by Jade Kerrion
He fought them with the ferocity of a trapped wildcat, surprising her with the taut strength in his body, but the outcome was inevitable. He was brutally beaten and then slammed facedown into the ground. His hands were pulled back, his wrists bound with electrical cuffs. She saw him wince, saw the flash of pain that surged through his eyes as the cuffs sent bursts of electrical pulses through his skin, stunning his nerve endings into numbness and incapacitating movement from his fingertips up to his shoulders.
They hauled him back to his feet. His dark eyes widened with alarm when one of the military personnel stepped forward, an electrical collar in his hand. Danyael struggled when the collar was locked around his neck, then he convulsed, doubling over in agony as the collar was activated. The first flash of electricity was always the worst, shocking mind and body into submission. Subsequent pulses, less intense but constant, kept mind and body docile, helpless to resist. The ability to speak was stolen; it was impossible to form words with the jolts of electricity directly piercing his throat.
Zara winced, biting down on her lower lip as an odd sense of pity warred against her instinctive dislike of him. Safely concealed among gawking crowds, she watched Roland Rakehell stride through the airport. Roland stared at Danyael, twisted his head sharply to the side, and scrutinized the almost invisible scar that marred the right side of Danyael’s face. “It’s just the fucking template,” he snapped.
She saw the exact moment when Roland crushed his younger son with five simple words. Danyael could not speak. He would have collapsed from exhaustion and from the constant surge of electricity through his body if the soldiers were not holding him up, but he did not need to speak. Danyael’s expressive dark eyes flooded with despair a fraction of a second before he dropped his gaze to the ground, trying to conceal his pain.
Roland looked at Lucien’s private jet, silver and glistening in the sunlight. “It might as well be good for something.” He glanced over his shoulder at a thin man dressed in military fatigues. “Wipe his memory as we discussed and put him on the plane back to New York.”
“Here, sir?” The man looked around the public airport with an expression of consternation. “That’s not a good idea, sir. He’s an alpha empath, and I’ll need to get through his shields to shatter his memories. An alpha empath without shields is just…not a good idea. The containment vehicle is right outside. It’ll be safer to do it there; his powers will be contained while we—”
“Do it right here, right now,” Roland ordered, his eyes narrowing. “Humiliate him in public. He was going to embarrass me. This is nothing less than he deserves.”
The man swallowed nervously and then nodded toward the soldiers. “Hold him down.” He squatted on the tarmac and looked down into Danyael’s dark eyes. “I’m Tim Brown. I need to take two days of your memories,” he said quietly, with an odd sort of compassion in his voice. “To be precise, I don’t erase them. I shatter them in a way that no longer allows you to make any sense of them. You may recall fragments in dreams or flashbacks, but those would be the exception rather than the norm. I’m very good at what I do, and the memory fragments will be so small as to be largely passed over by both your conscious and unconscious mind.”
Danyael shook his head. Even at that distance, Zara could see the growing terror in his eyes.
“It’ll be all right,” Tim promised, his voice soft. “You have to drop your shields, let me in. And you’ll have to control your own emotions, or everyone else will be affected by what you feel. Come on,” he urged. “Drop them, or I’ll have to force my way through. The outcome is inevitable in any case. Save your strength for the aftermath because you’ll need it.”
Tim was briefly silent as he waited in vain for Danyael to comply, and then with genuine regret in his brown eyes, he looked over his shoulder at the lieutenant holding the controls for the electrical collar. If Danyael was not going to lower his shields voluntarily, then the only way to break through was to subject him to excruciating pain, and use the physical distraction—though the term was inadequate in view of the kind of pain that would entail—to smash through his shields. “Punch it,” he ordered. The lieutenant obeyed without question, flicking a switch that sent intense currents of electricity surging through Danyael’s body.
Danyael jerked violently as his dark eyes flashed open wide, unseeing. A silent scream tore from his throat. This was the only opportunity Tim would ever have. The alpha telepath inhaled deeply and spiked his power like a lance straight into Danyael’s mind, plowing through his psychic shields.
