The name calling lit the wolf’s gaze to pure fire and rage. After a second of struggling, he broke through her spell and ran at her. Heavy paws hit her in the chest sending her to the ground and just as the large snout snapped in front of her face a familiar voice called out, “Down, wolf.”
The wolf instantly obeyed, and Reagan pushed herself up to find Liam O’Conner standing at the edge of the Mindscape. “You? But I—” She whipped her head between him and the wolf and furrowed her brow. “I don’t understand.”
“Didn’t your boss warn you, Ms. Silas. I’m an alpha, my beast and I don’t adhere to the commonalities you see in others of my kind. My beast and I are separate on the inside. He has his own thoughts and actions, and I have mine.” He paused and looked around. “You’ve entered his mind, not mine. You’re just lucky he called for me.”
She was in awe. No one had told her this was possible. She’d never imagined it'd be possible for stronger werewolves to have separate brain activity. This was taking right-brain vs. left-brain to a whole new level. Although in all honesty, she hadn’t paid much attention to the section on werewolves during her training. Given her hatred of the animals that attacked her mother and tore her family apart because of it, she never really saw the point of learning how their brains worked, she only wanted to slaughter every last one of them. She gave him a quick once over to appear bored by his lesson. Well, maybe not slaughter all of them, this one did something to her on a cellular level she couldn’t explain. It was a tightness in her chest, the prickle of hairs on the back of her neck, and the dryness of her mouth the moment she’d looked at him which were all unexplainable. She didn’t like wolves. She wasn’t a pack-groupie. She never wanted to be stuck in the same room with one unless she had a weapon, but this one was different.
“Well, tell your beast it can go take a leap off the nearest cliff. We’re here to do some work, Mr. O’Conner. I’m not wasting any more time with these theatrics.”
The wolf howled and slowly trotted back into the bushes, leaving her alone with the male who seemed to be in more control of the situation than she was, which was something she didn’t like one bit.
“Very well, where would you like to start?”
She’d start by dragging out images of his family, the wife he’d lost to torment him. Most men would talk after that, but when she attempted to conjure up the images she froze for one brief second. Her eyes flickering to him. He smiled and shook his head. “Don’t use her against me, lass. I can be a fair male, but if you tear off that scab, I will unleash hell on earth upon you.”
“No one tells me how to do my job, jackass.” Reagan took a deep breath and reached inside his mind finding the sobbing face of his wife hidden away in a part of his brain locked tighter than a bank vault. She yanked to draw his wife out when the ground shook and Liam fell to his knees clutching his midsection and screaming. The wolf sprung from its hiding place and ran for its other half. Blood puddled on the ground beneath Liam and Reagan stared in horror. “What the hell?”
Liam collapsed on the ground while convulsions wracked his body. She stumbled back and looked around for an explanation. She felt her physical self shaking, and Jake’s voice pierced through Liam’s Mindscape. “Reagan, get the hell out of there, now!”
Several minutes and pleas from Jake later she emerged to find a medical crew tending to Liam. Jake was cradling her and caressing her cheek. “Reagan, what the hell happened?”
Her voice shook. “That’s exactly what I want to know.” She turned to see what was happening but Jake refused to let her go. “Jake, please. Let go of me.”
“What did you do? Why would you do this?” He pleaded.
“Do what? I didn’t do anything.”
The captain crouched down beside her. “Agent Silas, I think you better come to my office.”
The medical crew was lifting Liam to his feet; she tried to ignore his blood-soaked clothes. “What happened to him?”
The captain glared down at her. “That’s what we are going to find out.”
As he led her from the room something shimmered and caught her eye. The wolf from Liam’s mind was standing next to him, his mouth turned up in a silent snarl. How was it here? She blinked again hoping it was a figment of her imagination, but it still stood there looking otherworldly and ethereal. Clasping her hand over her mouth, she stifled her gasp. She’d pulled it out of his mind. Manifesting a psychic projection into the physical plane was dangerous at best and fatal at worse. “What have I done?” She whispered.
