Inside Straight

by Mark Henwick

  These weren’t the same people. They couldn’t be.

  They looked... absent.

  Compelled.

  The weight continued to build. At some critical point, it’d formed a shadow, a visual distortion behind Weaver.

  It came to me that each member of the coven was part of that thing.

  Which, in Adept terms, meant that the thing was part of them as well.

  What had Diana said to me about the Taos Adepts? The fish goes rotten from the head.

  The lock on Diana had bound the Taos community into the evil that might have started with their leader alone. For the Taos Adepts, that lock had become their soultree.

  What I was seeing behind Weaver was the soultree of the Denver coven.

  Evil, given a foothold through Weaver, had propagated throughout what had been the most benevolent of Adept communities. That was where he had gotten his extra power from.

  I felt sick to my stomach again.

  “It should have been mine from the outset,” Weaver was saying, leaning forward for emphasis. “All of this could have been avoided. It was intended for me.”

  He leaned back, and in the yellow glare of the lamp, the shadow seemed to settle around his shoulders, as if it was possessive.

  The hairs on the back of my head stood up.

  A soultree could be more than just a passive, inanimate concept, a shared space for aura.

  I knew that; Ash wasn’t inanimate.

  It’d happened here, too. Instead of being a sort of central repository of their ideals and aspirations, and a common resource, the Denver community soultree had turned into the agent of their corruption.

  Taos Adept community. And then Denver.

  Once might be a coincidence. Twice is not. I could hear the voice of my old Ops 4-10 instructor, Ben-Haim, as if he were standing beside me.

  Matlal was behind this. He had twisted the Denver community, just as he had twisted the Taos community. I didn’t know how, but I knew it was him.

  I’d forgotten Celum, until he bent down beside me and whispered in my ear. His voice was soft as a serpent.

  “I’m looking forward to you refusing his offer,” he said. “So I get to play with you. And if you think that’s bad, I’m going to hand you over to an old friend of yours afterwards. I’m sure you’ll remember Mirela Tucek. When she starts on you, you’ll wish you could have stayed with me.”

  I remembered Tucek. She’d called herself Mother Tucek, and had run a ‘convent’ in Taos, full of Carpathian nuns. She’d killed for fun in front of me, and it was she who’d been responsible for Matlal’s escape.

  She was a link between Matlal and what happened to the Taos Adepts.

  And here in Denver? I took another long sniff of Celum. El Paso, for sure. Beneath that? I couldn’t be sure, but there are no coincidences. Celum was obviously familiar with Matlal, through Tucek, and he provided a connection to both the El Paso alphas’ challenge and Weaver.

  “You know they’ve gone all Aztec down there in Yucatan. After we’ve had our fun, I’m going to watch Mirela open you up and dig your heart out of your chest.”

  My stomach churned. His voice had gotten hoarse. He was actually aroused thinking about it.

  He’d gotten louder as well.

  “Enough, Celum,” Weaver said. “I don’t think we’ll be doing that. Outside of strict need, all this fascination with pain and terror is unwholesome. There’s no call for it. And I’ll have no requirement to keep Matlal happy either, when I have the dragon.”

  Celum said nothing.

  I wasn’t going to foul my eukori by looking into his mind, but I didn’t need to. Celum hated Weaver and he’d kill him, if he got the chance.

  More members of the coven, at least the ones that had survived Weaver’s takeover, had come in and sat in their places. The shadow behind Weaver had grown with each addition. It was dark and thick as an oil fire. To my paranormal senses, it reeked. And it was growing, more than the addition of each member.

  “Do you agree to call your mentor?” Weaver asked me.

  I shook my head.

  He sighed.

  “Then we must revert to the plan to lure the dragon here and precipitate a move. Unfortunately, there needs to be great duress both for the lure and the move. In plain words, pain for the hosts, and pain for the dragon. Enormous, unbearable pain. Are you sure you won’t reconsider?”

  “Don’t.” Tullah stirred feebly and breathed as I held her against me. “Kill me. Don’t let that creature trap Kaothos.”

