Blood of Jackals

by Todd Marcelas Moreno

  “Ransom may be the wrong word.” Tenatte’s perfect teeth glistened as he smiled. “If you were my son, and you pissed me off, I would pay to get you back.”

  “I know other secrets of the True Church,” Valmont offered instead.

  “You mean like whether the approved way of scratching yourself while in the middle of a yawning ritual is with your left hand or your right?”

  “Financial matters. Business interests.”

  “We’re covered in that regard as well,” Tenatte said airily, seeking out another morsel from the tray. “Save for one area.”

  “Yes?” Valmont asked, forced to break the silence.

  “The rebels,” Tenatte rumbled, selecting a peeled, hard-boiled egg.

  “I cannot—”

  “Oh, we know your father has a firm grip over their finances.” Tenatte caged the egg with his hand, holding it palm-up as he repeatedly squeezed it pointedly. “But we can help alleviate some of the pain any... realignment would entail.”

  Valmont curbed his own smile. Tenatte did not intend to kill him. Yet. “What would you have me offer to the Assembly?” the rebel leader asked.

  “Their freedom,” Tenatte replied, savagely biting into the egg.

  Valmont gasped, but did not look away. He knew what he had to do for his reprieve to be more lasting. “And just what would you offer me?” he asked.

  Tenatte’s glittering metallic eyes turned to his. Valmont could almost hear the inner aperture mechanism move as the lenses slowly refocused. Aware that he would lose any staring contest, Valmont casually reached for a peach, bit into it, and returned Tenatte’s gaze.

  The Consortium representative laughed, though the edges of the sound had an odd resonance. “How about your father’s head?” he asked finally.

  “Agreed.” Valmont hid his relief by finishing his peach.

  - - -

  “Elder!” called one of the NDBs hiding with Steuben. “Some soldier is trying to contact us. He says he knows we’re down here.”

  “Let me hear his message,” the Colonel ordered, rising from his seat and walking toward the viewscreen.

  “Attention, New Dawn Believers,” said the soldier, his uniform dirty and face haggard. “We know your position. Surrender now, and you will not be harmed.”

  “How did they find out we were here?” a woman asked behind Steuben. “The sanctuary is supposed to be shielded.”

  “The boy,” Charid shouted, standing awkwardly with his broken arm in a sling. “He sent out a signal alerting them to us.” A clamor arose as others openly wondered what to do.

  “Silence,” Steuben commanded, cutting the air with his hand. “We will do nothing. Let their hails go unanswered. They could be simply testing to see if anyone is down here.”

  “Another message is coming in, Elder.”

  “Attention, New Dawn Believers,” the same soldier continued. “Someone among you is trained in the Mental Disciplines. We sensed his call. Give him to us, and we will leave you in peace. Otherwise, we will enter your sanctuary by force. You have two minutes to answer.”

  “I told you he was dangerous,” Charid said.

  Steuben turned to face the troublesome NDB, noting with satisfaction the swelling from the bruise he had given him.

  “Give them the boy,” Charid urged. Several people echoed his suggestion.

  The Colonel waited a moment, knowing that the soldiers were not looking for a mere child. They were looking for a named traitor.

  “You expect me to cast out a young boy?” Steuben asked, his face a mix of horror and disgust. “Sacrifice one of our own? You know how the soldiers will treat him. I can sense it. They intend to kill whomever it is they seek.”

  “But you don’t know he’s one of us,” Charid replied, staggering toward him. “Just as I don’t know you’re one of us.”

  Steuben was about to step forward when he felt a tug on his arm. As the Colonel looked down, Jayson shook his head. Steuben regarded him a moment before taking a calming deep breath and nodding to him.

  “My decision stands,” the Colonel intoned. “We will not sell our blood, even to save ourselves. The soldiers will not be answered.”

  Steuben barely reached his chair as the soldiers gave their own answer. From high above them, through the shelter’s ceiling of solid rock, the dulled sound of lasfire striking the sanctuary’s outer shield echoed ominously. Everyone in the sanctuary froze, even the Colonel.