The captain opened the door to his office and warned, “Whatever it was you better have a damn good explanation for it.”
The office was humid compared to the rest of the offices on floor Forty-seven. Captain Hampton James had an affinity for plants, flowers in particular and kept his office swelteringly warm and damp. A large desk, the captain’s chair, two filing cabinets, and two other chairs in front of the desk were all the furniture the captain had in his room but the abundance of plants made the space feel cluttered. Jake closed the door behind her and took one of the seats in front of the desk. Reagan reluctantly sat next to him and folded her arms over her chest. “What do you think I did?”
The captain unbuttoned his jacket before taking his seat behind the desk. “I’d like to think you did nothing and this is just some terrible coincidence, but the Agency doesn’t believe in coincidences. Now, what did you mean when you said “what have I done”?”
“I—” She couldn’t explain it. Taking a psychic projection into the physical world is highly illegal. She’d lose her job. The wolf would be hunted and executed which would kill a part of Liam’s soul. Not that she should care, wolves were meant to die, but she couldn’t bring herself to hold on to that grudge at this moment. “I just meant something must have happened that I wasn’t aware of.”
“Reagan,” the captain blurted out, “That is the flimsiest excuse I’ve ever heard. Now why did you attack him?”
“I didn’t attack him. Not physically.”
“Psychically.” He retorted.
“I didn’t.”
“Reagan he was bleeding.”
“Captain, you were right there watching. I didn’t do anything to him. Nothing outside of what I’m allowed to do anyways. And I don’t even know how to do a psychic attack that would manifest in the physical world.”
“Do you deny there was a man in that room bleeding all over the place?”
“No, of course not, but I didn’t do anything to him. I hadn’t even started the interrogation yet.”
Jake interrupted. “What? Why not? You were in there for a full fifteen minutes before he collapsed and started bleeding.”
“I was… Well, I had to find him first.”
Jake paled. “What do you mean you had to find him first?”
The captain slammed his fist down on the desk and shouted. “Jake, stay out of this. Reagan, tell us what happened.”
She did her best to retell what had happened, but nothing she said seemed to appease either of the two men in the room with her. Though why Jake would be so upset with her was mind boggling. When she finished, the captain shook his head. “There has to be more to it.”
“You were watching me, sir. I didn’t attack him.”
“We can only see what you physically do; we aren’t in the Mindscape with you and you are well aware that a psychic witch can physically harm a victim while inside the person’s mind.”
“Yes, I know, but—”
“No buts, Reagan. This is inexcusable, and Internal Affairs is going to be up my ass over this.”
“But you would have seen some signs from me that something was happening. You would have seen me tense or twitch or something.”
Jake cleared his throat. “Actually, our entire floor lost power for a few minutes. The captain went to sort it out and by the time he got back the werewolf was already on the floor.”
Her mouth fell open. “What? How did that happen? You have backup generato
rs for your backups. There is no way you could have a issue like that—”
“Enough.” The captain snapped. “Reagan, I’m sorry, I have no choice but to suspend you until we can investigate this matter.”
She clenched her jaw and inhaled sharply. “And what about Mr. O’Conner?”
“His wounds are being treated and then he will be sent on his way. We can’t risk him sicking his lawyers on us. We have to play this one by the book and that means letting him go since you got nothing from him.”
“I’m sorry.”
He held up his hand to cut her off. “Don’t say anything more until you have a lawyer. I need your access badge and any other Agency items on your person.
She stood up and unclipped the access badge. Her hand hovered reluctantly over her Agency issued stun gun but eventually unholstered it and placed it on the desk first. “I need a lawyer, sir?”
“I’d advise you to look into one, yes.”
A flip of the wrist sent the badge flying onto the desk and she spun on her heels before storming out of the office. Jake was breathing down her neck before she made it to the elevator. “Reggie, wait.”
After punching the down arrow a dozen times in quick secession, she glanced over her shoulder at him. “Go away, Jake. I don’t want to hear anything you or the Agency has to say.”
“I’m not the Agency; you know that.”
