has a serious resistance to mind magic.”

  “It couldn’t possibly have been me,” Matthew said sardonically.

  “No. You were coming along nicely, but you’re still susceptible. I imagine it will take us a few more years of training to toughen that resistance of yours. I’m still willing to work with you, if you are.”

  “What?” Matthew reeled backward, running into the arm of a burgundy sofa.

  “Yes, I’ve been trying to decide, but I still think you’re the one I want. It is – regrettable – that you worked against me today, but you also showed a great deal of backbone. More than you’ve ever showed before, and certainly more than my groveling, whining pack of advisors kissing my toes all the time. No, I think you would be good for me. Good for the Underground.”

  Matthew couldn’t believe it. Judging from their thoughts, neither could Hideyuki or Kaitlin, but the latter was nervous. She thought Matthew might fall under Alexander’s spell.

  He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. If he did, Kaitlin would be in danger.

  “You have a problem with me, Matthew? Tell me what it is so we can put it behind us.”

  “Blood mage,” Matthew spat out. “I know you’re a blood mage.”

  “Blood magic isn’t all evil, no more than any other type of magic,” Alexander said.

  “You’re using it to influence people, to make them forget, to cover things up.”

  Alexander laughed. “Oh please, my young mind mage, do tell me how unethical it is to influence people. To make them forget. To cover things up.”

  Matthew had nothing to say to that. He had, in fact, done all of those things in the past, just without the blood.

  “You think you’ve drawn a line,” Alexander went on. “You think you’re on one side of it and I’m on the other, but I don’t think you know where that line is anymore, if you ever knew. What have you done for power, Matthew. Tell me. What have you done?”

  And it wasn’t just a question, it was a command. Matthew opened his mouth, willed himself not to speak, but found himself answering anyway. “I’ve cheated on every test I’ve ever taken in my life, reading the mind of my fellow students or teachers for the answers. That’s how I graduated three years early. In college I began to do more. I began courting influence, making connections. If someone didn’t like me, I read their thoughts, found their weaknesses, and exploited them. Some I turned to my side. The ones I could not influence I made a laughingstock of. I seduced the girl who graduated at the top of my law school class. She was married, and I made sure her husband found out. I won my first election to the Missouri House of Representatives by destroying my opponent’s reputation. He liked pornography, but he was very discreet about it. I read it from his mind and got a recording of him admitting it.”

  “You can stop,” Alexander said. “I’m sure we could be here for hours, listening to these stories.”

  Not quite, Matthew wanted to say. He always tried to use positive influence before resorting to exploitation. He had been a seducer far more often that he’d been a destroyer. He’d been half in love with the law school valedictorian; they’d dated in their first year, before she’d gotten married, but when he’d told her the truth about himself and his telepathy, she had run. He’d erased her memory, but she had spent the next three years hating him and doing everything in her power to destroy him. Maybe part of it had been subconscious, he didn’t know, he only knew that he’d had to stop her.

  Excuses.


  Behind him, Kaitlin’s mind was reeling with shock. Hideyuki didn’t seem surprised by Matthew’s revelations, but somehow Kaitlin had come to see him as... a hero? He glanced at her. Now how in the world had that happened? And if that was the case, then why was she so afraid of him?

  Cassie was right, Kaitlin thought. I’m crazy.

  “Everyone, have a seat,” Alexander said, gesturing around him to the sofas and chairs. “We might be here for a while.”

  Again, it was a command. Matthew found his feet moving before Alexander finished saying the words, along with Hideyuki. Devon lay on the floor, unconscious. But Kaitlin hesitated.

  “Now that is unexpected,” Alexander said, staring at her with far more interest than before. “You tested negative for magic, but you seem to have a remarkable gift.”

  “Me? No, I don’t.”

  “Come here,” Alexander said, again in his commanding voice.

  Kaitlin shook her head.

  “Remarkable. I wonder how resistant you are.” Alexander flexed his fingers for a moment, stared at her, and Matthew knew he was putting together the magic for an extremely powerful spell. Matthew closed his eyes, not wanting to know. Not wanting to see.

  “Nothing,” Alexander said, not bothering to hide the astonishment in his voice. “My dear, does mind magic affect you at all?”

  Kaitlin ‘s heart was racing, and she was thinking, What do I do? What do I do?

  “No wonder you were afraid,” Alexander said. “I have to admit, I’m not sure what to do with someone like you. Your loyalties are clearly not with me.”

  Are you fighting him at all? Kaitlin wanted to know.

  Matthew gathered his own strength, what little there was of it, and threw a shield around himself. It worked, a little bit. He could think more clearly.

  I’m not Alexander, no matter what he says, Matthew thought.