He was up and diving toward me before I had any time to anticipate. I was unprepared for a physical fight, and even though I could defend myself, I was smaller, weaker, and seriously lacking in the psychic powers department. Tackling me to the ground, he crushed me to the floor. His hands clenched down around my throat. Darkness set in. There was a dull cracking sensation as he lifted my head off the ground and slammed it down again and again. I clawed at his hands, fighting to breathe, but could not even budge his littlest finger. Losing coherence quickly, I realized I could no longer struggle; that each kick was using valuable resources, and taking me even closer to the end.
Can I die? I found myself wondering, as I began to black out.
Suddenly, the pressure lessened. A man was pulling Karl off me. The two of them struggled about the room. Furniture overturned. A grouping of statues landed all around me like tipped bowling pins as I fought to pull the tiniest breath through my swollen throat. By the time my vision had begun to return, and my body to heal, the fight was almost over. Karl had hurt the other man. He lay on the ground near the French doors, blood oozing from a gruesome head wound.
“William?” Karl raged. In his hand was a figurine that had been turned into a cudgel. “After what the Sangha has done for you? The others, surely, but you?”
“Don’t hurt her,” the man on the ground slurred. I recognized him. He had been the security guard to throw me in the cell, the one whose knife I had borrowed to cut my stitches. His nose was broken and a large lump of detached tissue was hanging over his eye, exposing a massive skull fracture. “Please.”
Karl lifted the statue and with a growl, smashed it down on William’s head. There was a sound like a watermelon being dropped from on high.
I realized only as it echoed into the silence that I had screamed. Slowly, the maniac turned and dropped his weapon. He was disheveled, spattered with blood, cut and scraped, but somehow he still managed to look businesslike. He stood straight, fixed his collar, took a moment to make sure his shirt was tucked just so. I sat on the floor, staring at the dead body in paralysis.
He had just killed a man in front of me. A sudden thought of Ursula laughing, licking blood off her fingers, blasted through my brain as Karl did the same.
See what they’re willing to do?
Karl took a deep breath. “Well, now that we’ve gotten that out of our system.”
I sat, completely unable to breathe, or move, or think, and watched the pulp that had been William’s head splotch the floor. I saw what seemed to be brain tissue and felt sure I would vomit, but nothing came. I bent over, coughing, when suddenly Karl grabbed hold of my hair and began dragging me. I tried to hold back, tried to tug free, but somewhere near William, I slid in the blood and lost my balance. My face smacked into the door frame.
Furious, Karl twisted my arm and bodily, hefted me onto my feet. With a massive shove, he sent me out the door a few steps, just far enough away from him that he could get over the threshold and recapture me. I managed to stomp on his insole, but that only angered him. He hit me across the face. Sparks flew across my vision. I lost motor control. Then he grabbed me by the elbow and began to drag me again.
No amount of struggle was enough. I screamed, kicked, and punched. I even bit him, but each time, he would just hit me and send me flying. Finally, he tired of the whole process and flagged down a few suited security men who had come running.
They picked me up, still thrashing as violently as my injuries would allow, and wove their way through the compound. Eventually, I was thrown into a chair. The click and snap of handcuffs woke me from my fear-induced hysteria. I sat panting, looking around me in terror.
It was a large, cold room, and upon every wall surface were monitors. In a long bank on either wall, computer terminals were manned by dutiful techies with none of Jinx’s style or flair. They sat staring at their work with dull expressions, as if they had been medicated. Only the one over whom Karl loomed had any hint of emotion on his face, which had turned a greenish color as Karl continued to issue commands into his ear.
When he stood up straight, the computer tech snapped into action like a drone, typing out code and accessing data.
Power over others.
“You fucking pig,” I snarled at Karl. “Is this where the Buddha’s grand message has gone? You just bashed a man’s skull in! He was one of you!”
Karl’s vicious eye rose over the hill of his shoulder and glared at me. “So grand even he could not bear to witness it?”
