“Did he interfere with Faye’s mind?” Ann demanded.
Serena lifted her hand in a graceful gesture, pushing a wisp of hair back from her forehead. An elaborate jeweled watch glinted on her wrist, so unlike the rest of her plain, ordered clothes that Faye noticed it immediately. Distracted, she dragged herself back to the present.
“I can’t detect any, though I would like to examine her in an iso room just to make sure.”
Sorcerers lived mortal lifespans but had staggering, off-the-scale psi senses. Harken could have done it, spread a compulsion in her to believe him and disbelieve anyone else. It would have changed her mind, made it easier for him to control her. And the rest of his followers, Faye realized. Her stomach dipped, nausea making its presence felt.
“No,” Andros said at once. “She’s been through too much. I’ll vouch for her. She’ll stay with me while she’s in the building, won’t go anywhere without me.”
Andros ignored Nick’s grunt of disapproval and kept his attention focused on his boss. She jerked a nod. “That’s acceptable. Your reputation depends on hers. And she doesn’t have your security clearance.”
Ann motioned to the Sorcerer, who passed her the coffeepot from the other end of the table. Ann had already finished the contents of the pot set at her end. She poured herself another coffee and glanced around to see if anyone wanted any. Nobody did. If Faye drank that amount of coffee all the time, she’d be a complete nervous wreck. “Nordheim played on you, told you what you were most likely to believe.” Ann poured herself a cupful of the thick, strong brew. “He reinforced your natural inclinations. Skillfully. While he might not have planted compulsions, he would only have to persuade.”
“Like a stage magician pretending to mind read,” she said numbly.
“The same kind of tricks, reinforced with telepathy,” Ann agreed.
So cold-blooded. But now she thought about it, really thought, Faye knew it was possible. She’d spent long hours with Harken, discussing the state of the world. He could have nudged her thinking in a certain direction, helped her to believe what her natural inclinations led her to.
And he’d held an attraction for her too. She’d let him in, let down her guard.
Sitting across the table from them, Ann nodded. “If you want to work with us, that’s acceptable for now. I’d prefer it if you had a proper scan, as all agents do, and let Serena read you thoroughly. Let me know when you’re ready for that. If you are prepared to keep quiet but don’t want to work with us, you can leave now, after you’ve allowed Serena to set up a block to you telling anyone. We won’t track you. Just don’t feel stupid. It could have happened to any of us. Once a Sorcerer of that power has his claws into you, nobody can resist for long.” Her mouth flattened. “I think he’s even more dangerous than we assumed. We need to get him back.”
Before she could censor herself, Faye made her protest. “You won’t hurt him?” She recalled the sickening thud when she’d struck Serena and the blow she’d landed on the security guard. Even if they were set up to provide false resistance, she’d still hurt them and she didn’t want to cause anyone any pain.
“I can’t promise that.” Ann glanced at a slim folder in front of her and pushed it across the table. “He’s hurt far more people than you know.” She took a deep breath, the single gold chain she wore around her neck glittering in the harsh light. “Know that if you read the contents of this file and refuse to help us, we’ll detain you until the mission is complete or ask you to undergo a procedure with Serena that will prevent you talking about what you’re about to see. This file contains the reasons why we wanted him.”
Faye had to know. “Okay, I’ll read them. I agree to your terms.”
Ann sighed. “Professor Nordheim used his Sorcerer skills and his cover as a protector of the rights of Talents to take them to illegal laboratories. He found easy pickings at the university and spread his activities outward. We think there are more people involved in his activities and we want them too, which is why we wanted him to get away, hoping he’d go straight to them. We’ve sent a unit to take the people who were with him today, so the mission may well be over. Read and believe.”
There was good money in the illegal laboratories. Hidden all over the world, their agents took Talents and cut them up, dissected them. All to gain valuable assets—the power to heal, longevity, the ability to transform into something far more powerful and terrifying than their human form. Selling cures for cancer or muscular dystrophy, selling the elixir of life, selling the added strength and power of a shape-shifter, all had the potential of making vast profits.
