Touch of Madness

by C. T. Adams

  It would be rude to wake Tom, so I was very carefully quiet as I started the coffee brewing and did my meditation. When that was finished I gathered up the soap, a good book, and all my dirty laundry and took the elevator downstairs.

  The book was a good one. It kept my mind off of things I really didn’t want to think about, including men with rifles, my annoying brother, and Amanda Shea. I was glad to get the laundry done, too. The fresh scent of detergent and the feel of warm clothes in my hands as I folded them fresh from the dryer were very domestic, very soothing. By the time I’d finished and was carrying the basket of folded clothes upstairs I actually felt as though eventually things would be all right. Of course I figured it was probably just the soap fumes.

  I continued on the domestic theme when I got upstairs. Tom was still snoring away, so I fed Blank, put away the laundry, and started on the housework. By the time Tom finally rolled out of bed I’d done all the dusting, had AC/DC in my iPod, and was doing a little dance as I ran a mop over the kitchen floor.

  He came up behind me to nuzzle my neck and pull me into a hug that was only slightly hampered by the mop. He was wearing one of my favorite tee-shirts over a pair of black sweatpants. It had a pirate on the front pointing his finger outward and read “Dread Pirate Roberts Wants You. Call Me about Franchise Opportunities.” The tee was tight across his chest and shoulders, showing off his build to perfection. It also covered all the healing bruises on his chest and abdomen. His face looked better than it had two days ago, but it was still obvious he’d taken a beating. Still, he was up and moving. If he’d been human, he’d be in the hospital.

  “What’s the plan for the day?”

  I slid the headphones off and set the iPod onto the counter. “I figured I’d call Simms’s office and see if I could set up a time to try and heal Bryan and the others. Then I thought I’d head over to the church and talk to Mike about things.”

  “I don’t like you wandering around bus stops when someone’s been trying to shoot you. I’m amazed the police haven’t insisted on offering you protection.” He got a very suspicious look on his face and his eyes went dark and deep. “Or did they? What exactly did they say to you while I was calling the cab?”

  I turned away. I didn’t want to face him, didn’t want to lose the last shreds of my good mood by getting into an argument.

  Then his hands were on my waist, and he turned me around so I had to face him. Looking into those oh-soserious eyes from inches away I couldn’t lie, couldn’t even mislead him.

  “Tom … ,” I started to speak, but my expression told him my answer better than words.

  He let go of me and stalked away, going to the farthest part of the living room just to be away from me. “Damn it, Katie! Damn it to hell! You told them no, didn’t you! You refused their protection.”

  “I—”

  “Don’t even try to explain. Just … don’t.” He turned toward the window, pulling aside one of the vertical blinds with one hand. I could see the muscles knotted in his shoulders beneath the thin fabric of the tee-shirt he wore. “This isn’t the Thrall, Kate. This is some lunatic with a gun. You can’t stand and fight. You won’t even know it’s happening until it’s too late. Don’t you get that? It’s a miracle you didn’t die yesterday. You should be dead. You would be if it hadn’t been for sheer dumb luck. And he’s out there and he’s waiting and you’re going to make it easy for him because you’re too damned stupid to get the help you need.”

  He was shaking with rage, hard enough that the blind rattled. “I love you, Katie, but I can’t keep watching you deliberately put yourself in the line of fire. I can’t, and I won’t.” He let the blind drop and turned to face me. “So this is it. Either you call the cops and tell them you’ll take their protection, or it’s over.”

  “I don’t like ultimatums, Tom.” I said it softly. I wasn’t angry … yet, if the shoe were on the other foot, I’d be doing and saying the same things to him … or worse.

  He snorted, a bitter sound that carried no humor. “I don’t like giving them. But you’re not giving me any choice. We can’t spend our lives together if you’re dead. Take the protection until the shooter’s caught. If they get Amanda, too, so much the better. Although I can’t imagine the boys in blue putting a stake through her heart.”

  “You heard that? I thought you were asleep.”

