One Wrong Move

by Shannon McKenna

  Aaro dragged his gaze away. He was not ready to deal with Mr.

  Apparently Normal yet, though he was their real problem by far, more than all the others combined. Aaro addressed his cousin.

  “Hey, Dmitri.”

  “Sasha,” his cousin said. “How long has it been? Twenty years?”

  “Not long enough,” Aaro said. “You’re a long way from the city out here, aren’t you? I thought you didn’t like nature. Remember how I used to put spiders in your shoes? Snakes in your bed? You were such a pussy about that. I’m surprised to find you in a place like this.”

  Dmitri’s lips curled. “Yeah, I remember. Nature’s not my thing. I have you to thank for that, probably. But hate is a strong motivator.”

  Mr. Normal clapped his hands. “Cousinly love. Warms the heart. Now shut up. Your tender family reminiscences aren’t on my schedule.”

  Aaro stared up into his face. “Who are you, asshole?”

  Oh, fuck . . . pain slammed into him. Him and his smart mouth.

  He barely heard the guy above the roar in his ears, the rasp of his lungs. He concentrated—and pushed it far enough back not to pass out.

  “I suggest you be more polite when you speak to me,” Mr.

  Normal said. “I’m not used to this much resistance. You must have been enhanced. Are you? Did that lying hag Kasyanov soup you up, too?”

  “What . . . are you . . . doing?” he gasped out.

  “Look at him. Most people can’t even talk when I blast them with this voltage,” the guy mused. “Only Roy. God knows, he’s had practice.”

  “But what the fuck is it?” The words burst out of him.

  Mr. Normal’s eyes twinkled jovially. “You are experiencing the effects of my very strong talent for compulsion, Mr. Arbatov. It’s my particular specialty. Extremely useful. Perfect for my personality.”

  Compulsion? “To do what?” he coughed out.

  “Nothing, at the moment,” the man said. “I’m not focusing right now. I’m just blasting it at you wholesale. But when I do focus, I can push an unsuspecting mind into making any decision I want. Like when your hand decided to reach out beyond the door frame and drop the gun.” He clicked his tongue. “Bad decision, but you can hardly be blamed.” He preened. “Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

  Aaro strained for traction. It seemed effortless, for the guy. He stood there, perfectly calm, his face normal, no twitch, no strain, while projecting a battering force that felt like a hurricane wind.

  His phone, left next to the remains of their meal, began to buzz.

  Mr. Normal scooped it up. “Bruno,” he said. “Your friend, who signed your death warrant. We got your destination from him and your lovely friend Lily tonight. And Miles, whoever he is. These people just talk and talk and never stop.” He shook his head. “It was almost too easy.”

  Aaro struggled to bring up the salient details. “You’re . . .

  Rudd?”

  The guy looked gratified. “You know about me? Yes, my name is Rudd. Helga told you, I expect. She’s been a naughty girl.”

  Aaro propelled the words out. “Until you killed her.”

  “No, she did that all by herself.” Rudd moved closer, and the energy clawing at Aaro’s mind grew stronger. He leaned close to Aaro’s sweat-slicked face. “She got what she deserved, for trying to trick me. She was caught in her own trap, that’s all. Devious old cunt.”

  The sick nauseous dark was rising up to swamp him. He struggled to keep afloat. Not that he could help Nina in his current state, but Christ, he didn’t want to conk out and leave her all alone.

  Too bad. It was getting dark, he was sinking lower, drifting farther . . . and farther, into the dark. . . .

  “Uh, boss?” The voice came from miles away. He could not tell whose voice it was.

  “Don’t interrupt me!”

  “You’ll blow his mind, boss. Let me just read him first, please!”

  The pressure let up. Aaro’s head dangled as his vision cleared, dragging in lungfuls of oxygen. “What are you?” he rasped.

  Rudd chuckled. “Interesting question,” he mused. “And coin-cidentally, it’s my favorite. But are you asking what I was? What I am, which is constantly evolving? Or what I aspire to become?”

  Aaro coughed. “You can stop jerking off any time.”

  Pain ripped through him. He jerked, strained. The chair rocked.

  “Be respectful,” Rudd warned. “Be very respectful. At all times.”