  Weaver’s plan fell into place at that point.

  Weaver wasn’t intending to displace his own spirit guide with Kaothos. He’d deliberately twisted the Denver soultree with the specific purpose of capturing the dragon. That’s what Tullah meant by ‘creature’—the foulness that had been the soultree.

  I didn’t understand the mechanics, or whether it’d work. Weaver was convinced it would. Weaver believed that Kaothos would be trapped in the soultree and Weaver would control the soultree.

  I shook my head again in answer to Weaver’s question of reconsidering. There wasn’t any point calling Diana anyway. She wouldn’t fall into this trap, whatever I said.

  Weaver shrugged.

  The shadow stretched out from behind him, formed a snakelike arm.

  This was very, very bad.

  Tullah cringed.

  The snake slithered down the step and crossed the floor slowly. The way it did that—it was nothing to do with a restriction on its movement; it was enjoying our fear.

  “Kill me,” Tullah said, shrinking away from it, but at that moment, Celum ripped Weaver’s jacket off me and snapped a chain onto my collar. He pulled me back so I couldn’t reach her and then he fastened the chain to a hoop.

  “Can’t have you killing our little star,” he said. “Not until we’re finished.”

  He quickly stood away from me as the shadow snake approached.

  It ignored Tullah.

  It rose and struck at me.

  Chapter 71

  “Not that bad, was it?”

  It wasn’t, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. The soultree’s strike was a stronger version of Weaver’s covert working that he’d hit me with at the club and afterwards at his house. It was like static electricity. More shock than pain.

  The payload was the same.

  Weaver had gone back to his favorite weapon; a working that attacked my mind. Except I was ready this time, even if I hadn’t realized I was. With a kind of sick fascination I found I could visualize what it was doing and how it was succeeding, like a psychedelic shimmering trying to creep through my head, some bizarre aftershock of Kane’s peyote trip.

  It was fascinating.

  Not only was it not quite what Weaver thought it was, but I found I had defenses against it.

  That was a wild card in my hand. It might give me an edge, but I couldn’t see how, yet.

  One last person entered the room through the water-door behind me. Not one of the Denver coven. I could feel a ripple of fear down the seated ranks of Adepts and I knew who it was.

  Gwendolyn Enkeliekki, leader of the Michigan and Ontario Adepts, and Hecate of the Northern Adept League, stalked around the raised circumference of the pit like a jaguar.

  She was as I’d first seen her. Hair like ice. Eyes like electric blue neon. Dressed in a black leather duster and thin gloves.

  Weaver seemed to be the only one not actually scared of her.

  A couple of Adepts to Weaver’s right hurriedly moved, and she sat in the vacated space. She peeled off the thin gloves, her movements languid and precise, her eyes fixed on Celum.

  “You have a job, Celum,” she said, “and it doesn’t involve your perverted hobby of torture. It involves protecting the mine.”

  “There’s no threat,” he said.

  “No? Several groups of heavily armed troops, including former Special Forces colleagues of our prisoner, are above us as you stand there, wasting time.”


  “So what? They can’t find the way in!”

  “Their equipment includes explosives perfectly capable of removing twenty feet of topsoil, if correctly placed, and collapsing the mine around our ears, if not. Take your scum pack of outcast wolves and persuade the visitors to fall back until we have the dragon.”

  Celum squared his shoulders and tried to stare the Hecate down. “You can’t order me around,” he said.

  The Hecate didn’t answer. She simply looked at him and the temperature of the room plummeted. Even the obscene shape of the soultree seemed to shrink in on itself.

  “Go,” Weaver said hurriedly. “Give me the controller for the collars first.”

  Celum stomped to the front and handed it over with ill grace.

  He didn’t like the Hecate, and he didn’t like Weaver. I wondered if there was anyone he did like.

  “Harrison,” Weaver called out to one of the Adepts behind me. “Go with him and run the tunnel substantiation. Let Celum and his wolves come up behind the troops at our front door.”

