by Jade Kerrion
The first blow lifted the man off the ground, flinging him into the air to land heavily on his back. Stunned by the fall, he stared in disbelief as they closed in on him. He had no time to scream. Claws and fangs tore into him, ripping and shredding. Blood spurted, sprayed.
The dog lunged forward, sinking fangs into flesh. The monster turned, picked up the animal, and snarled, exposing fangs that dripped blood. The monster raised a clawed appendage, too deformed to call a hand and prepared to rip the small terrier to pieces. Kill…
No…let live…
It obeyed the eldest without hesitation. Indifferently, it flung the dog away. The terrier landed in the bushes with a yelp of surprise and then tumbled, unhurt, to the ground.
Their grisly work done, they turned, and as one, loped with the grace of predators, back into the woods. The corpse, mutilated almost beyond recognition, they left on the ground as they resumed their journey. They were near. They could feel his presence drawing them closer like the stars draw weary sailors home.
Find him…find him…
So close now…almost there…
CHAPTER SEVEN
Danyael sensed Galahad’s presence long before he heard the quiet footsteps stop beside him. Galahad’s emotional aura was laced with curiosity instead of concern. Good; he didn’t want Galahad’s pity. Any emotion outside of neutral—whether positive or negative—tended to backfire on him one way or another.
He caught the brief flicker of uncertainty, slivers the color of mercury piercing Galahad’s vivid emotional spectrum, before misting away like fog under spotlights. In the visible world, Galahad scarcely seemed to hesitate before joining him on the bench in the sun-flooded solarium. “Very pretty,” Galahad said, a faint smile passing over his lips as he took in the wonder of the indoor garden in a single sweeping glance.
Danyael nodded. The garden was lush with tropical plants that did not have a chance of surviving outside, even in the mild Virginian winters. The artful display of nature apparently growing wild had taken teams of skilled gardeners hours of work to attain. The overall effect was beautiful, and the solarium was one of his favorite haunts at Lucien’s house, the place he went to be alone. He inhaled deeply of the earth-scented air as he braced himself for the inevitable questions.
“Are you all right?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been,” Danyael said. He looked up, staring unseeingly at the tangle of plants in front of him.
“Did you know it was your mother?”
Danyael was silent for a long while. Conflict roiled through him. “Maybe,” he conceded, the words reluctantly torn from him. “It was easier not to ask the questions, easier to just shut the door on my past.” A soundless sigh. “I guess it’s time to take those blinders off.”
“Things could have changed. It’s been a long time. She could have had a change of heart.”
“Unlikely.”
“You don’t think so?”
Danyael shook his head. “No one ever came back to look for me,” he said quietly, stating the one key fact that Galahad had somehow missed when reviewing the records of Danyael’s life.
“How can you say that so easily?”
Danyael looked away. He knew his dark eyes reflected anguish; he had never been able to keep his eyes from betraying him, but nothing crept past his iron control. “Practice,” he said.
“I expected an empath to be overly emotional, a victim of heightened sensitivity. I did not think I would find the polar opposite, powerful emotions carefully reined, perfectly controlled.” Galahad paused. “Are you ready to see her again?”
“I don’t know what I can say to apologize.”
“Apologize?”
“Maternal instinct is an extremely well documented mammalian behavior. For my mother to have behaved so wildly out of the norm, she was likely driven to it by an alpha empath.”
“You think this is your fault?”
“Everything else after that is; you saw my file. Why wouldn’t the first tragedy in my life also be my fault?”
“You were only three years old.”
“So it took her three years to get around to trying to get rid of me. That speaks more for her emotional resilience than anything else.”
Danyael’s empathic awareness flashed a warning as something deep and dark stirred in Galahad.
Galahad shot to his feet. “Do you really believe you’re personally and completely responsible for everything in your file?”
Danyael raised his head and met Galahad’s gaze squarely. “You’ve seen what I can do to your emotions,” he said, his quiet, controlled voice standing out in contrast to the dangerous glitter of his black eyes. “Did you think that there’s no dark side to that?”