  “Don’t hurt him, please,” Nina begged. “Please, he never—”

  “Shut up, bitch!” Spittle flew from the guy’s lips as he whirled on her. “No one asked you to talk yet! I’ll deal with you later!”

  Nina shrieked, cringing as the guy had at her with his mental flail. Aaro struggled against his bonds. “Stop! Please, don’t hurt her!”

  “No?” Rudd turned back to him, his lips wet. His eyes flicked from Nina to Aaro. “You’ll be good?”

  Aaro swallowed that down. “I’ll be good,” he said hoarsely.

  “That’s better.” Rudd sounded satisfied. “As I was saying.

  What I was, that was the question? I’ll tell you who and what I was when I met Helga Kasyanov.” He waited, bright eyed, for Aaro to respond.

  Great. Kissing the ass of a madman who was in love with himself. Just the thing to brighten his mood. “How?” he growled sourly.

  “I sold life insurance to her!” Rudd waited for Aaro’s exclamation. He giggled to fill the gap when there was none. “Isn’t it perfect? One of life’s little ironies. Of course, her daughter had already collected the money, three years ago, when we faked her death. But even so.”

  Aaro was genuinely baffled. “Life insurance?”

  “Yes, it was eleven or twelve years ago.” Rudd had a hint of nostalgia in his voice. “I was back in the TriCities, then. She made an appointment with me. Wanted her daughter’s education covered, in case anything happened to her. Lara was fourteen at the time—”

  “Where is Lara?” Nina burst in. “What did you do to Lara?”

  The man shot her an annoyed glance. Nina twitched and yelped in the chair as if she’d been lashed with a whip. “You be quiet,” he snapped. “I wasn’t talking to you. Anyway, I sold Helga a policy, quite expensive, but very good, and the next day, she came back to see me again.” His eyes drifted up, dreamily, as he remembered. “She told me I had a strong talent of persuasion.

  That she was involved in a think tank that was exploring all the possibilities of enhancing these innate talents. She invited me to take part. Said my abilities were wasted selling insurance. She was right. I was reborn on that day.”

  “Kasyanov gave you this drug?” he asked. “This psi-max shit?”

  “Not at first,” Rudd explained. “It took her years to develop the formula. I was there for all of it. Anabel joined us about seven years ago, and Roy right after her. Helga had no idea what she had wrought.” He giggled. “It was all so very secret. It made it easy, in the end, to take the operation over and run it myself.”

  “And your power to persuade turned into the power to compel, with this drug?”

  “More or less,” he said. “Everone who is enhanced has their own special twist. Anabel, for example, does invasive telepathy.

  If memories are stimulated with the appropriate questions, she can pull them out of your head like beads on a string. Roy, here, he’s my faithful hound. He can follow your mental frequency from over two miles away sometimes, on a good day. Both very handy abilities to have on my staff.”

  “Ah,” he said. “So what are you now?”

  “Ah . . .” Rudd considered the question. “Well, compulsion can be applied in so many ways. Business, for starters. I have made a great deal of money. But I’m bored with that. Always the same. Big yawn.”

  He paused, waited, eyes twinkling. Aaro gritted his teeth, and did what was expected of him. “So? What’s next for you?”

  “That depends on many things. One o
f which is you two,” was his response. “We were on a cusp of a new era, before Helga betrayed us. She was developing the formula that would end our dependence on psi-max forever. But she double-crossed me, and you two are going to fix that.” His smile widened. “At least, I hope so, for your sakes.”

  “What is it that you’ll become?” Aaro hastened to drag the guy’s thoughts from anger and betrayal and back to his own glorious self.

  “I was making the shift into politics, you see,” Rudd explained. “I need a larger scope. A bigger canvas, for my abilities, my gifts. But I need that new formula first. I want the enhancement to be permanent. No ebb and flow, no needing a fresh dose, no constant strain from the side effects.” He looked at Nina.

  “Helga injected one of the A doses into you, my dear. And you have another dose with you, is that correct?”

  Nina hesitated, her eyes darting to Aaro. Anabel hauled off and whacked her again. The sound of contact made Aaro gasp and cringe as if the pain were his own. “Yes, she does,” he blurted. “One dose.”

  Rudd walked over to Nina, and tilted up her chin, squeezing it hard enough to make her squeak. “And how do you feel?”