  “That is only the first shield,” Steuben said aloud, not bothering to turn around to face his audience. “There are several others which are far more powerful, being harder to penetrate the deeper they are.” The Colonel turned his head halfway around. “Have faith in your brethren who designed and built this sanctuary.” With that Steuben continued forward to sit down by himself in silence, secretly hoping not to be proven wrong.

  - - -

  As much as Derrick believed that his captors were making progress in removing the mental bar which blocked his memory, he wished there was some way he could know how much was left to go. He simply had no concept regarding the expanse of his own memory, and no reference points with which to take any meaningful measurements.

  If Alfren knew how much longer it would take, he was keeping quiet. And so long as progress was being made, Yeskin seemed content to let it run its course. But what would happen when they did reach the end? Would memories flood back to him, as he had been told? Or would some final trap set by the woman who did this to him kill him, as he feared?

  Derrick sighed. “What was your last subject’s name, Yeskin?” he asked, deciding to start on the lump of a man studying his data with Alfren still in the room. “I mean, Doctor Yeskin?”

  Yeskin gave Alfren a quick look. “It’s not important,” he said.

  “She was unimportant?” Derrick pressed. While Yeskin had previously let it slip that his last victim had been a girl, he had yet to reveal her name.

  “No—” Yeskin began. Alfren stopped tending the equipment.

  “So, she was just like any other subject,” Derrick interrupted.

  “No, she was...” Yeskin could not finish. Whatever guilt the man was feeling, Derrick desperately hoped that he could use it to his advantage. In the meantime, he needed help.

  “What was her name, Alfren?” Derrick asked.

  “Wren,” Alfren answered, not having moved.

  “Shut up, Alfren!” Yeskin ordered.

  “Wren,” Derrick repeated, imagining a bird caged by an evil tormentor. Or a crazy one.

  “Shut up, shut up,” Yeskin said, once again rushing from the room. Yeskin stopped at the door. “Come on, Alfren.”

  “I’m not done,” Alfren protested, motioning toward the machinery.

  “Get over here.”

  Alfren gave Derrick a sad look before obeying, all but admitting that the psychological wedge he was trying to use on Yeskin in his bid for freedom was a wedge to use on Alfren as well.

  - - -

  XXII

  Dorian was sitting in total darkness when his sister Agnetha returned to her room at the Palace. Her breath caught as he activated the lights.

  “Dorie!” she said, pulling her evening cloak tight around her. It was too late of course. Dorian had already seen her revealing gown. “How did you—?”

  “Where were you, Agnetha?” he asked, still seated in his chair. “The Chamberlain’s daughter returned home hours ago.”

  “I was... I was out.” She held her chin high.

  “That gown,” said Dorian. “Is it one of hers? Are you really so impressed by these people that you need to act and dress like them?”

  “My days of laces and bows are over, Dorie. I’m no longer a child.”

  “And what do you think the men you meet see when they look at you?”

  Agnetha frowned. “Who’s to say what others think of them? But I know what most men look at when they first see me. In fact, I use it to my advantage.”

  “Congratulations. You can manipu
late men with unspoken promises you don’t intend to keep. You’ve the makings of a good courtesan.”

  “As I recall, at my age, you passed yourself about quite freely.”

  “So you at least come at a high price then, right? Mother will be so proud.”

  “Yes,” Agnetha replied, no longer willing to be baited, “especially when she hears who I dined with this evening.”

  “And does he have money or celebrity?”

  “Both. Along with position. It was Lord Jordan.”

  Dorian blanched. “No,” he whispered.

  “Yes. And despite what you say about him, he is quite the gentleman.”

  “Agnetha, do you know what that man has done?”

  “Rescued the government from collapse?”

  “He’s the one behind Lord Derrick’s abduction,” he projected.

  “Ha!” she replied, unconcerned over their privacy. “Next you’ll say he had a hand in the deaths of Lord Guishaun’s father and brother.”

  “No.” Dorian’s gaze fell. “He wasn’t involved there.”

  “Look, I know all about this ‘crown contest’ Guishaun has with Lord Jordan.”

  “Is that all it is?” breathed Dorian.

