***
2200 hours came much quicker than Rosalie anticipated, but she wasn’t really nervous. She was the least experienced of the Seekers, and was expecting that she would be going as a reserve. So it was with a sanguine air that she joined the others in the front hall, waiting to hear her assigned vehicle. The Soldiers were all wearing black jumpsuits and loaded for bear on their weapons of choice: metal sticks, knives, throwing stars and even a couple of nanchucks. The Seekers were all told to wear dark clothing as well.
They were going in five vehicles, nicely anonymous sedans that would go by various routes towards a patch of woods 20 miles from the target. Under ordinary circumstances, a Seeker’s ability to detect danger became ineffective beyond 20 miles. But as a precaution, each vehicle was assigned a Seeker who would cast an interference shield that would make them hard to pinpoint.
Rosalie found herself riding with four young Soldiers who were much more relaxed than the older, more experienced ones. They were speculating on who they were after and where they were going, and Rosalie got caught up in their excitement. It was with difficulty that she maintained the shield, but she managed.
When they got to the rendezvous, they were the first ones there. They made idle conversation while they waited, and Rosalie amused herself by hopping from mind to mind, inserting an improbable word here and there and waiting for them to pop out of her companions’ speech.
“And this guy thought he could get lucky on the first date,” a dainty looking girl of about 19 was saying, rolling her eyes. “Just because he used to be the captain of the hopscotch team, he thought I was—“
“Captain of the what team?” one of them interrupted.
“Hopscotch,” the girl repeated, sounding puzzled. “I meant football. Rosalie!”
Rosalie giggled, just as the other teams started to arrive. In fifteen minutes, the whole house team had arrived and the leaders were conferring in low tones. After about another five minutes, two other cars arrived and another ten people came out. Rosalie recognized one as a well-known rock star, looking strangely anonymous in his black suit. He strode forward and was brought up-to-date with the tentative plans for attack. He took over smoothly, unfurling a detailed floor plan of the target building.
Justin sidled up to Rosalie, who was watching them closely. “Spying?”
She didn’t look around. “Just star struck. First Barbara, now him.”
“Yeah, lots of well-known personalities are from our neck of the woods,” he said, and an odd tone in his voice made her curious. She made a delicate foray into his thoughts, but saw nothing but the images of some celebrities, including several mayors, industry leaders, even a senator. She didn’t go any deeper out of courtesy, but she had an uneasy feeling that Justin was hiding something, particularly from her. She itched to uncover it, but decided it wasn’t the time or place. She went back to her scrutiny of the Soldiers, who were now conferring with Barbara and the older Seekers.
They seemed to have agreed on a plan and went to their various groups to debrief them. Justin rejoined his team as Barbara walked up to Rosalie.
“You and your group will be waiting just outside the house, but we’ll keep in constant communication,” Barbara said, her normally cheerful face solemn. “Your mission is to provide backup when and if it is needed. When I give the signal, come into the house and make your way to me any way you can. Rosalie, you will stay in the rear, feeding your Soldiers with the information they need to execute their mission.”
They all nodded, no lightheartedness in their faces now. They were young, but they were highly trained, and Rosalie felt some unease that they would be depending on her to steer them in the right direction and warn them about impending danger.
They had practiced multiple mind linking at the house, and Rosalie found it easy. In fact, Rosalie found everything about being a Seeker easy to master. It had delighted Barbara, and made her feel great. But Meg had seem worried about her, and she wasn’t sure why.
Rosalie quickly tested the links with the other four people in her group as they drove up to the house, stopping just outside the house grounds, about a quarter of a mile up a wooded slope. The moonlight filtering through the leafy canopy was weak, but it more than enough to see clearly with their enhanced eyesight. It was an easy run for the vampires, soundlessly making their way to the sleeping house on the top of the hill like ghosts, the Seekers throwing a cloak of interference over their respective groups. Rosalie’s group, as did two other groups, stopped at the edge of the woods where the house was clearly silhouetted. It was a sprawling, modern edifice surrounded by a ten-foot stone wall. They watched the others scale the outer wall at various points and disappear into the grounds.