  There was nothing I could do about that immediately, but if Annie was here, she’d never get caught off guard like that. If Annie wasn’t... I tried to remember who was in charge of Team Mike.

  Besides all that, the Hecate was lying, unless Annie hadn’t told me what the Ops 4-10 squads were carrying, but I allowed nothing to show on my face. It seemed no one dared challenge the Hecate’s statements about the troops carrying explosives.

  With Celum gone, the room temperature returned to normal.

  “You’re a bit early,” Weaver said to the Hecate.

  “On the contrary, I’m just in time,” she replied. “Celum needed to be sent to do his job, and I needed to come here and prepare to open a bridge to the dragon.”

  “You said it would be much easier if we could use Farrell.”

  “And I meant it. It’s Farrell’s Athanate mentor who’s hosting the dragon. Far easier to use that connection to build the bridge than one between a former host and spirit guide. It would have been even easier if she’d brought Diana to Vernal with her, but she didn’t.”

  “Is the former host redundant then?” one of the Adepts asked.

  “No,” the Hecate replied. “She remains the lure, and it’s her pain that the dragon will be subject to.”

  “Speaking of which...” Weaver ran his finger over a button on the controller and Tullah jerked. She tried to stay still, but no amount of self-control could stop her hands from reaching for the collar.

  I strained forward, but the chain holding me was already taut. I tried to shout for him to stop, but the collar was choking me and my voice was a near-silent rasp.

  They ignored me.

  “Build it slowly.” The Hecate put a hand out and touched Weaver’s arm. “It does no good to knock her out. The correct timing on this is vital. I will open that bridge after Farrell’s resistance reaches its critical point. Your conjunct spirit,” she waved at the shape behind him, “must be ready by that time. At exactly that point, the former host must be in excruciating pain. Not unconscious. Fail any of that, and we’re in a world of trouble.”

  “It’s all going as planned,” Weaver said. “The conjunct will reach full power in...” he looked at his watch, “seven minutes and forty seconds exactly. The pain for Tullah will escalate smoothly throughout that time. Farrell’s ability to resist my commands will be destroyed long before that. She’s barely recovered from the earlier working and this one’s more powerful. She’ll do exactly what we tell her.”

  Either the Hecate was an evil, perverted bitch who enjoyed ensuring I knew what was about to happen to me, or Gabrielle had been right all along, and she was feeding me information in the hope I could do something about it.

  If I couldn’t, what would she do?

  Sabotage it herself?

  Skylur had passed along the message from the New York Adepts. They’d said the dragon was of such significance that Hecate Gwendolyn Enkeliekki would commit any act to ensure the dragon was protected.

  I felt a chill pass through me. I suddenly saw that ‘any act’ probably included dying. Me, Tullah, everyone here, including the Hecate herself.

  My nose flared, and I tasted the subtle scents of the room. The Hecate hadn’t completely lied. There were explosives that threatened us. She had them.

  They were continuing to talk. It was a low-voiced, private conversation. It seemed Weaver had forgotten about my hybrid hearing.

  It was good enough to hear them discussing the fact that the Hecate’s input was key. None of the other Adepts had the power to reach all the way to Denver and breach the shield around the dungeon. The conjunct could do it, theoretically, but it was tricky to try that, channel the pain from Tullah to lure Kaothos out and then draw Kaothos back here and capture her within the conjunct.

  “I’m sure you will develop the level of power to spirit walk that far,” the Hecate said. “It’s mainly a matter of overcoming your self-limiting beliefs.”

  Weaver thought she was flattering him.

  She was talking secretly to me, and giving me the faintest outline of a plan.

  Get Kaothos here before the conjunct was ready to trap her. And knock Tullah out so she couldn’t distract Kaothos when I did. Obviously, I needed to disobey Weaver’s commands.

  How to do all that?

  The Hecate had told me; I needed to overcome my self-limiting belief that I couldn’t spirit walk all the way to Denver.