“That’s not the point,” Galahad retorted. “You didn’t ask for your genes. You didn’t ask to be a mutant. How can you be responsible for something you had no choice in…no control over? That’s not the way the world works.”
“You were raised in a lab. What the hell do you know about the way the world works?”
Galahad’s hands clenched into fists. His dark eyes flashed, glittering with fury fueled by twenty-five years of injustice. “That’s not the way the world should work. If I accepted your point of view, I’d have to hold myself personally and completely responsible for the years of isolation and misery I suffered at the lab. The scientists who ran experiments on me are not absolved of their responsibility just because I was born with the supposedly perfect genetic code. None of us had any say in the genes that were inserted, either naturally or by design, into our cells. But instead of treasuring the diversity, the superiority we bring to the gene pool, we’re treated like social pariahs, or worse, lab animals.”
It was not just anger and fury that arced like lightning through Galahad. It was resentment, dark and towering, a jagged spike that sliced through his composure like a blade through paper.
It caught Danyael off-guard. Galahad’s emotions seared through him, a blast of intense heat that scorched and burned and ignited mirroring emotions in him. Galahad’s empathic was Danyael’s first startled thought. Xin had cautioned as much based on a comparison of their genetic codes, but now he had evidence to support her suspicions. Galahad was not powerful enough to trigger the monitors that tracked the energy signatures of mutants, but he was easily on par with some of the most charismatic human leaders who inspired with and led by the sheer force of their personality.
Danyael quenched the backlash of Galahad’s emotions and then pushed to his feet. Controlled anger surged through his eyes. Black locked on black, both sets glittering. “The difference between your situation and mine, Galahad, is subtle but profound,” he said quietly. What happened to you at the lab was cruel, and it wasn’t your fault. What happened to me…that was my fault, because I didn’t control it.”
“You were a child.”
“Age doesn’t acquit me. I screwed them up. I unbalanced the emotions of perfectly normal, decent people to the point where they lashed out at me. Of course I’m responsible.”
Galahad shook his head. “And what about the adults? Aren’t they responsible too?”
Danyael chuckled, a bitter sound. “You really are an innocent. There is nothing special, nothing heart-rending about my story, because it’s as common as dirt. It’s been repeated for generations, across cultures. Every day, in millions of homes, children are abused, and probably not a single one of them is an alpha empath. Those children aren’t responsible. They don’t deserve it, but it happens anyway.”
“Why?”
It was another one of those questions for which he had no answers. He looked away, said nothing.
“Humans are cruel.”
The certainty in Galahad’s voice sent a fissure of alarm racing down Danyael’s spine. Danyael shook his head, the gesture a habitual denial of the truth. “We’re human too,” he said quietly and then turned and walked away. His fists were clenched, the subtlest physical betrayal of the excruciatingly tight bonds
he had wrapped around his heart to contain his emotions. He swallowed hard, struggling to pull together the threads of calmness and peace that hung in tattered shreds before him. I’m not ready, and I have no answers that make sense anymore.
~*~
Miriya followed Danyael’s energy signature to a Spanish-revival mansion presiding over three acres of prime real estate in McLean, Virginia. Her quick scan of the home and its residents offered little by way of psychic resistance, with the exception of Danyael himself. His psychic shields shimmered with the undercurrent of extraordinary power.
Her task was easy. Walk in, talk to Danyael, and either walk out with Danyael or cart him away in a body bag. The choice was his.
Following the low pulse of his energy around the side of the house, she strolled through the gardens, easily deterring the curious or the watchful with a carefully placed mental suggestion that she belonged there. As luck would have it, as she was walking along the far side of the swimming pool, the patio doors opened, and the low-frequency hum of Danyael’s energy signature shot up a few notches. Danyael himself.
Miriya crouched by the bushes as Danyael prowled the length of the patio beside the curved edges of the swimming pool. He was clearly disturbed, even distressed. She did not need any empathic or even telepathic skills to figure that out. Anyone with eyes would have noticed it from his restive motions; from the tension in his lean muscled frame; and from the way he clenched and unclenched his fists as he tried to work through his anxiety and stress.