  “I heard, Buffy.” He snorted again. I watched him deliberately tamp down his anger, get his emotions in check. Pissed as he was, his control hadn’t wavered for an instant. There had been no sign of his beast. And now he was trying to back away from an argument that neither of us wanted and no one would win.

  If he was willing to let go of his anger, I was more than happy to play along. “Pretty sneaky of you faking like that, Fido.”

  “I figured Carlton wouldn’t talk if he thought I was listening, and I wanted to know what was going on. It just figures he’d have the hots for you.” He shrugged. It was an abrupt, angry movement. His words might be neutral, but his body was still tense. I watched him take a slow, controlled breath and let it out slowly.

  “You do realize I’m not interested.” I looked him in the eyes as I said it.

  “You’d better not be,” he grumbled.

  “I’m not.” There wasn’t a bit of lie in that. I really wasn’t interested in Carlton in any sort of romantic sense. He just was an interesting person.

  “And what’s your decision on the police protection?” Ah yes, back to the subject I’d tried so hard to change. Damn.

  “I’ll call Brooks. Maybe I’ll get lucky and they’ll have caught the shooters already.”

  “It’s awfully soon for them to. have done that,” Tom pointed out.

  “Not necessarily. I don’t think they were professionals.”

  “But you don’t know. Not for sure. So you need to be careful.”

  He was pushing, and I hated it. But he was right. I knew he was right. I was in danger from something I couldn’t handle myself. And I sure as hell didn’t want to lose him. “If the shooters haven’t been caught, I’ll accept police protection.”

  He sighed and closed his eyes. I could almost see his lips moving in a prayer of thanks.

  I reached over, grabbed the phone, and rummaged around until I found Brooks’s business card. I dialed the number for his cell. He picked up on the first ring.

  “Hello, Reilly.”

  “How’d you know it was me?” I didn’t bother to hide the surprise in my voice.

  “Caller ID,” he explained. “Hear you survived another close call. You must have more lives than a damned cat.”

  I moved the mop out of the way and pulled up a seat on the nearest stool. Tom stayed on the other side of the room, but I could tell he was listening. His ears were good enough that he might even be able to hear Brooks’s side of the conversation.

  “About that—” I started to explain, but he cut me off in mid-sentence.

  “We got’em. One of the neighbors across from the church got a partial plate number. It was the father and brother of one of the kids from Bear Creek. Dad confessed on condition we drop the charges against his son.”

  “Think the son will come after me?”

  “Nah. He knows we’re watching him. You should be okay on this one.”

  “And Amanda?”

  “I’m still looking. I’ll call you if I turn anything up. In the meantime, be careful. I’ve been doing a little research. Apparently Ms. Shea isn’t the first one to try this little trick.”

  “What happened the last time?” I asked.

  “Let’s just say it ended badly.” Brooks sounded tired, but there was a hint of anger as well.

  “How badly?”

  “The Japanese National Police lost more than a dozen cops in a Tokyo museum before it was all over.” His voice was calm and very serious.

  “How did they end up taking him down?”

  “The riot squad had been shooting him in the chest, and all it did was slow him d
own. When one of the cops ran out of ammo, he broke through a case and grabbed a set of antique swords off their stand. He used the katana to lop off the guy’s head and the wakizashi to stab him in the heart.”

  I winced, not only from the visual in my head, but from the knowledge that it was something I might have to do, very soon. “Gruesome.”

  “Very. But it worked.” He paused, I heard a muted conversation in the background before he came back on. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Brooks—” I paused, trying to come up with better words than just “thanks” and failed miserably. After all, he’d said he was on sympathy leave. That meant somebody close to him was dead or dying. The last thing he needed was to deal with my troubles. But he’d agreed to it, and without complaint. “Thank you. I really appreciate this.”

  “Yeah, well … if you really want to thank me you can use those psychic abilities of yours to get me the lottery numbers for Friday. Camille wants a new SUV.”

