He wasn’t sure what he could say to that, so he waited for her to go on. He sipped his coffee slowly. She frowned at hers. He imagined she was reliving the mission, thinking about things she’d rather not.
Coraolis wanted to thank her, but he didn’t want to interrupt her train of thought. She obviously didn’t have to do this. She’d invited him into her home to have a confidential conversation when she could have insisted he wait until mission start.
“He seemed different after that.” She paused to sip from her cup, choosing her words carefully. “He became driven. I thought it was because he was officially on mission. That he straightened up once it got serious.
“Anyway, I didn’t see him again until after he made that hole in the sky. He looked different then. I think he was growing scales, and his eyes…” The line between her brows reappeared. “Like a snake’s. Inhuman.”
It sounded crazy, but he knew she’d passed the psych eval or else they wouldn’t be sending her back out. She was clearly troubled, and she wasn’t hiding from it.
When she finished speaking, she looked into her mug. She hadn’t touched it since her first sip. Her face was drawn with dark smudges under her eyes that spoke of many sleepless nights. He admired her courage and the strength it took to face those memories again. He wanted to repay her.
Coraolis leaned forward. “I bet you’ve had your fill of questions. Perhaps you have a few of your own? I’d like to help put your mind at ease.”
She gave him a skeptical look, then nodded. “It couldn’t hurt, I guess. Do you know why Dante was alone?”
He hesitated, and her gaze sharpened. If he were smart, he would lie. The answer was above his pay grade, and he’d be in his rights to say so. If he lied to her, he was certain she’d know, and it would destroy their new rapport.
“I’m not supposed to know the answer to that,” he said. Maybe she’d be happy with the middle ground.
“But you do.”
It wasn’t a question, yet it wasn’t a demand he share. He appreciated that. Technically, he still had a choice. In reality, he wanted Captain Ronasuli to trust him, and all of his instincts said he could trust her. His instincts were usually good.
“It was part of an experiment. Operation Swordfall. I don’t know much besides the name. Dante was chosen because he’s the strongest graduate the Academy had seen in years.” It was his turn to frown into his coffee. “I’m sure there was more to it. I don’t want to believe they’d endanger Side Liner deliberately.”
Her eyes dampened suddenly, and she bowed her head. On impulse, he reached across the table to touch her hand. There was a sudden tension in her jaw, but she didn’t pull away.
“I am deeply sorry for your loss,” he said. “I should have said that at the very beginning.”
“Thank you.” Her voice was steady. “I just want to get them back.”
“We will help you do that.”
“We? There will be two of you?” she asked. “No offense, you seem like a good guy, but—”
“I understand. I’ve never deployed without another Mystic, and if I have anything to say about it, I never will. Captain, if there’s anything else I can do to ease your mind, just ask.”
She looked at him straight on. Her eyes were dry now, without a hint of more emotion. She’d embraced her feelings, then set them aside. He liked her force of will.
“I’ll be honest and admit I have doubts, but you’ve been straight with me. I appreciate that.” There was a wry twist to her mouth. Perhaps she was thinking of her own leaders, who hadn’t seen fit to share as much. “I think the best way to build trust would be to have a successful mission.”
“Then it’s a good thing we intend to succeed.” He smiled and when she raised her eyebrows, her eyes sparkled a little.
They moved away from the topic of Dante and the mission. She answered a few friendly questions, and Coraolis shared a little of his life in exchange. She was easy to talk to once her barriers were down. She proved to be intelligent and quick-witted. He found he looked forward to going on the mission with her.
He pushed away from the table, a bit reluctantly. It was time to go before he overstayed his welcome. “It’s been lovely talking to you, captain. I have some preparations to make before we leave.”
“Of course. I’m glad you stopped by,” she said, then gave him the hint of a smile. “But you should call me Julia.”
“Very well, Julia. I look forward to talking again.”