Rosalie kept her focus on keeping Barbara within mental reach. She saw the moonlit grounds they were running across through Barbara’s eyes. Suddenly, lights snapped on all over the grounds, flooding the whole place with daylight brightness. Motion sensors. The invading groups were momentarily frozen in place, and then the house security erupted from the house and from hidden areas in the back.
Rosalie saw with horror that the defending forces were toting guns, but she detected no corresponding alarm in Barbara, and quickly saw why. The Soldiers moved fast, and while isolated shots were fired, they easily evaded them, and the defending forces quickly divested themselves of the heavy hardware. Only close combat would be effective with such people, and both sides knew it.
The battle was furious, and too fast for the eye to see. Both sides were superbly trained, but while the invading force was large, the defenders outnumbered them two to one. At first it seemed the invading Solders would come to grief, but the Seekers proved their value as the tide slowly turned in favor of the invaders. An opening occurred and Barbara’s group, which included Brandon, charged the front door and quickly made their way to the top floor, where Barbara’s probing pinpointed as the location of their target.
“Come now, Rosalie!”
Rosalie was startled at Barbara’s sharply delivered mental command, and for a moment she could only stand there.
“NOW!”
Rosalie was galvanized into action, sharply calling her Soldiers to follow her. They easily outran her, forming a flank as she made her way to where Barbara was.
The house was dark, in sharp contrast with the brightly-lit grounds. Rosalie was vaguely aware that Justin had joined her group, but her main focus was on getting to Barbara. Her connection with Barbara had been continuous, but all of a sudden it was cut-off as they entered the foyer. Disoriented by the loss, she cast about wildly, while her Soldiers formed a ring around her. Two defending Soldiers leaped down the staircase, and her Soldiers engaged them as she tried to pinpoint Barbara. Nothing. She tried to locate Brandon. Still nothing.
In desperation, she leaped to a higher plane and zeroed in to where her mind told her there was a large concentration of people. From her higher viewpoint, she saw Barbara through a slight haze, standing motionless in the middle of a large, dark room illuminated by wall sconces. She saw that Barbara’s eyes had rolled up in their sockets, showing only white, and her face was contorted in desperate concentration. Brandon and the other Soldiers were likewise motionless, facing a trio of women, the apex that of a woman who was strangely familiar.
It was the woman in Rosalie’s dream.
She gasped, and rapidly came back down, charging the staircase, followed closely by Justin and two of the Soldiers. She burst into the room and sent out a blue-white streak at the woman in her dream. The streak ripped through an invisible barrier, which sparkled as it collapsed, and hit the woman, knocking her back. The two women flanking her were startled and stepped back. Barbara collapsed just as Brandon, as if released from a tight grip, rushed forward. He caught her before she hit the floor.
Rosalie turned her attention to the other two Seekers, quickly wrapping their minds in the equivalent of a block of solid ice, and they promptly crumpled as well. It would keep them out of commission fo
r just a few minutes, but Rosalie needed to bring all her attention to the woman in the middle, who was already on her feet.
Rosalie threw up her mind’s defenses, and just in time. Her head rocked as she felt a mental assault akin to a battering ram, and she hunkered down grimly, throwing a shield around the people closest to her. She was receiving the equivalent of a bombardment, but no one could keep it up for long. She waited for the smallest pause to send her own ordnance.
She saw her opening, and she shot out to grapple the woman’s mind. She encountered a block that seemed as solid as reinforced steel, but she blew through it with a fury fueled by seeing the pain in Barbara’s face. Her mind storm swept through the woman’s mind, seeking the switch that would disarm her, and felt overwhelmed.