  We were both laughing when he hung up the line. My laughter faded and died when I looked across the room at Tom. He looked fractionally less tense and angry than he had, but his body language was still rigid. He reached behind one of the plants and jabbed at the switch to open the blinds. Bright daylight flooded the room.

  “You heard that they caught the shooters?”

  One short nod, but he didn’t smile. “I heard.”

  “You still don’t sound happy.”

  I watched him roll his neck, trying to release some of the tension in his muscles. “I’m not happy. You’re going to have to deal with Amanda. I hate it, but even if you weren’t working with the vamps, you’d still have to. She hates you, and she’ll just keep coming after you until one of the two of you is dead.” He walked away from the windows, slowly crossing the room until he stood just a few inches from where I sat. “But you weren’t happy about the shit with the pack. If you can let that go and let me handle it, then it’s only fair that I let you deal with this.”

  “Yeah. But it sucks.”

  “Hell yeah,” he agreed. “Look, I need to go downstairs, clean up, check my messages, call in to the station. Are we okay?”

  “We’re fine.” I leaned forward, kissing him gently. “I’m just going to call Dr. Simms and Michael to set things up and then maybe start cooking.”

  “You’re not still mad?”

  I shook my head no. “You?”

  “Only a little.” He cupped my face in his hand. “I know you don’t mean to, but sometimes you really do scare the shit out of me.”

  “Sorry.”

  He kissed me on the forehead and left. I watched him leave, wondering what I’d done right in this life to have him in it. As the door clicked shut I reached for the pad where I’d written Dr. Simms’s number. My heart beat a little faster with nerves. What if it didn’t work? What if it did? I tried to remember Bryan as he used to be and honestly couldn’t. It had been so long.

  I punched in the number and extension. A pleasant female voice answered the line. “Dr. Simms’s office, may I help you?”

  I took a deep breath to calm my nerves and answered in my best business voice. “This is Kate Reilly. Is Dr. Simms available?”

  “One moment please.”

  I listened to Muzak for a minute or two, my fingers tapping a nervous rhythm against the countertop.

  “Good morning, Ms. Reilly. How can I help you?” His voice was pleasant, cultured, and more than a little smug. I’d called. Just like he’d planned. I could actually imagine the obnoxious expression on his face just from hearing those few words. A part of me really wanted to hang up right then and there. But I wanted to help Bryan and I needed to be in a hospital when I did.

  “Dr. Simms, I called because I think I know how to cure—completely cure my brother and your daughter.”

  He let out an involuntary gasp of shock. “You what?”

  “I can’t be sure until I actually try, but—”

  “What do you want from me?” He interrupted me, his voice still breathless with excitement, his words spilling over each other as a result. Suddenly, the upper hand was mine again. But it didn’t really matter to me whether or not I won a stupid little pissing match with him.

  “I want to try this at the hospital, just in case anything goes … wrong.”

  “How—” I heard him take a deep breath to steady himself. “How does it work? What will you do?”

  It seemed silly telling him that I’d sit next to his daughter, take her hand, and think at her, but that was pretty much what I was going to try to do. So I used words like “meditate” and “trance” and tried not to sound like a complete idiot. I must have failed because I could hear the skepticism in his voice. “That’s it?”

  “Look, Dr. Simms, we’re in uncharted territory here. I think it’ll work. It seems logical to me that it should. But if it doesn’t, what harm’s done? It won’t make anything worse.”

  “I suppose not.” I heard an irregular tapping, like the sound of a pen hitting the top of a desk as he considered what I was suggesting. Eventually, he spoke. “Fine. Come by the hospital this afternoon at two. I’ll have security escort you to the conference room near my office. But understand this, Ms. Reilly. I am not a man to be toyed with. If this is some elaborate stunt to try to get out from under the charges brought against you—” he let the threat dangle.

  It was probably stupid to be annoyed, but I was. “Dr. Simms, you are the one who has been pursuing me. You offered to drop the charges. Not me. I haven’t asked for a damned thing except a place to do this. If things go well, I want my brother kept overnight for observation, but you’d want that anyway so you can gather the press together to make an announcement.”