She walked him to the door when the hammer dropped on his head. His legs turned to jelly beneath him, and he belly-flopped on the carpet. The pain was so overwhelming it took him a moment to realize it wasn’t physical but in his mind. Some outside force pressed against his will. It threatened to crush him if he didn’t open his mental doors and let it in.
“No,” he gasped. He realized that Julia was kneeling beside him, shouting into her phone. She sounded far away.
I won’t let you in.
“It’s all right, Mike. I’m getting you help…” she said.
He rolled onto his side, curling up as he rallied his defenses. He wasn’t going to crumble easily. Something wanted a peek inside his mind, it’d have to fight him for it.
“No ambulance,” he gasped. This wasn’t something a doctor could help with. “Please.”
He sat up. Outwardly, he was saying he was fine. He would probably be more convincing if he stopped repeating himself, but it was too late. Julia put her hands on his shoulders. That was good. She could act as a physical anchor while he got his mind in order.
He visualized his mind as a one-room cabin with something big and nasty pounding at the door. It held up, but the walls around it were spiderwebbed with cracks. Books, dishes, and furniture scattered across the floor as if a giant had picked up the building and shaken it.
That’s enough!
He lashed out with his mind. There was a sense of surprise, and then nothing.
The assault on the door paused. Coraolis touched the wall, and the logs changed to heavy stone blocks. Shutters covered the windows. He cleaned up the mess, putting everything back in its place. When he was satisfied his defenses were fortified and the attacks had stopped, he opened his eyes.
Julia leaned over him. Her fingertips rested against his neck as she looked at her watch. Her lips moved as she counted, but they stopped when he grabbed her hand.
“No ambulance,” he said. He realized he’d been saying it. “This was a psychic attack. They can’t do anything for me.”
“A psychic attack? What do you mean?”
“Something tried to look inside my mind. I stopped it, but…I think it was Dante.”
Julia’s face lost color. “Are you sure you’re okay?” She peered into his eyes, checking for a concussion. A reasonable theory.
“I’m fine.” His head ached, and he rubbed his temples. “He’s more powerful than I expected.”
“We’ll need to make a better plan to deal with him.” Julia helped Cor to his feet. “It doesn’t change what we have to do.”
“Right.” He smiled and squeezed her hand. “It only changes how we have to do it, not what.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Dante hovered in the void, his back to the planet. He had stretched out his powers and found Earth under his hand. It was an impossible feat. No Mystic could reach that far through the vast reaches of space, but he had grown far beyond a mere Mystic. Every day, his reach became longer. Each trip to the Astral Plane was as easy as stepping through a door. If it taxed him at all, it was no worse than running up a flight of stairs.
He reveled in his power. He’d been able to touch the minds of the ‘top brass’ of the Earth Fleet. He’d learned about their mission to Cavey. They were sending Julia Ronasuli to face him again. He looked forward to getting even.
That was all he needed to know, though he checked out the Mystic set to come against him. Coraolis had built his reputation around diplomacy. He was supposed to be strong, but his real gi
ft was bringing people together. Dante met him once, years ago. His memory of that time was dim, but he was sure they’d gotten along. He never imagined they’d end up on opposing sides.
The other Mystic’s mind was well protected, yet Dante wanted a peek. He slammed into Coraolis’s mental walls with all the grace of a drunken ballerina and the subtlety of a jackhammer. Coraolis pushed back, and Dante felt his limits over such a distance.
He decided not to push. They would meet soon enough, and there was no question who would win. He relished seeing the look in Coraolis’s eyes when the man realized how greatly he was outmatched. That thought stayed with him upon exiting the Astral Plane. He didn’t just look forward to winning. He wanted to crush them. He wanted to punish Ronasuli for humiliating him.
He opened his eyes. He reposed at the base of a thorny tree. Pale fruit had been left on the ground in front of him. The smaller dragons liked to bring him food, yet they were otherwise quite shy. It was one of the few things he could eat on Cavey, though the taste was bitter. He picked a fruit up and looked it over, his thoughts elsewhere.