Zara knew Danyael’s screams were silenced, but she did not need to hear his screams to know that he was in extreme agony. His body arched and writhed in pain as his head tossed from side to side. She watched transfixed and admired the slender line of his throat as he threw his head back, struggling to breathe. She smiled as Danyael’s dark eyes glistened; shimmering and sparkling with unshed tears.
She was caught completely off guard by the jolt of lust that clawed at her gut. Danyael?
The mood of the crowd transformed.
Struggling to maintain her shaky grip on her emotions, she looked around. The eyes of the people around gleamed viciously as they closed in on Danyael, drawn as she was to his pain. Enjoying it. Loving it. Wanting more. He was so beautiful, so fragile, stunningly exquisite in his sheer vulnerability. She wanted—they wanted—to hear him scream, wanted to make him cry. Good God. She breathed, trying to cling on to the fact that she knew she hated him, that she did not want to be around him. The man standing next to her was actually sweating, breathing heavily as he reached down to adjust and massage his crotch. What is happening to me? To all of us?
What the hell is happening to Danyael?
The first spike of raw power, unforgiving in its brutality, would have bludgeoned Danyael to his knees had he been standing. His unshielded mind and the memories they protected crumbled before the assault as Tim’s powers tore like lion’s claws through fallen prey. Only Tim heard Danyael’s anguished silent screams and sensed the terror and panic that Danyael kept clamped under control as his memories were shattered and crushed beneath the staggering force of Tim’s mind.
He could only endure, watching helplessly as his memories were stripped from him, as the void in front of him grew dark and monstrous, threatening to engulf his sanity.
Far worse were the emotions that bombarded him from the outside, lust so potent it bordered on insanity. Without psychic shields, his unchecked empathic powers were once again driving people around him insane. The terrified memories of his childhood rose up, engulfed him. No…Please, I can’t go through this again. I can’t.
It’s okay, Danyael, Tim soothed. A memory flashed through their linked minds. A ten-year-old child sobbed in panic and terror, his beaten body throbbing in pain as he was violently assaulted by a gang of teenagers. Tim flinched, gritting his teeth against Danyael’s memories. It’s okay. I’ll protect you. I won’t let them hurt you. Relax…you’re making this harder than it has to be.
Danyael bit back a silent sob, shuddered under Tim’s touch.
We’re almost there, Danyael. We’re almost there. He glanced over his shoulder. The crowd was on the verge of turning into a mob, driven mad, compelled into insanity by the pain and suffering of an alpha empath. “Form around me,” he ordered his team of ten men, grateful that as humans assigned to support the Mutant Assault Group, their minds were protected and they were not susceptible to the tidal wave of Danyael’s unshielded emotions. “I want a fifteen-foot perimeter. Anyone breaks through that, you cripple them. If they keep moving forward, you shoot to kill.”
“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant confirmed and formed his team around Tim and Danyael. The sight of machine guns, braced against shoulders, dashed cold water against the rising heat of the crowd. The minutes ticked by and the crowd jostled restlessly, craning for a glimpse of Danyael through the wall of military fatigues. Finally, one man, his eyes gleaming with the madness of frustrated lust, surged forward
.
Tim jolted, shocked by the sharp retort of a gun. A man screamed. Seconds later, the gun fired again, and then there was silence. The telepath grimaced. So stupid and unnecessary. If Roland Rakehell had allowed him to wipe Danyael’s memories in a private room, all the insanity could have been avoided. Nothing good came out of humans interfering in mutant affairs. The humans knew nothing, and worse, cared for nothing. Driven by greed and fear, they clung desperately to the fragments of authority still available to them, even though it was clear that their time for leadership was long past.