So far none had worked, though the labs had produced terrifying hybrids in their attempts to mold the different types of human together. There shouldn’t be hybrids. People were either Talents or they weren’t. No in-betweens. But until they found their cures, the labs made money by forcing Talents to convert others.
Numbly, Faye opened the folder and read. After the first few pages she realized there were no doubts. This was truth.
Harken, a man she’d considered her friend and ally, had put Talents there. For money. She couldn’t deny the evidence she saw and she doubted anyone would manufacture such a plethora of reports from the different government agencies just to fool her. Or that they could. She picked up an FBI document showing the discovery of an illegal laboratory in the Nevada desert, with accompanying photographs. Faye forced herself to look at the dreadful pictures of dead bodies and tortured Talents, wires and tubes coming out of them, their limbs and bodies half dissected, not allowed to change and to heal. She stared into the eyes of a shape-shifter, his head and upper body still human, his lower body that of a horse. A pegasus. So rare, and these people were taking him apart.
Horrible. But Faye forced herself to study every one. Because she was partly responsible for this. She’d enabled him, supported Harken while he plied his dreadful trade. If he stayed at liberty because of her actions, she’d never forgive herself. Never.
The next picture showed someone she knew. She’d helped this boy escape an intolerable situation in New York. When he’d come into his Talent at puberty, his parents had abandoned him. Packed up and moved. Until that moment he’d thought he was their son but they’d adopted him, not knowing what he was. On his own, he’d shape-shifted in public and nearly lost his life when a crowd had mobbed him. Confused, he’d staggered about the streets and eventually settled as a beggar, terrified when he shape-shifted every month. Faye had discovered him and spirited him to what she thought was safety with the help of Professor Nordheim, who’d promised to ensure the boy reached safety. Friends in San Francisco, he’d said. Only she had to see this now.
Tears sprang to her eyes. Before this she had kept her composure, but the sight of what they had done to this boy forced her into realization, facing the horror she’d helped to cause. The boy had no life, none at all, and she’d help to achieve it. But she had to be sure. “You have proof that the professor is involved.” Her voice shook. She couldn’t believe it, her mind chasing to catch up with the evidence before her eyes.
Andros covered her hand with his. She unclenched her fist and let it lie passively, encompassed by his warmth. His sympathy gave her some comfort, but not much. “Yes, of course you do. I’m sorry, I’m finding all this difficult.”
The only sound in the room came when she turned pages. She read it all, uncaring whether she kept them waiting or not. Looked at every picture, every horrific scene. Then she saw the surveillance photographs of Professor Nordheim.
She had to consider the possibility that the photos and files were faked. It would have taken a lot of work, and for what purpose? For what reason? To fool her? She didn’t think so. All they had to do was capture her, restrain her until they’d taken the professor off the map as they said they’d do now. Much easier than this. Especially considering her limited abilities in the espionage arena.
She slumped, her head between her hands, willing the tears back. “I’m sorry.”
Ann’s voice dropped into the still room. “He’s fooled a lot of people. He spreads disinformation and he only captures the Talents who won’t be missed right away. He has helped a couple, but only to maintain his cover.”
“I should have killed the fucker,” Nick Ivy said. Nobody disagreed.
Ann continued, relentlessly exposing Harken Nordheim. “If Talents are classed as nonhuman, the next step is to class them as animals. Then the laboratories can take any they please. Harken’s efforts are all show, noise without substance. It’s a cover.”
“It’s nonsense, that animal thing. It’ll never happen.” Andros’ dismissal showed, for once, his extreme youth as a Talent. It happened, and had for a long time.
Faye said what needed to be said. “Banning alcohol was nonsense. So was allowing mortals to enslave each other. All we need to do is not to do anything. Just let them do it, smiling our disbelief.” Like she’d done.
Andros grunted. “In any case, someone has to stop this lowlife. I’m in.”