“What is that supposed to mean?” My voice was raw, garbled with pain, but I would be damned if I’d let him silence me. “You’re crazy!”
Karl smiled. “I am what my maker designed.” I opened my mouth, but he would not hear it. “What did Ananda say to you, Lilith?”
“I’m never going to tell you.”
“If you don’t there will be serious consequences.” He leaned forward smoothly, displacing a techie in his rolling chair, and tapped a single key. A monitor divided into four tiny screens. In horror, I recognized the coffee shop, buzzing with thirsty patrons, and Jinx’s home, its yard littered with motorcycles. The other two screens depicted places I did not recognize: a ranch-style home set back from the street and surrounded by an iron fence, and a large multi-storied building. In each window, inky shapes moved, gliding through the terrain in the familiar pose of sharp-shooters wielding AK’s. They swarmed the sites, hand-signals and all, and prepared for their entrance.
Delighted in his brutal way, Karl snatched the headset from the operator and brought the mic to his lips.
“Get it over with.”
With mechanical precision, the four teams kicked or rammed in doors, disabled Jinx’s motion-sensitive cameras and repelled over his tall security gate.
I gasped. How did they know Jinx even existed? They must have followed me. I lurched forward and clung to Karl’s arm with my free hand. “Don’t, please! This isn’t necessary! I’ll tell you whatever you want to know!”
“Too late. These three have annoyed me for the last time, but I’m sure you have other people you care about,” he said, trying to shake me off.
I grappled for the mic, but with one momentous shove, he hurled me back. The chair I was chained to flipped end over end, taking me with it. I smashed into the floor with a dizzying impact that knocked the wind from me, but then the pain vanished and I felt the warmth of the tissues repairing themselves. The arm of the chair to which the handcuff was attached had broken. I crawled slowly on my knees as the two computer nerds flanking me looked on in vague dismay. On the screens, the SWAT teams were converging on their unsuspecting targets.
I looked on, powerless, as the team in the upper right screen smashed in the front door of the house and marched through its hall and carpeted living area. The camera jiggled, mounted on one of their dark shoulders, and found the body of a man, sitting in a chair with a half-empty glass of Scotch beside his slack hand. It was Matthew.
He leapt up, reaching for his sidearm on the table beside his recliner. He got off one shot, just as the men came from behind. As they tackled him to the ground and restrained him, the team in the lower left screen broke through the window of Jinx’s French doors and scattered through the mansion.
Breathless, I prayed that he was off somewhere else. Then I recalled that the green and black ninja had been parked in his driveway, which meant he had to be there.
In the coffee shop, customers screamed and dropped to their knees. The barrista reached for the telephone but was unceremoniously hit across the face with the butt of a gun and dragged outside. While I panted and tried to get back to my feet, the camera was carried through the shop to the upstairs apartment. I thanked Arthur’s prescience for teaching him to hide out at the monastery. His immaculate white bathroom and bed were empty. All that existed to show anyone lived there at all were my sister’s color-coded journals.
A gloved hand shot out from beneath the camera and disrespectfully shoved a few onto the floor.
They rifled through her soul, looking for clues, and then tossed them aside.
“There’s nothing here,” a garbled voice said.
“Burn it,” Karl demanded.
“Roger.”
“Stop!” I shrieked, pulling my disobedient body upward. They were about to destroy Sam’s well-deserved dream, and for some reason, that hurt more than anything else. I could see Arthur’s face as he stood in his kitchen and told me that if the coffee shop burned to the ground, and all of his books were destroyed, he would be content doing something else, somewhere else.
“I have very little to miss.”
“Tell them to stop!”
As the coffee crew stuck devices around the apartment, and Matthew was pushed, bleeding, into a black, windowless van, the team at Jinx’s house got a mean surprise. The speakers echoed with a metallically shrill version of Jinx’s smart mouth.
“Redundant security systems are bitches, huh? You fuckers really need to work on the ninja stealth. So not impressed.”