Tim scanned Danyael’s memories before crushing them. He finally understood Roland’s insistence on destroying Danyael’s—his son’s—memories. Roland was driven by selfish ambition that cared nothing for the lives trampled underfoot. He was a human embarrassed and ashamed of a mutant son, a human who regarded mutants as rubbish to be discarded when they no longer served a purpose.
Tim checked his surging anger, unwilling to add to Danyael’s suffering. Danyael had endured enough. He had endured too much. The alpha empath was today’s sacrifice to human paranoia. There would be others tomorrow, more the day after, and it would never end, unless the mutants rose to claim the world according to the same rules that the humans had once used to stake their claim. Survival of the fittest.
General Kieran Howard was right. Tim’s jaw set in tense lines. It was long past time for mutant ascendancy, and it would begin with the Mutant Assault Group.
~*~
Done. It had taken longer than he had expected—a little more than an hour, far too long for anyone to have to endure that kind of pain because of a human’s selfish whim. I’m sorry, Danyael. Tim sat back, his expression weary, removed the electrical handcuffs and collar, and helped Danyael rise to a sitting position. “My name is Tim Brown,” he reintroduced himself. “I’m with the Mutant Assault Group. You’ve lost two days of your memories.”
Danyael reached up with a trembling hand to cover his eyes and touched his face, checking for tears. Relief passed over the beautiful features when his hand came away dry. Racking his mind, he searched for memories that had been left behind. He recalled—still cringed from—the memory of the live blood transfusion in the plane. He recalled the surprise of seeing Phillip Evans waiting by the car when he exited the plane, of learning that Lucien had sent for him.
After that, nothing, just a terrifying emptiness that taunted him with a barrage of crippling, destructive emotions, emotions for which he had no context, no memories.
Panic surged, but his training clamped down on the nameless terror. Voices from his past ingrained in his subconscious took over: Control. Your only choice in any circumstance is control. You’re an alpha empath. For your own sake, you don’t have the luxury of any other choice.
He yanked his external shields back up, suffocating under the weight of emotions he did not understand. Emotions clawed at him like living things, trying to tear their way out of him. Self-hatred, so potent, so bitter that he could almost taste it on his tongue, ripped and shredded the little that he still recognized as himself. He stared down at his hands as they clenched and unclenched involuntarily, the subtlest physical betrayal of devastating emotional turmoil.
“Is it complete?” an older man, not dressed in uniform, asked.
Danyael glanced at him and recoiled, stunned by the extremity of the emotions emanating from him. The disgust, the hate; he searched the man’s face, struggling, grasping for a memory that was no longer there. Nothing. He lowered his gaze, unable to meet the scathing dark gaze that raked him, left him feeling exposed and vulnerable. You know me. Who are you? His mind pleaded for answers, but nothing passed his lips.
Tim nodded, his expression distracted as he searched Danyael’s mind. “It’s done.”
A smile of satisfaction passed over the man’s face. “Good. Get him out of my sight.” His lip curled as if the sight of Danyael disgusted him. “Put him on the plane and send him back to New York.”
There was no point in fighting them, not when he no longer knew what he was fighting for, or against; not when he had bigger—far bigger—battles to fight.
The emotional maelstrom twisting through him demanded all his attention, all his strength, to keep under control, to keep from spilling past his exhausted psychic shields. He did not resist when the soldiers dragged him to his feet and hauled him over to the plane. He listened as the pilots were ordered to deposit him in New York City. Home, he recalled vaguely.
The plane doors closed and the engines purred as the small, sleek passenger jet accelerated for takeoff. He stared at his misshapen left hand as he massaged it. It ached. It always hurt, some days worse than others. That day, it was excruciating, sharp shards of pain shooting up and down his wrist. There was nothing he could do about it, nothing he could ever do about his own pain.
He inhaled unsteadily and raised his gaze to stare out the window. His dark eyes were inscrutable, distant with ancient pain.
The tears remained locked in his heart.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Lucien hung up the cell phone. “They got him,”
Xin twisted around in the chair to look at him. “Who? Danyael?”