He wasn’t a vengeful person. He didn’t typically care about balancing books. In truth, he realized, he wasn’t the one who wanted revenge. The dragon pulled his strings, just as it had killed the Side Liner’s crew.
Anger ignited in Dante’s chest. Maybe he was interested in revenge after all. He straightened and set the fruit aside. Eyes closed, he focused inward, looking for his uninvited guest.
The dragon was hard to find. Not because it hid; indeed, it lurked in every corner of his mind. However, it had no weak spot. Trying to remove it was like fighting his own mind.
He tried to pry the dragon out by brute force.
Stop that.
All right, it had noticed.
“Don’t you think you’ve overstayed your welcome? You didn’t even buy me dinner before you took over my life.” He gathered his energy and attacked again, only to be shoved back.
Use up all our power! It doesn’t matter. A star can’t burn itself.
Dante stopped hammering at the dragon. “What is that supposed to mean?” He gathered his strength.
We are one. I am you, and you are me. We have merged. You can remove me no more than you can stop breathing.
“No, I don’t believe that.” Dante felt sick. He probed at the dragon’s presence, trying to find where it ended and he began. There was no such line. The dragon wasn’t just in his mind. It was fused with his spirit.
He pushed at the borders of his awareness. Nothing. Dante slumped, feeling hope drain out of him. The dragon was right. It was him. He was it.
That meant the Side Liner was his fault. The E.F. was coming for him, and he deserved to be caught. He wasn’t sure what they’d do to a Mystic gone rogue. Nothing good. He’d still take a lifetime in prison over helping the dragon hurt anyone else. Yet, while a part of him despaired of his future, he wasn’t about to give up on his freedom.
He passed the days, then weeks, traveling from Astral Plane to material world. He watched dragons pass through the rift and tried to guess how many were on Cavey now. Too many for the E.F. to deal with, he knew that.
He examined his connection with the dragon at every opportunity. The monster was right, they were nearly one being now. The difference was that it didn’t seem to know his thoughts. It only paid attention if he tried to free himself. That meant he had some freedom to plan, and soon, to act.
He meditated morning and night, working out new theories without testing them. One night, he probed the limits of his power and ran out of things to try before his strength waned. It was incredible. He imagined how much he could accomplish. He could do so much for humanity. He just had to bear a certain burden for the rest of his life, one that wasn’t even that bad.
Not that bad?
His anger rose. Yes, he was free to roam the planet, but he was still a prisoner. He had faltered, and the dragon had entered his mind. It had brought other dragons to the physical world, and those dragons had killed Side Liner’s landing party. The universe was going to pay a great price for Dante’s failure.
He’d had enough. This was the day he would go free or die. He went to the river bank. Peering into the water, his own draconian features took him by surprise, as usual. It was never pleasant to see a stranger’s face in the mirror. Maybe the dragon had done this to erode his sense of self, or perhaps it was a simple side effect of the possession.
It didn’t matter why. At the moment, it was a tool to separate himself from his unwelcome guest.
He’d learned many tricks from the dragon over the last weeks. He understood some of what made the rift to the Astral Plane possible. He knew how the merging of their spirits had been accomplished. Other spells and tricks had given him more puzzle pieces. With that knowledge, he could cobble together a plan to free himself.
Dante entered a trance, one that normally freed him from his body but, this time, he didn’t let go. He balanced between the material world and the Astral. When he opened his eyes, he saw both.
His fragmented reflection was made of separate pieces like a stained-glass window. His true face was there, overlapping his draconic one. He traced a line in the air, and the two aspects separated, his natural face on one side, while the dragon coalesced on the other.
You know not what you do.
Dante started. The Dragon loomed on the opposite river bank, large enough to brush its head against the clouds. It could walk on the forest and notice the trees it crushed beneath it no more than Dante noticed grass underfoot. Its eyes burned with azure flame and, if it wanted, it could swallow him in an instant.