“Yes. Me too,” Faye said.
Ann nodded and Faye suspected she’d expected nothing less. Somehow it came as comfort to her wounded soul, that Ann had expected her to do the right thing, to help redress the wrong she’d made, however unwittingly. “We’ve had people in place at the university for months. None of them got as close as you did to Professor Nordheim, Faye. You have the perfect cover. Andros, I’m sending you back in with Faye to discover the rest, if there is any rest to discover. But I want this nest of vipers cleaned out, completely gone. I want Nordheim back and then, hopefully, that’s the end of that vat of poison. You go in as you were today.”
Andros’ head went back against his chair with a soft thud. “As a cripple?”
“As a disabled student. We couldn’t ask for better cover, because you’re going in as yourself. They never knew about your conversion. That will give you a huge advantage.” Ann frowned at Faye. “I want your word that you’ll do as you’re told. If you feel out of your depth or in danger, you broadcast and we’ll send help. Andros will be going in as himself, Serena has a post as a temporary lecturer in the professor’s department and Nick will back you up. If you need him to come in, he’ll act as Serena’s boyfriend. I want this man stopped and I want it done discreetly.”
“Can you strip his mind once you have Nordheim?” Faye didn’t care what happened to him anymore. Not after finding out what he’d done to others. If it had merely been manipulation, selfish use of people for his own ends, then she wouldn’t have been so concerned. After all, it was her own stupid fault that she’d believed him. But he’d caused suffering and death—for money.
“It’s a last resort,” Serena said. She’d hardly moved at all, just observed with that uncanny stillness virgin Sorcerers sometimes had. “In any case, he probably has a self-destruct bomb set. We’re finding more and more of them these days.” At Faye’s raised brow, she explained. “It’s like a suicide bomb. If a Sorcerer trips a mental trigger, it will detonate. Like an atom bomb, but of the mind. It wipes the mind of the person concerned and the Sorcerer who is questioning. And if it’s done outside an iso room, anyone in the vicinity, also.”
“For now,” Ann said, “I want Nordheim stopped, and anyone in transit recovered. I want extreme discretion used, so that I can put an agent into the operation in deep cover. Clear?”
In this place, Faye was learning, Ann’s decisions were final. She swallowed. “I’m so sorry. I wish I’d realized sooner.”
“Make amends,” Ann told her. “Make a difference.”
*
Back in the privacy of his apartment, Andros could finally give Faye the comfort he’d yearned to all the time he’d listened and learned about the professor’s activities. He put his arm around her shoulders. “We’ll get out of this. We’ll do okay.”
She shuddered and turned into the shelter of his body. “I shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have gotten him out. I really thought—how stupid am I?”
He hated her this vulnerable. Her fine mind was collapsing in the wake of the revelations and the pictures she’d forced herself to look at.
His boss would do anything to get the justice she believed Talents were entitled to. She only ever thought about the big picture. She’d dragged Sandro Gianetti out of blissful retirement on his honeymoon to stand for a vacant senatorship. She’d used couples ruthlessly in pursuit of the greater good, and Andros had no doubt that if she had to sacrifice him, she’d do it without compunction if she thought she’d save more lives than she’d lose.
He couldn’t live like that, couldn’t think like that. Coming in to STORM from the outside, from the viewpoint of a previously anti-Talent stand, he could see what she didn’t. As far as he’d been concerned, they’d refused to help him with his muscular dystrophy when they had the means to do so. The Talents he’d connected with had lied to him, told him they could cure him or convert him with little cost to themselves, and so he could understand what Faye was going through now.
Before, he’d believed that Talents were refusing to help him. To learn that shape-shifters could only convert once and vampires had to give up their lives in order to convert someone had come as a revelation to him. He still thought they should reveal that fact. It would stop the begging letters STORM received by the sacksful, or the inbox-full. But Ann wanted information filtered out and vampires, secretive by nature, refused to reveal anything about themselves that wasn’t strictly necessary.