My laugh squelched out beneath my sobs.
“Sir, it appears he saw us coming.”
“I don’t care if he did or not,” Karl seethed, “Find out where—”
“It’s called a panic room,” Jinx chuckled, “and it’s designed to be impenetrable.”
Karl’s face contorted. “Is it designed to be fire-proof?”
There was a moment of silence that was twice as long for Jinx.
“Prolly not,” he said finally, “but I am.”
“Hmm,” Karl growled. “Smoke him out.”
Images of carefully catalogued collections flickered through my mind, but oddly enough, the thing it lodged upon was that damned bean bag chair, grinning up at me. It was all I had left of her.
“You can’t . . .” I murmured, “please.” My face was damp with tears and though I was now standing, my hip would not function.
In two of the four screens, fires began, while in the last remaining screen, I saw the team scale the stairs of an apartment building and turn a thin door to mere splinters. Sam was just inside, attempting to jump out a window. He was dragged back and before his training could kick in, they had outmatched him and shoved a black bag down over his head.
“Stop!” I cried, but no one was listening. I looked around at the others, those people who seemed to worship individuality, yet could not divide their mind from Karl’s long enough to protest the destruction of one of their fellows. “How can you allow this to happen? When did it turn from seeing life as sacrosanct, to destroying everything you touch?”
They refused to look at me, their heads bowed in shame, while Karl continued to give orders to his crews. Jinx’s house exploded in flashes of smoke. The camera was jostled as its operator ran from the building to a predetermined position. They surrounded the home and waited. Long minutes ticked by. As the Spanish architecture buckled beneath the growing inferno, a tiny figure staggered from the rubble, on fire. Before it could even stop, drop, and roll, it was hurled to the grass, put out by the sheer weight of bodies. It struggled only slightly, and as the camera shifted, a scorched, but never tarnished, figure was hoisted up, hurling obscenities.
The final screen was cleared by the team leader and heedless of the other occupants of the building, the fires were set. Smoke detectors went off from every side, and while the team fled, Sam in tow, families began emptying into the halls in various states of undress and fear.
I closed my eyes against the tears. Kicking and screaming, my companions were black-bagged and restrained in the back of identical tactical vehicles. It was all because of me.
Chapter 26
As I sat bolt upright, soft arms released me. I turned, dizzy, frantic, overwhelmed, and found Ananda staring at me with a knowing glint in his doe eyes. Reaching up, he placed a soft hand on my forehead. As if it was rain, all my misery slid off me into the sand and was forgotten.
“I . . .” I began, trying to find dry land in the ocean that had become my reality, full of undercurrents and crushing upheavals. “You . . .”
He held his finger up to his lips.
And I knew.
The fight with Karl had never taken place. Nor had my conversation with Ananda. The Guardian had remained true to his vow, silent until . . . until what?
He got to his feet, shaking clouds of sand out of delicate folds. Before I could say anything, he was back in the tree, staring down at me like an amused squirrel.
I had time. If I could just get somewhere and figure this all out, I could get us both out, and maybe even end this fight. It all came down to understanding why I was having these visions and how best to act on them. But to do that, I had to find a place that was safe.
I jumped to my feet and looked around, trying to recall the map I’d been building in my mind, but my thoughts were so confused. Ignoring Ananda’s attendant as he tried to stop me without touching me, I made a dash for a door I had spotted off the courtyard. It appeared to be unguarded, until suddenly there was a man standing in front of it. I nearly collided with him, I was moving so quickly, but he caught me around the waist easily.
“Lilith,” he said into my ear.
I held up my hands in instant submission. “Don’t take me back to the cell, please!”
“It should be easy to find you somewhere else.”
I frowned and held very still, feeling his chest move against my back as if every breath were labored. “When Karl sees that I’m gone . . .”
“I’m head of security,” the man said. “I’ve already been given permission to put you in the main quarters if need be. But I can’t leave you alone.”