Or could it? It had taken him over, used him as its puppet, yet it hadn’t destroyed his spirit. His mind was his own, and he still had the power to fight the Dragon’s influence. It hadn’t even stopped him from casting the spell.
It didn’t have any real power over him. It just wanted him to think so.
“Folks have been telling me that all my life. ‘You know not what you do,’ they said.” He smirked as he stood. If this was going to be a fight, he wanted to be on his feet. “It never stopped me.”
So be it.
The dragon struck.
Dante was faster. He swept his arm, raising a barrier between them. The wall curved in on itself to form a transparent dome around the dragon. Then it doubled, making itself a globe. The beast thrashed, throwing itself against the walls of its new prison, yet Dante had access to the dragon’s strength as well as his own.
He anchored the sphere in a dark corner of his mind, then left it there with just enough room for the dragon to chew on its own tail. When he was sure the dragon couldn’t break free, he left the trance and sank to his knees.
His face was mostly unchanged. The hint of scales still lingered at the edges of his jaw. Sharp, reptilian lines remained on his high cheekbones. But his eyes had changed from slits to the warm brown they had been. If he wasn’t already on the ground, he would have collapsed with relief.
He was free.
He laughed and threw himself onto his back. The grass-like plants under him smelled like sweet clover. Where the rift didn’t bleed violet and orange into the air, the sky was a clear aquamarine.
A dragon screeched and, for the first time, the sound sent panic through his body. His gut told him to run. At the same time, his body refused to move until he’d identified the source of the sound.
That wasn’t normal. He’d always felt a kinship with the beasts. He’d always been safe from them.
Except now he wasn’t. That had been the dragon, and its rapport with its own kind. Dante cut himself off from that protection when he won his freedom. Like a rabbit in a field, he hoped the hawk passed him by.
“Seems like a fair trade to me,” he said. “Hear that, dragon breath?”
There was no answer, and he was glad of it. Dante was alone on an alien planet, surrounded by hostile creatures, with the passage to the Astral Plane letting more creatures through a
ll the time.
He needed a plan. Step one, find cover. Step two, survive the night. If he got that far, maybe he would come up with step three.
***
Dante had never been one for the woods, and that went double when everything in it was trying to kill him.
At least the trees seemed neutral. The wildlife had been scared off or eaten, leaving a multitude of hungry dragons and one tender Mystic. He didn’t think the dragons would eat him. He was more worried they’d help his prisoner escape. And then, if it wasn’t stupid, it would steal Dante’s trick. He’d spend the rest of his life trapped in his own mind.
No, thank you.
Lucky for him, his expanded powers acted as dragon radar. They warned him when one got close, giving him time to hide.
Sooner or later, the warnings wouldn’t be enough. If he stayed in the forest, he was going to get caught. Good places to hide were scarce, and the trees often held panther-sized dragons that liked to drop on their prey. They didn’t stay in one place, either. If one hunting spot didn’t pan out, they moved. That meant he couldn’t rest for long, or he’d wake up in a dragon’s claws.
Dark fell hours ago, but the rift lit the sky and burned like a supernova. It touched the ground at one extreme while the other scraped the stratosphere. It was too bright for his physical eyes and higher senses. This close, it threatened to blind him. Yet, it seemed to be the safest place. It gave off enough psychic static to make it hard to see the dragons coming out of the void. He assumed it would have the same effect on them.
Dante found a thicket where the young trees had barely formed thorns, and the bushes walling in the space weren’t the kind that raised blisters on his skin. He checked for animal tracks. Finding none, he settled on the ground amid the greenery.
He waited until the noise of the rift became no more than white noise, then sat with his legs tucked under him. As heavy as his eyes were, he couldn’t sleep until he was sure he was safe.
He took that to mean this place was safe, at least for a while.
He let go of his body’s shackles and soared into the Astral Plane, following streaks of light as he rose to the stars. He brushed against one, and it flooded him with pure emotion. One was joy. Another was confusion. They all danced beyond his grasp, refusing to be handled. When he stopped reaching for them, they swung back to brush against him.
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