The woman’s mind was like a dark labyrinth filled with whipping vines and Ent-like trees leering at her, their trunks gnashing bark-teeth at her. A furious wind howled through it, and Rosalie felt lost like Alice in “Through the Looking Glass.” She felt like she was in an insane mind, and soon she would become insane as well.
Rosalie struggled to jump to a higher plane to escape the pull of the woman’s mind, and for a moment, she had a sensation of successfully containing the mind within a confining shroud she had created. And then she was pulled violently down and she found herself back in the labyrinth.
She stood stock still as a shadowy figure appeared at the end of what seemed like a long path through the wild vegetation. She strained to see, expecting to see the woman. As the figure came closer, she could see that it was a small child, and she could feel waves of loneliness wafting to her. She stepped forward involuntarily, ignoring the vines that were whipping across her path.
“Help me,” the child sobbed, holding out its arms.
“Who are you?” Rosalie asked. She was close enough now to see it was a boy, and he was crying.
The child shook his head, and suddenly a picture formed between them. The child was standing in front of the woman in whose mind she was, who was holding him by the shoulder.
“Don’t be afraid,” the woman said, looking deep into the boy’s tear-filled eyes. “I won’t leave you behind.” After a moment, the child stiffened and his eyes rolled back and revealed only white. A white ribbon of mist curled from his eyes into hers, and then the child sagged and the woman gently laid him down, a small smile on her face.
The image disappeared, and in its place was the boy. He opened his mouth as if to speak, and Rosalie saw with wonder that his face was transforming, and he was getting bigger.
“Don’t you recognize me, Rosalie?” he asked, grinning widely to show his canines.
It was Justin, and his smile was predatory. His eyes glowed red.
Rosalie felt frozen in place, watching him come closer. She willed the little boy to come back, and for a shimmering moment, it seemed there were two people occupying the same space: one was this red-eyed Justin, the other the lost little boy with frightened brown eyes. Then the boy was gone, and Rosalie suddenly understood that she was going to be trapped in this place like the little boy.
Rosalie turned and began to run. She felt sweat forming on her skin, and thought how ridiculous that was as she wasn’t really here. Nevertheless, she was very conscious of her panting breath and knew Justin was rapidly gaining on her. She tried to escape the mind of this terrible woman, but found herself unable to. She looked back, terrified, and threw back a shield. Justin was indeed close, and he ripped through the shield easily. He transformed yet again, and Rosalie was now being pursued by the woman, who was laughing triumphantly. She stretched out a long-taloned hand and that’s when Rosalie tripped. She threw out a hand to break her fall, but she just kept falling…falling….
She looked up hopelessly, and saw the angry swirls of gray growing farther away as the darkness closed in on her. With a tremendous effort that sapped the last of her strength, she pulled herself out of the darkness with a massive burst of energy. It was a blue-white flash that bathed the whole world with white and for a moment she rotated within its center.
For a moment, she opened her mind’s eye and saw that she was in a weirdly beautiful world where distant flashes alleviated an otherwise deep black. It was like watching flawless diamonds being dropped on a lush, velvet bed before sinking out of sight. The darkness had weight, but it both pressed on her and lifted her up. It was not a dead darkness. She sensed energy and power that pulsed all around her. And then the moment was gone as she shot back down into the physical world back into her own body, and out of the mind that had tried to overwhelm her.
She opened her eyes to see Brandon bending over her, and it was all over.
Rosalie fainted.
Chapter Seventeen – Explanations
They were back in the house, and both Meg and Barbara were in Rosalie’s room, conferring in low voices as the doctor ministered to her.
Rosalie was still unconscious, and there were some fears that it was closer to a coma. Gerard Cole conferred with the doctor, who nodded his head. Cole thanked him and escorted the doctor out of the room. Cole turned to Meg and Barbara, who anxiously waited for the diagnosis.
“Will she be okay?” Barbara asked anxiously.
Cole nodded. “She’ll be fine. She just needs to rest.”