The way he said it sounded apologetic, and my fears were instantly at ease. If there was a friend to be found in this place, he seemed to be that man.
I turned to express gratitude, and was jolted by the sight of the man I had, but moments before, witnessed gurgling in his own blood. His hair was tousled, tie undone, and his earpiece dangling from an unbuttoned collar.
“William!” I gasped.
Surprised that I knew his name, he blinked at me. “How . . .”
I shook my head. “Just get me someplace where I can think.”
He nodded and took my arm chivalrously. He said nothing as he led me from the garden to one of the residential wings, though he closed his hand over mine as it rested in the crook of his elbow. I tried not to show my anxiousness as I mulled over how much time I had left, if the visions could be trusted.
When I had visited Club Trishna, and when Mathew was kidnapped, they had proven linear, warning of things that would come, however imperfectly. They seemed to hold snippets of information, designed to guide my choices or more often than not, events that proceeded from a choice I had made, showing me the negative impact that choice would have, before I’d even finished making it.
How could I know if this vision followed that pattern, how much of it was accurate, and how much of it was garbled in the reception? What if, as my abilities grew and refined, they became richer in detail, more trustworthy. The only way I’d know was to test them.
I turned and looked at my escort. He was quiet, subdued, and yet he watched me as if waiting for something. If I trusted him, would he prove worthy? Maybe it was time to try Ursula’s methods on for size.
I knew then, inexplicably, that though physical contact was not necessary for the magic to work, it did help. Something about his skin and the warmth that emanated from it, the transference of energy, told me that if I asked, I would know the truth. I thought back on all I now knew, on Karl’s little speech about his choice of beverage and understood why Ursula had been so able to read me, even though she had never touched me.
Eva’s blood was my blood.
“Can I trust you, William?” I asked, just as we entered the hall.
He halted in his tracks and blinked at me. “Yes.”
I smiled my most glowing smile and gave him an approving nod, because I was positive he was honest to his core.
He wal
ked to a door and, using a magnetic pass card, opened a set of double doors. On the other side was a large room that reminded me of the honeymoon suite Howard had booked for us.
My spirits sank.
There was a king-sized bed packed with pillows, a fabulous set of mahogany furniture, fine fabrics, soft carpeting, and above all, that same haphazard faux-elegance. I felt as if I was trapped in Las Vegas, minus the views of a garish strip of neon lights that turned the darkest shadows into cheerful, hope-filled day.
From the balcony, there was a view of the garden and Ananda’s tree, though the legend was no longer inhabiting it and the raked lines in the sand were being redrawn.
On the other side of a regal archway was a bathroom the size of Eva’s apartment, tiled entirely out of rose-veined marble. I wandered around it with William in tow, trying to phrase my question just right.
“You should clean up a bit,” he suggested, “since you have the time.”
I gazed at him. His had a look of gentility on his broad, masculine face. Cocking my head to the side, I realized that I could clearly picture him as a man in uniform. He had the spine of a Devil Dog and the deportment of a Naval Academy grad. Never once had he been disrespectful toward me, even though he had no reason to be polite. Sure, he’d shoved me into a cell, but who wouldn’t with Karl giving the orders?
“William,” I took a deep breath and glanced around, “if I needed to know something important, would you tell me?”
His brow furrowed slightly. “What do you need to know?”
“Are my friends in danger?” I sat on the edge of the pool-sized tub. “Is Karl planning on sending a SWAT team to capture them?”
“Friendzzzzz . . .?” he commented on the plural. I stared back emotionlessly until he sighed and looked away. “Not that I know of.”
It was my turn to frown. I put my face into my hands and wondered what I was meant to do. Had the vision been warning me against attempting to control Karl with my new talents? Had it been trying to show me the outcome of Jinx’s hack—that they could tell if their system were invaded and trace him somehow? Was it some eventuality that might come to pass if my actions had proceeded from that point?
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