Up close, the edges of his energy signature were jagged, though nothing slipped past his iron-clad control. She allowed herself an appreciative smile. His pale blond hair contrasted with his dark eyes; both highlighted his sculptured features. Danyael’s beauty was of the sort made for blood feuds, his profile so flawlessly perfect that it could have driven angels to tears of envy. He was also doing his damnedest to hide it. He probably did not make many friends with his ingeniously designed psychic shield that continuously emitted emotional cues to deflect interest away from him.
Miriya braced herself to make the initial contact with him, but froze when the patio door opened again and another man, inconceivably Danyael’s twin, stepped out. She gaped, stunned into inaction for several precious seconds, before probing the other man’s unshielded mind for answers.
A flurry of confused images pounded through her mind. Their voices united to scream one name, “Galahad.”
The destruction of Pioneer Labs and the disappearance of Galahad started the entire mess. Danyael was behind it all. There was no point in talking or even hoping that he would come in quietly, no point in giving away the advantage of surprise.
Alex Saunders’s words echoed in her mind: Take him down; do it fast.
Rallying her powers, she spiked an attack into Danyael’s mind to shatter his shields, and followed up with a blast that should have splintered his conscious mind into fragments.
Danyael screamed in anguish and reeled to one knee, clutching his head in both hands in agony, but his shields did not collapse. They did not even waver.
Damn it. She had taken out other alpha telepaths with the same attack. How could a mere empath withstand it?
Galahad raced forward. “Danyael!” he cried with alarm, leaning over Danyael, supporting him through the wracking shudders.
“Telepath…” Danyael’s warning was forced past clenched teeth.
Galahad tensed. He straightened, his dark eyes scanning the area. For a split second, his gaze darted past her before locking back on her. “Zara! Lucien!” His cry set off panicked alarm in the house.
Miriya tensed as Galahad sprinted toward her. No need for secrecy now. She pushed to her feet, prepared to send a psychic blast into Galahad’s mind, but froze. Fear so overpowering, so pungent she could smell it on her skin crawled through her, its icy claws sinking into her spine.
Some distant part of her mind, still rational, screamed at her that Danyael, who struggled to rise to his feet, was actually fighting back. He had latched on to the psychic trail left by her attack and followed it back to her mind. Miriya felt Danyael snaking insidiously past the psychic barriers that would otherwise have kept him out, before unleashing his own particular brand of hell.
Galahad reached her, but inexplicably, he grabbed her and in a smooth motion, pushed her toward Danyael, toward the house. She stumbled, falling beside Danyael as two people—a young man and a young woman—ran out of the house and raced past her to join Galahad. She looked past them and saw what Galahad had seen—six grotesque, vaguely humanoid forms loping rapidly across the lawn toward the house.
The escaped monsters from Pioneer Laboratories.
A strong hand closed around her wrist. Miriya jerked her gaze up. Danyael’s dark eyes were pools of pain. “Help me.” He broke off his attack on her emotions as swiftly and cleanly as he had launched it.
She sucked in a gasp of air as her emotions cleared, freeing her mind and body.
“Link us,” he said. “All of us.”
Miriya searched his face. Her mind touched his. Her eyes narrowed as she grasped the edges of his plan. “You’re crazy!”
“I have to try.” He forced the words through another hiss of barely suppressed agony. “Those creatures tore through an entire police force. They’ll tear through my friends unless I can keep them alive long enough to win the fight.”
His plan went against all of her better instincts, but Galahad and his companions were out of time. She closed her eyes. Like rippling tentacles, her powers surged out and latched onto the unshielded minds of Danyael’s three companions. She glanced over at him. His psychic shields dropped, permitting her entry. She reached into his mind, latched on, and met his gaze with new respect. It was an act of extreme courage, of stunning vulnerability. He had freely opened his mind to her, giving her full access to help his friends, even if it meant that she could easily destroy him.
We have found him…Brothers…Kill humans…kill humans.