  The Hecate had to know what Weaver’s workings were doing to me. Yes, they were attempting to dismantle my ability to resist his demands. Good luck with that. But it was no precision surgical strike. It was about as subtle as a grenade, damaging inhibitions and increasing suggestibility.

  His previous attempt had done all sorts of things he probably didn’t know about.

  He probably anticipated the reduction of sexual inhibitions. He didn’t even know about Ash, and that whatever else it had done, his working enabled my connection to Ash.

  And I’d spirit jumped all the way back to Ireland.

  If I could do that, I sure as hell could spirit jump to Denver.

  All I needed was a base to launch from. Being chained to the floor in a room which was magically isolated from the rest of the world wasn’t that base.

  But I had other skills Weaver didn’t know about. My Carpathian Athanate heritage. I could connect my eukori to other paranormals and harness some of their power.

  Step one was to get out from behind this magical shield.

  Step two would be to connect with my House outside.

  Step three would be to spirit walk all the way back to Denver.

  I’d need to tap into Ash’s power to do that. I needed to really open up and let that power in. I didn’t care whether that was good or bad. It could suck my soul out of me for all I cared at that moment.

  That was my plan. Get Kaothos and she would put an end to Weaver.

  Only everything had to go right, or nothing would.

  With my desperation driving it, my Carpathian eukori probed the barriers that had been raised in Tullah’s mind, achieved a spark of a connection. I willed her to meet my eyes, no matter how much pain she was in.

  I could feel that pain. The collar was pulsing electric shocks into her system. Linked through eukori, I shared those and their brutality made me gasp.

  For a moment, I thought I was too late for Tullah, that there was nothing left.

  Then I caught a tiny spark; the smallest glimmer of the old Tullah hidden deep inside her. I needed to draw that to the fore. I needed her with me.

  She looked, and I saw myself as she saw me: a wild figure, mud-caked hair, muddy warpaint covering the top half of my face, eyes staring like a demented woman.

  “It’s only at times like these, Apprentice,” I said, my voice ragged, “when you’ve got nowhere left to go, that you draw to an inside straight.”

  “What’s she saying?” Weaver frowned and peered at me.

  I ignored him
. Ignored the workings attacking my mind. Ignored everything around me but Tullah.

  I forced the words out. “Remember what I taught you about drawing the inside straight. Tell me.”

  Her eyes were dull with the pain, but her lips moved.

  “Outside straight good. Inside straight bad. Bad odds. Never take it. Unless no option.”

  She was a mess, but answering me brought that fierce glow back to the surface. She was fighting back.

  Helped by Tara. I sensed my twin, but I couldn’t see clearly. Tullah’s mind was dulled with the pain already, and every second it grew worse.

  Sharing eukori would help with the pain, but that wasn’t the purpose.

  It’d give us more power than I had on my own. It would also expose Tullah to the effects of Weaver’s spell on my mind. It would be a race between our spirits breaking out of the crucible and Tullah’s resistance to Weaver failing.

  “If fail...” Her eyes closed as the shocks grew worse. Her voice faltered. Her lips continued to move, mouthing the same words over and over. “Promise. Fail. Kill me. Save Kaothos.”

  I could. If we were tightly bound, linked with eukori, I could stop her heart. It’d probably stop mine as well.

  I would. She sensed that and she lowered her barriers. I gathered her fully into my eukori, bound her to me as quickly and completely as I could, and we reached out.

  We met the slick water-bound shield that covered this room.

  There wasn’t even a single electric cable that pierced that shield, and like the construct, the shield was getting stronger every second. Tullah and I slammed against it and couldn’t pierce it.

  There was no other power I dared use in this room. No Ash. I tried and there was nothing there. The shield held.

  If only I’d done it earlier. If only I’d tried when people were walking through that water-door.

  Drawing to an inside straight was a fool’s game. We couldn’t even get out of this room.

  And as Tullah said, we couldn’t let them use us to capture Kaothos.

  But our attempt hadn’t gone unnoticed.

  An aura like cold smoke seeped around us. I could taste who it belonged to.