  Nina coughed. “I’ve been better.”

  Rudd slapped her again, rocking her head back. “Don’t be snotty.”

  “She won’t be,” Aaro said hastily. “Tell them, Nina. Now. ”

  Nina held her head up, blinking, but her face was composed.

  “Yesterday I had some nasty hallucinations,” she said. “Also some waves of what I assume was telepathy that I could not control. Today, not so much. I can hear thoughts, but I can block them out at will. Helga told me I had three days, four at the most, without the B dose.”

  “Or what?” Anabel demanded.

  Nina looked up at her, quiet for a moment. “Or I die.”

  Silence. The four attackers all exchanged grim glances.

  “Without the B dose,” Rudd repeated. “Well, there it is, then.

  This is the part where the two of you tell us where that B dose is.”

  Rudd crossed his arms. The silence grew once again, and took on actual weight as it charged with danger. Impending pain and terror.

  Aaro’s guts sank. “We don’t know where it is,” he said.

  Rudd glanced at Roy, and made a gesture. Roy punched Aaro in the jaw. The blow snapped his head back, cut his lip against his teeth.

  Aaro licked blood off his lip. “It’s still true,” he said flatly.

  “Is it?” Rudd was breathing hard. “Is it? See if it’s true, Anabel!”

  The blonde approached him now. He winced as the mental hand began poking. It hurt, almost as much as Rudd’s mental beating, but in a more intimate way. He resisted, kept those vault doors locked. Like he used to do with Oleg. She battered on them, but the doors held.

  “He’s blocking me.” Anabel’s voice was sharp. “The son of a bitch is blocking me!”

  The air around her changed. She glowed, eyes sparkling, a nimbus of light gathering around her. “I could get through it.”

  She flicked a coy glance at Rudd. “It would be fun, to do it in front of her.”

  Rudd grunted. “I don’t have the stomach for it at this hour,”

  he said. “There’s a more sanitary way, one that doesn’t involve bodily fluids.” He gestured at Nina. “Hit her again.”

  Anabel pouted, but she turned to Nina, hauled off—

  “No!” Aaro shouted. “No, don’t. I’ll, uh . . . I’ll lower the shield.” He said the words without even knowing if that mechanism was within his voluntary control. He would make it be.

  Please.

  Dmitri chuckled. Anabel lowered her clenched fist. She gripped his face in her hands. Her dangling blond hair tickled his neck.

  So beautiful to look at, and she smelled sweet, too, but something stunted and unclean squirmed behind her eyes. He recoiled, every muscle rigid.

  “Open wide, big boy,” she cooed.

  For a moment or two, he didn’t think it was going to happen.

  He strained to visualize the vault doors. Thank God he had something concrete to imagine. He had Nina to thank for that.

  For that, and a million other unnameable things. He pushed that thought away. No tender thoughts of Nina with that mind-raping hag hanging over him.

  Even so, he seemed to feel Nina, reaching out. A gentle touch, holding him up. He clung to that hand in the darkness, and pictured those vault doors. The image formed, clear and sharp. He shoved them open, slowly, from the inside. They creaked . . .

  first a crack, wider . . .

  Anabel drove inside, violent and eager. He jerked, fighting nausea, panic. His heart thudded as she flailed around inside his naked inner self, hacking and slashing. “I’ve got him!” Her voice trembled with excitement. “Ask the questions now! Quick! I don’t know how long I can hold him. He’s very strong! Hurry!”

  Rudd cleared his throat. “Did Helga Kasyanov enhance you with psi-max?” he demanded.

  Aaro yelled, as Anabel plowed through his mind, prodding and pinching. He could not speak, so it was a damn good thing she answered for him. “He never heard of psi-max or of Kasyanov before yesterday. His friends in Portland asked him to help Nina Christie.”

  “All right then. What are the effects of the new formula?”

  Another assault. He tried not to cry out. He felt torn apart.

  “He doesn’t know much.” Anabel sounded disappointed.

  “Just what Kasyanov said. He heard a recording, of Helga babbling. She said then that the formula will stabilize the psi, but only if you get the B dose in time, within three days. Four, max.

  Helga croaked at day five. When I saw her in the ICU, she looked like shit. Like she was melting down from the inside.”