  “Yes.” His voice was still suspicious, but he couldn’t dispute the truth.

  “I only ask that you try to keep my name out of it.” I was being completely honest about that. Because if my name was tied to a true cure, people whose loved ones were trapped as Eden zombies would pursue me to the ends of the earth to get my help. There were thousands, maybe even millions of zombies. There was only one of me.

  He paused and then sighed. “If this cure of yours works, that won’t be possible—no matter what I do. You know that. Researchers are going to want to know how it was done. They’ll want to know how to duplicate the effect. There’s too much at stake—”

  I cut him off. “Let’s just see how this first time goes, shall we? So two o’clock, at the front door.”

  “I’ll see you then.”

  It took a couple of attempts to hit the button to end the call. I was shaking. I was going to do this. Holy crap. I was going to do this. I used the meditation exercises I’d learned from Henri to steady myself. It took a few minutes, but when I hit the number for Michael on speed dial I was almost calm.

  After I’d told him my plan, there were more than a few moments of stunned silence. When he finally replied, his voice was shaking—both with hope and incredible excitement

  “If what you’re saying is true, Kate, we could … I mean, you could … how many people would get their lives, their loved ones—” I heard his voice falter again, but not from excitement this time. “But oh dear Lord, there are so very—”

  He’s a bright boy. I knew he’d figure it out for himself, so I completed the thought, repeating what I said to Simms. “So many of them. There’s only one of me, Mike. Saving Rob drained me … a lot. His injuries were only physical, and he was already a wolf, so he could help. I love Bryan, and I need the hospital’s staff, so I’ll help Simms, but—”

  Concern for me warred with concern for his charges in his voice when he replied softly. “I understand.” There was a pause and I let the silence flow, allowing each of us to keep our thoughts for a time.

  “You need to tell Joe, you know.”

  I shook my head, knowing he couldn’t see. “I can’t, Mike. You saw how—”

  “You have to, Katie. He has just as much stake in Bryan’s
future as you do. He’s a doctor and a good one. He’s read—extensively—on the effects of Eden, and you know it. What if something goes … wrong? Could you live with yourself, knowing he might have had a suggestion that could have prevented it?”

  He was right, and I knew it. But I couldn’t imagine how Joe would respond. Would he be excited at the possibility, or think that, yet again, I was meddling in things beyond my ken?

  Score one for pessimism, dammit. Even the logical, reasoned speech I’d rehearsed in front of the mirror, to be certain my facial muscles would convey hope and excitement, wasn’t enough.

  “You want to what?!” Joe’s voice held so many emotions that I was glad I’d chosen to call, rather than tell him in person. That much emotional overload would beat at my head like a sledgehammer and make the session with Bryan more difficult. Anger flowed into fear, and tumbled over excitement. But he just couldn’t allow that I might actually have enough brains to know what I was doing, so anger won out. “Kate, no! I forbid this. You don’t even know this can work. What if—”

  “What if what, Joe? Just go ahead and say it. What if I kill Bryan? Do you think I haven’t considered the possibilities? I’m not quite that stupid and irresponsible, regardless of what runs through that excuse of a mind you have. Hasn’t it even occurred to you that I wouldn’t have suggested it if I wasn’t pretty damned sure I could bring him back? I want to do this. I have to … at least try.”

  His voice grew cold. “I didn’t think you were going to kill him, Kate. But what if you undo the good already done? You have no way to be positive it’ll increase his cognitive ability. Damn it, he recognizes me, Kate! He smiles when I walk in the room. He laughs at cartoons and—” There was a pause and I heard coughing and a short snuffle that told me Joe was tearing up nearly as much as I was because, yes, that was one of the possibilities I’d considered.

  “Fuck it. Do what you’re going to do. I know you will anyway.”

  He slammed down the phone, leaving me to rock on the couch in silent, angry tears, wondering if I was going to lose both brothers if anything went wrong this afternoon.