  “Everyone talks about it. Oh, and you might tell Guishaun to tone down the ‘March to Sainthood’ act. He’s obviously just campaigning to be made grandee.”

  “You stupid little girl,” Dorian hissed, flying from his chair. “Don’t you understand? Guishaun is fighting for his life.”

  Agnetha backed away before again holding her ground. “Yeah,” she replied, “his life in unabashed luxury. That would work for you too, wouldn’t it, Dorie?”

  Dorian wanted to weep. “Agnetha,” he said, feeling his stomach tighten and drop away. There would be no convincing her. “Promise me something.”

  “Shall it be another unspoken promise of my silence?” she asked flippantly.

  “Dammit Agnetha, I mean it.” His voice cracked as tears began to flow. At last he had his sister’s attention. “For mother’s sake at least. Promise me. If anything should happen to me, anything, promise you will flee from this place.”

  “Happen to you? What could possibly—?”

  “Please,” Dorian reached out as he fell to one knee, grabbing his sister’s hand in his own. Leaning forward, he put his cheek against it and closed his eyes.

  Stunned, Agnetha instinctively put her other hand on his head, letting her fingers pass through his hair as he sobbed. Finally, she lifted her brother’s chin to look upon his face. There was no deception there. “I promise,” she replied, realizing that despite her earlier indignation, she was suddenly afraid.

  - - -

  Their session again over for the day, Derrick watched as Alfren left to tend something in another room and Yeskin reviewed his data. It was time again to take a hammer to his wedge. “Doctor Yeskin,” he began, seeing Yeskin’s hackles rise. He did not want to talk. “You do know that I want to live, right?”

  Yeskin breathed deeply. “Yes. And I’m sorry. But you’re not the first participant in this study, and won’t be the last. My work is important.”

  “So, what else did you tell the others when they begged you for their life? When they pleaded for you to let them go?”

  “That their sacrifice was for the greater good,” Yeskin answered distantly.

  “And did you tell that to Wren before you killed her?”

  Yeskin whipped his head around and stared at Derrick. “I didn’t kill her! She just...” he searched painfully for the words as tears formed in his eyes. “She just gave up. Stopped trying.”

  “Why did you not stop? Why did you push her that far?”

  “The work...”

  “You tested her and her psychic power to failure. You killed Wren for the sake of your never-ending study, and you didn’t even care!”

  “I cared!” Yeskin roared. “Wren. Sweet, pretty Wren. Shut up!”

  Alfren rushed through the open doorway. “I heard yelling.”

  “Why did you kill Wren, Yeskin?” Derrick asked.

  “I didn’t kill her.”

  “But who besides Alfren haven’t you killed?”

  “I was going to make her my assistant,” Yeskin insisted.

  “But you killed her anyway.”

  “She... she... it was an accident. She let her shields fall.”

  “After how long?” Derrick pressed. “How long did you make her fight for her life until she was too tired to defend herself?”

  “Shut up! It was an accident. I had to do it for my study.”

  “If she was to be your assistant, you would not have risked using her for your study. Why was she not going to be your assistant?”

  “I wanted Wren to be my assistant.”

  “Then why did you kill her?”

  “I didn’t mean to. I loved her!”

  “But she did not love you,” Derrick said flatly.

  “You don’t know that! You don’t know anything!”

  “She did not want to be your assistant either. So, despite her crying and begging, you pushed her beyond her limits, and killed her.”

  “No. It wasn’t like that.” Yeskin looked at Alfren staring at him with his mouth open. “Stop looking at me like that!” he demanded.

  “Wren,” Alfren whispered.

  “Don’t listen to him,” Yeskin snapped. “He’s lying. I’ll fix him though. Let’s get this bar off him. That’ll show him.”

  When Alfren did not move, Yeskin pulsed his implant. Alfren flinched, but still stood silently. “Take your chair, Alfren,” Yeskin whispered. “Or you’ll sit in his place.” Slowly Alfren turned his eyes to meet Yeskin’s. What the other man saw there brought a shiver. “Sit,” Yeskin commanded, determined to maintain his authority. “Now.”