  “One more question, before we toss you in the trash.” Rudd’s voice vibrated with anger. This time, he let his coercive power thunder through the words, driving them into Aaro’s head like a hammer driving a pick. “Where are the B doses?”

  The double invasion was agony. He almost lost consciousness at the noise, the blinding lights, the pain. He was screaming, but he could not hear his own voice. He writhed, flopped. Air rushed past his face.

  Thwack, a sideways whole body blow. The world had turned ninety degrees. He was on the floor. Gasping for breath.

  “No idea.” Anabel’s voice was sullen. “No fucking clue. Whatever Helga told them, it wasn’t enough. I got something about a library. Something about a grave. Wycleff. Skeletons. A grave. A party. That’s it. It’s nonsense. Garbage. He doesn’t think they’ll find the dose, that’s for sure. He’s afraid she’ll die. He’s scared shitless.”

  “How sweet, that he cares,” Rudd muttered. “I’m moved.”

  “Yeah, maybe we could speed things up for him,” Anabel said.

  “Put him out of his misery.” She aimed a vicious kick to his thigh. “He’s in love with her. They’re fucking like bunnies, every chance they get. Love in the face of certain death. Like, La Bohême, or something.”

  “I’m not interested in his sex life,” Rudd snapped. “Focus.”

  “Wycleff?” It was Roy speaking, now, though he could not turn to see. “Why Wycleff? That old goat’s been dead for years.

  Maybe that’s what the grave part’s about. Or maybe Helga was just delirious.”

  “Shut up, Roy,” Rudd said. “I didn’t ask for your input.”

  They left Aaro forgotten on the floor, coughing as blood ran from his nose down his throat, and turned to Nina.

  “You do know that if you block Anabel, we will punish him,”

  Rudd told her. “Understood?”

  “Yes.” Nina’s voice was amazingly even. “I get that.”

  They asked her the same questions, and got the same conclusions, but Nina didn’t shout or choke nearly as much as he had.

  She just went rigid, trembling and silent, enduring it when they did their mind-rape-and-battery thing. Tough as boot leather.

  Am
azing.

  Aaro couldn’t see her, no matter how he lurched or struggled or craned his neck. All he could do was watch her feet twitch and her toes curl in the fancy sandals Roxanne had brought, to go with the sexy new outfit. He tried to reach out to her, but he didn’t know how. That was Nina’s magic thing, not his. He couldn’t help her the way she had helped him. He couldn’t do anything. He was a useless fucking lump of dead meat. He wanted to hit himself.

  Hate them, not yourself, silly. It sounded like Nina’s scolding voice echoing through his mind, but she was busy gasping and jerking as they dug around inside her head.

  He faded in and out of consciousness. Swam back to the surface to find Roy and Dmitri hoisting him upright. He stared up into his cousin’s gloating face. Spat blood into it.

  Dmitri wiped the red spatter off. “You’ll wish you hadn’t done that while you watch me and Roy taking turns with your fuck buddy,” he said. “At least this detour is good for something. Always a pleasure getting laid, and getting laid by your woman, ah, now, that’s worth something to me. Plus, I’ll be able to read your mind while I do it.”

  “Read my . . .” He stared at Dmitri, sickened. “You?”

  “Oh, yeah. Me.” Dmitri’s smile was broad. “I’m a telepath, too. It’s in the family, after all, right? Maybe I got the latent ability from wherever Tonya got it. I love it. Doing . . . this. ”

  He dug into Aaro’s head, not as deep or hard as Anabel, but it hurt, having that squirming presence inside. Dmitri groped and probed . . . and laughed. “You’re as much of a sanctimonious prick as you ever were,” Dmitri said. “Always moping, agonizing about hurting people. Fucking wuss. You’d do anything for her, wouldn’t you? Never fear, cousin. Whatever you can do to her, I can do better. I’ll show you tonight, when the boss is gone. Over and over. In every hole she’s got.”

  “That butthead psycho Rudd is your boss?” Aaro asked. “Oleg was better. Never grew up to be boss yourself, huh? Don’t feel bad. Some are born to lead and some to follow, you know?”

  Whap. Dmitri’s roundhouse to the ribs made him suck wind.

  His cousin rubbed his knuckles and circled the chair.