He knew now that soon he’d have to find a place of his own. Move out. It was unhealthy to live here. Even if his apartment at STORM was far better than anything he could afford on his own in this part of town, one of the best areas of Manhattan. He’d cope. Thanks to his great salary, he wouldn’t starve anytime soon and he could easily afford something central and comfortable. No cramped studio apartments for him.
Glancing over Faye’s bowed head, he took in the place he’d made his own. No huge gamer screens or complex rigs here. He kept them downstairs. Here he had a laptop, a couple of game consoles and some great, comfortable furniture.
He had a large living room with a fantastic view, two bedrooms, a bathroom and a half, kitchen and study. None of it was important, not really, and nothing personal. In San Francisco, a firebomb had taken most of his sentimental treasures, family pictures—keepsakes from the large house he’d grown up in, all gone. He’d been glad to start from scratch in New York. It seemed appropriate. New life, new belongings. He could leave it all behind and not look back if he wanted to.
But not the woman in his arms. He’d have difficulty leaving her behind. His stomach tightened with apprehension when he thought of it. He’d never planned to put down roots this soon, had planned on a hundred years, maybe two, of the carefree single life. But the knowledge, deep down, that he’d found someone special only grew in certainty the more contact he had with her. More than anything he wanted to go on with her and find out what they had.
In a while. After he’d helped Faye clear up this mess.
“Come and sit down.”
He led her to the sofa and for the first time she raised her head and looked around. “It’s nice here.”
“You sound as if you expected a nerd’s paradise.”
She gave a shaky laugh and his heart lightened a little. “I did, sort of. You do computer science, you’re a company geek and, in my experience, they tend to live their work.”
“Not this one.” He wanted to tell her something about himself that not many people knew, give her something special. “I had other interests. I loved music, wanted the whole rock-and-roll dream. Be a star, play for thousands of people. But I wasn’t good enough. I could sing okay, I could play guitar okay, but no more than that. It’s a hobby, one I enjoy, but it’s a good lesson, to learn that you can’t be a superstar at everything. I’m good at computers though, more than good, so I stay with that.” He indicated his Martin acoustic on its stand in the corner of the room. “Perhaps the love of music saved me from tot
al nerd-dom. The computer work comes too easily to me most of the time.” He paused. “I have found something I want to work at now. That’s why I applied to do a doctorate. It’s something I want to share with the world. Ann says I can make a fortune, but I want to do it responsibly. If it works.”
She lifted her tearstained face to his. At least she wasn’t crying anymore. He loved the way she curled into him and rested her head on his shoulder. He wanted to keep her there. “I’m doing my dissertation on the connection between telepathy and physical objects. I’m building a keyboard that can be operated telepathically. A virtual keyboard.”
“Why?”
“Because everybody has telepathy, every Talent, every mortal. Everyone can be taught to use it, if only a little. If a paraplegic could learn how to communicate that way, he or she could use a computer. It’s easy to do with telekinesis, but only Talents have that in enough strength and control to operate a keyboard. If a disabled person could operate a keyboard, it could be hooked up to any number of devices.”
She frowned. “A virtual keyboard?”
“You’ve seen them—those projected keyboards. The media is always saying that Talents can help mortals by sharing, but not all gifts are psi.”
“Wow.” Her lips curved in a tentative smile. “It’s not just paraplegics who could use this, is it?”
“No. If I can do this, I’ll start a company to produce them. And hopefully, I can make enough profit to give keyboards away to deserving causes.”
“How far are you along with the project?”
He grinned. “I work on it in most of my free time, but since my conversion, I’ve been slacking. I had to learn how to be a dragon. How to walk again. It sounds great, but it’s not all fun and games, regaining my ability to walk, learning to think long-term. Really long-term.” He made a face and she laughed.
He found that laugh adorable. He dropped a kiss on her lips, a playful, flirtatious kiss. She reached up, touched the back of his neck, urging him to do more. What else could he do but oblige?
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