  Alfren lowered his eyes, nodded and complied.

  Yeskin turned back to Derrick. “Time to stop nibbling at the edges.”

  “But Yeskin,” Alfren said, “there’s a whole area I haven’t started on yet.”

  “Whoever put that bar on him would expect someone to work around the edges. Now we are going straight to the heart.”

  Derrick’s own heart fell to the floor. “No, Alfren,” he pleaded. “Please!”

  “Listen to me, Alfren,” Yeskin said. “I don’t care how you get there, but go to the center of the bar and destroy it. Now.”

  Having no choice, Alfren breathed deeply and slowly exhaled. Projecting his awareness forward, he approached Derrick’s own. From his earlier work, he knew where the bar was, and how to sense it in its entirety. To him, it was like a great smoky spider that extended across Derrick’s mind. This was a representation, of course, but it gave Alfren an image with which to work while attacking it.

  Alfren spun the image of the bar around in his mind, examining the fissures and areas where Derrick’s awareness was slowly breaking through. He also looked at the area he had not worked on, sensing a change in it from when he first saw it. Alfren had avoided this area because others appeared to be easier to chip away at. But if this were the true heart of the bar...

  Yeskin renewed his menacing, but it did not matter. His target fixed, Alfren shot his psychic energy forth, imagining it like a lascannon, as he sought to penetrate the bar to its core. Derrick’s body went taut, giving Yeskin his only physical clue that Alfren had commenced his assault. Yeskin turned to his console to check Derrick’s vital signs. They were all dangerously elevated. At this, Yeskin only smiled.

  As Alfren continued to assail the bar, he began to feel vague warnings and a growing sense of dread. He could not tell if these were his own true feelings, or psychic phantoms worked into the bar as a defense mechanism. Either way, his only choice was to ignore them, knowing that Yeskin’s threat was certainly real.

  Committed to a set course, Alfren had no reason to step back and review his progress, or to consider a new area to work on. All he had to do was concentrate, but in that, there were still limits as to how far he could
go. Curious, Yeskin glanced over to the readings on Alfren. Although the separation of his awareness from his body probably made Alfren unaware of it, his assault was beginning to put as much stress on his body as on Derrick’s. Yeskin did not intervene however. Alfren could recover later, after the bar was down.

  Alfren breached the outer layer of the bar before he could stop his onslaught of psychic energy. A sense of urgency gripped him as his mind beheld the bar’s inner architecture. For a moment, he perceived its complexity in its entirety, like a multi-axised web of forbidding beauty. Something inside him told Alfren that he should withdraw. Like the earlier warnings, Alfren ignored this one as well, though he perceived that energy was gathering at the center of the bar’s ethereal web. Transfixed, he waited as the energy grew in strength.

  Yeskin studied Derrick’s vital signs as the bar disintegrated, unmindful of Alfren watching him. Raising his finger and pointing to Yeskin’s back, Alfren reached out to Derrick with his other forefinger, and with his thoughts, touched the power welling in Derrick’s mind.

  The bolt of psychic energy hit Yeskin like a physical blow that knocked him from his chair and against the wall. Although he had only been a conduit, Alfren was blown back and lay splayed across the floor, twitching as stray electrical currents traversed his body.

  Derrick lay still, his eyes open and unfocused.

  Yeskin was the first to regain consciousness. Staggering as he rose to his feet, he glanced at the blackened computer console where he had been sitting. He needed no diagnostic to know that it had overloaded and burnt out. He turned to Derrick, pale and unmoving in his chair, and detected neither breathing nor a heartbeat. Unable to be certain without functioning monitoring equipment, Yeskin left to find a portable scanner.

  Alfren woke to see Yeskin standing over Derrick. His eyes narrowed as he remembered what had happened. “You left me on the floor, Yeskin?”

  Yeskin did not look up. “You’re fine, right? He’s not. Now, come here. I need you to go into his mind.”

  “He’s alive?” Alfren asked, standing, and looking about for a weapon.

  “Yes, but his life signs are weak. I want you to see if he has brain activity.”