Miriya shook her head, her blond hair swaying as she braced against the flurry of incoherent images and maddened thoughts coming from the creatures. Scarcely ten feet away, Galahad, Lucien, and Zara fought against the creatures that came at them from all sides. The three humans were power and grace personified, trained elegance and precision of the finest martial arts disciplines pitted against brute strength and inhuman speed. The odds were stacked against the humans, but unnatural calmness flowed from Danyael through Miriya to the humans, reinforcing their ability to face the creatures without fear.
A massive claw, stained with dried blood, raked across Lucien’s abdomen, tearing through skin and flesh, but he did not cry out. Next to her, Danyael tensed and shuddered. His secondary powers—his empathic healing ability—surged through her and into Lucien, absorbing both the pain and the effects of the injury, sealing Lucien’s wounds even before blood had a chance to spill.
Miriya’s mind reeled. Danyael did not just control emotions. He could heal with a psychic touch.
Awestruck, she stood at the heart of power, the central link between Danyael and his friends. His primary and secondary mutant abilities flowed effortlessly through her, reinforcing courage, whisking away pain and injury, offering healing and succor.
Danyael weakened.
Miriya lost track of how many near-death experiences he absorbed. She crouched protectively over him as he curled into a fetal ball, shaking so hard it seemed he might shatter. He could not even cry out each time one of his companions took the brunt of an attack that washed through the psychic chain directly into him. All his energy seemed focused on dragging another gasp of air into his lungs.
The other people in the house rallied and rushed outside. A young woman on the balcony braced a large handgun against the railing, took careful aim, and fired a single, precise shot.
One of the creatures roared in pain as the bullet slammed into its forehead. Breaking away from the core of the fighting around Galahad, Lucien, and Zara, it clawed through an ol
der man and then scaled the wall to reach the young woman. Someone in the house shrieked a warning.
Danyael pushed to his feet and lunged after the creature, grabbing its leg as it leapt for the balcony. Snarling and flailing, it lost both its balance and grip and fell to the ground.
Miriya cursed aloud as the creature collapsed on top of Danyael and clambered to its feet. Beneath it, Danyael stirred weakly and convulsed, coughing blood, as another brutal attack—this one sustained by Zara—surged through the psychic chain. He did not resist as the creature lifted him off the ground with no visible effort. Danyael’s head fell back; his eyes were closed. He was scarcely breathing.
The creature pulled a clawed appendage back and poised to rip through his flesh. Kill humans…kill humans.
Miriya blasted a psychic jolt with surgical precision into Danyael’s brain, straight into the primitive limbic system, into his subconscious where his innate instincts and innermost emotions resided. She screamed out a single, terse order: Fight!
Danyael gasped, shuddering back into full awareness. His eyes opened, and he stared into gaping jaws that dripped saliva and blood. He reached forward, grabbed onto the creature’s shoulder with one hand to brace himself, and drove the heel of his other hand into its temple. Danyael’s voice shouted into her mind. Shields up! Break the link!
Miriya tore her mind away from his and severed the psychic chain fractions of a second before Danyael’s shields yanked back up. His mind and emotions were once again fully protected behind exquisitely perfected barriers. He pulled the plug on the dam that kept his most destructive emotions walled away. Physical contact was all he needed to direct his pain, and he wielded it with deadly precision as he drove it into the creature.
The creature froze, its mouth open in mid-roar. The sound died in its throat. Its hands flexed, dropping Danyael to the ground. He scrambled away from it, but it scarcely noticed. It moved again, first slowly, as its mouth opened wider to release a heart-rending wail of misery. With increasing speed, it tore into itself. Bloodied nails raked furrows into its deformed face, clawing out its own eyes. The hands moved frantically across its own body as it ripped through its own chest cavity, all the time uttering a wrenching moan of desperate sorrow, the kind of sorrow that could end only in suicide. With inhuman strength, it used two hands to pull apart its ribs, breaking them, and then reached in to yank out its still-beating heart. It stared at the organ with an expression of pitiful relief, and then dropped to its knees before crumpling to the ground. The bloody, malformed heart rolled out of its hand to stop at Danyael’s feet.