Cole had arrived at the scene in time to see Brandon grappling with Justin as Rosalie stood trembling before the woman they had all known as Helen Foster. Rosalie’s eyes had been closed, and her pallor had been appalling. Cole had taken a step forward to throw a mind bind over the Helen, when Rosalie suddenly opened her eyes. Her whole body pulsed as a corona of white line surrounded her for an endless moment. The image imprinted itself on the eyes of all those who witnessed it, and was awed by the power pulsing in that light. Then the light winked out like a used up lightbulb and a shudder passed through Rosalie before she crumpled to the floor just as Helen did.
The shield around Helen gone, the Soldiers quickly placed her and Justin under restraint, administering heavy sedatives to keep them unconscious during transport to Eden. Brandon had gathered up the unconscious Rosalie and brought her out.
“Helen had planned it from the start,” Cole now explained, “including staging her death twelve years ago. Ned was her unwitting accomplice, identifying a woman Helen had killed because he really believed it was her, thanks to a suggestion placed there the day Helen disappeared.”
“But why?” Meg asked, her brow knitted.
“The list,” Cole said. “That damned list! Her supposed death leant that list credibility, and the fact that the two elders named in it, those who made a run for it, really were rogues made it even more plausible. But the rest of those named were not.”
The women’s eyes widened with horror. There had been more than 50 names of Seekers and Soldiers in that list, and included some of the most trusted members of the coven. The purge had created an unbearable strain on all those who were tasked to carry out the executions, and led to distrust and suspicion among the survivors for many years.
“They were innocent?” Meg whispered, her cheeks white and looking her age for the first time in her life. Cole nodded grimly.
“I would’ve been on that list if Helen thought she could have made it stick, but it would have been too aeasily disproven, and would have cast doubt on the complicity of the rest. I’ve always been vocal against the “conquer the world” mantra that it would take a lot for the council to swallow it. ”
“But there was an investigation!” Barbara protested. “Everyone in that list was Seeker interrogated.”
“Helen did her work very well. She implanted thoughts of conspiracy in each of them, and then hid it so that even they were not aware that it was there. During the interrogation, the thoughts surfaced, and condemned them.” Cole’s mouth twisted wryly. “The fact is, there was no real plan to bomb the council meeting.”
“But how did you know?” Meg asked, perplexed.
“It was about 5 years ago, and it was Rowina who caught it
,” Cole said. “I had just launched the emission free engine, and I received a lot of offers for it. One offer came from a small engineering firm that should not have been able to afford the purchase price they offered. Rowina suspected the firm was just a front, and traced it back to the real interested parties. I knew the lawyer handling their contracts, and over a friendly dinner, I expressed surprise that his client wasn’t interested. I was monitoring the man’s mind, and you can imagine my shock when the image of Helen popped into his mind!” Cole gave a pained smile at the recollection.
“I met with Ned over some matter and probed his mind. I came upon the implanted suggestion, and DNA samples from the woman identified as Helen confirmed that it was not her. From that point it became easy to trace her, but she is a very dangerous woman, and not only because she is one of the most powerful Seekers in our history. I had to be careful not to arouse her suspicions. Even Rowina did not know.”
“But your accident….”Meg posed it as a question.
“Ah, yes,” for the first time Cole allowed himself to smile. “I knew I was top on Helen’s list of must-eliminate, and that it would happen before any major plan to destroy the council once and for all. Helen’s minions got to my driver, and he was convinced his family would be given the money they needed to help his sick child if he committed suicide and took me along with him.” His smile turned sad. “He didn’t even have a child.”
“Anyway, I caught the suggestion and added one of my own, that I was actually still in the car with him. In fact, I had slipped away and was in a safe house when the driver took the plunge.”
“What about the council meeting? Is it safe?” Meg asked urgently. Cole nodded.
“All the information I extracted from the two Seekers with Helen. Brandon is organizing rounding them up now.”
Vampire Warfare Page 8