Lucien stood by the bay windows in his study, gazing out at the lush landscaping. His employees were hard at work both in and outside the house, repairing the damage caused by the pro-humanists and preparing for the Christmas Eve party, which would start in two hours. He saw none of the activity, even though it swirled all around him. Lucien swallowed hard through the tight, crushing feeling in his chest, somewhere in the vicinity of his heart. “It appears that his father and the military caught up with him at the airport. They wiped his memory, put him on my plane, and told the pilots to take him back to New York.”
“And Miriya?”
“No sign of her, nor of Zara or Galahad. Did you try to call Zara?”
“She’s not picking up, but she switched her signal.”
“Signal?” Lucien turned to look at her.
“It’s something she’d worked out with her employees to let us know when she was on a case and wasn’t taking calls. She’s probably trying to keep her cell from being traced. What are you going to do?”
“Call Alex, let him know Danyael is back in New York, and then I’ll fly out to New York as soon as I can—probably tomorrow morning. I need to see him, make sure he’s all right.”
“It’s Christmas tomorrow.”
“All the more important for Danyael not to spend it alone,” Lucien retorted.
Xin dropped her gaze at the implicit rebuke.
Lucien checked his temper. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be taking it out on you.” He raked his fingers through his dark hair. “There are problems money can’t solve, and it galls me to admit it. Unfortunately, most of Danyael’s problems fall into that category.”
“You can’t solve the world’s problems, Lucien.”
“I’m not trying to solve the world’s problems. Just one friend’s, and my success rate has been highly questionable as of late.”
“You care a great deal for him.”
Lucien shook his head, a faint frown on his lips. “The real problem is that no one else cares enough for him. His damn psychic shield repels people; if he got run over by a car, no one would stop to help him. He goes through life expecting to be treated like crap, or at the very best ignored, gets what he expects, and then we all wonder why he’s so screwed up.”
“I don’t think he’s screwed up.”
“Zara does.”
“Why do you care what Zara thinks of him?”
The question made him pause, hesitate. “I don’t know,” he admitted finally. “Maybe because it bothers me to see how he tenses every time they’re in the room together. She hates him, and she doesn’t even have to say a single word to hurt him.”
“As a mutant, he’s probably used to that.”
“Which doesn’t make it right,” Lucien countered with a wry half smile. He glanced at the flat-screen te
levision mounted on the far wall of his study. A male reporter standing in front of the White House recapped the highlights of the president’s short speech, which included an affirmation that the riots had ended. Order and peace had been restored to the city. People were encouraged to go about their lives as usual.
There was absolutely no mention of the mutants or the enforcers from the council who had made it all possible.
It seemed as if America was determined to use mutants when necessary, but deny them the credit and any acknowledgment of their efforts. No wonder Danyael kept such a low profile, trying to conceal from as many people as possible the fact that he was a mutant. Humans bristled with intolerance for the derivatives, for those who were most like them, the clones and in vitros. In that world, there was no room for mutants whose capabilities set them above the humans.
There was certainly no room for Galahad.
“Will Zara be all right?” Lucien asked.
“She’s resourceful, and she’ll get word to me if she wants me to find her. As soon as I hear anything at all, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Good. Danyael’s my priority, but I’m not going to lose sight of Galahad. I couldn’t protect Danyael.” His smile was bitter. “Let’s see if I can do a better job with Galahad.”
“The responsibility isn’t yours to bear alone.”
“No one else seems interested in the job description.”
She smiled faintly. “I’ll help.”
“Won’t that get you in trouble? As far as we know, the government wants both of them.”
“I wasn’t planning on telling them that I’m helping.” She shrugged, chuckling softly. “What I do in my free time is my business, even if it is with government resources, and I can cover my tracks.”
Lucien eased into a faint smile, the first real smile he had enjoyed in hours. He looked away briefly and then back again at Xin, meeting her gaze. His smile transformed into a grin, became hopeful. “You’re staying for the party, aren’t you?”