As the elevator doors opened, she strode inside and pushed the ground floor button. She regarded him cooly, and right as the doors started to shut she asked, “Do you think I did it?” He opened his mouth but didn’t say anything. It was a sting she hadn’t expected. Jake not believing in her hurt most of all. He placed his hand on the door to pause it and she glared. “Do me a favor and stay away from me. And never call me that stupid nickname again.” Wishing she had magic that would work outside of the Mindscape she clinched her fists and cursed. He gave a knowing smile as if he could read her mind and knew the psychic witch was defenseless in the real world. His smugness pissed her off more, and she shoved him back letting the elevator doors closed.
The walk home without her stun gun felt oddly frightening. In these times having a weapon was a necessity, the fact that the captain had sent her out into the world without anything except her psychic magic, which was useless unless she was in someone’s head, stung almost as much as Jake believing she’d attacked the werewolf. Groups of human protesters huddled together on the street corner just outside the Agency’s headquarters. Their signs read hateful statements like “Go back to hell” “Human Rights” “Save us from the freaks.” Reagan tucked her head down and did her best to avoid contact with the group. She understood their fears, for most of her life her kind and others in the paranormal world had stayed hidden, living amongst the humans without them being any the wiser. Then one day, seemingly out of the blue a rebel group of creatures banded together and stepped out of the shadows demanding equal rights to live beside the humans and enjoy the freedoms every citizen should be granted.
At first, the humans thought it was a hoax, but more and more paranormal creatures came forward. Although Reagan was in her late teens at the time she paid very little attention to political affairs and her father had kept her isolated from most of it. All she knew was one day her life was normal, the next she was finishing up high school being homeschooled by her father. They were forced to move from the brownstone she’d grown up in to a borough she’d never even seen her entire life living in the city. Her father, Rick Silas, had been a paranoid man while Reagan was growing up. He insisted on her training with her psychic magic to the exclusion of almost everything else. Her respite had been school, where she could act normal, but when the paranormal world collided with human reality she found herself stuck inside, training even harder, and working to please her father.
As she turned another corner and headed for her apartment the Agency provided for her she couldn’t help the assault of memories of her father. After he’d pulled her out of high school, he’d told her he’d secured her a job but that she’d need to work on her power more, that in order to succeed she’d have to detach from everyone and everything. When she’d turned twenty he’d walked her into the Agency and stood her before Captain James, head of the Protection and Security Department of the Agency. She showed the Captain what she was capable of and he hired her on the spot. That was the last day she’d seen her father. He walked her to her new apartment, gave her a strict set of rules to live by and left.
Reagan rolled her eyes at the sign hanging on the elevator that said out of order and climbed the stairs to her home. Her hand paused on the door handle and she looked around. Nothing much had changed in the three years since that day. Her father had moved without warning, he sent a box of her belonging to her apartment the day after she’d gotten her job and when she went by the house to pick up some more stuff she found the entire place empty. His phone had been disconnected, and for some unexplained reason, Rick Silas disappeared from the face of the earth.
She turned the key in the door and stepped inside. Her home was just as bare as it had been when she moved in. Fully furnished upon arrival, it gave the feel of a military barracks rather than a home. All the furniture was gray, the bed was more like a cot. Nothing was more than it needed to be. Her small box of personal items was all the personality the apartment had and what her father had sent her hadn’t been much. Still, it was home and she was grateful to be off the streets and away from protesters. They tended to grow more violent when the sun set and with the biting cold racking the city their outbursts and attacks grew more blatant.
CHAPTER TWO
After finishing a hot bath and slipping into a pair of sweats and a tank top, Reagan padded to the kitchen and stared at the mostly empty fridge. The brisk cold air sent a shiver over her still damp skin. Normally she’d be out with Jake, laughing and enjoying a beer at some dive bar in the Arts District, the part of the city where vampires preferred to congregate. Those plans went out the window the moment he stood at the elevator and couldn’t look her in the eyes. She slammed the door shut and groaned as she foraged through her pantry. Dinner tonight would have to be chips and an old bottle of wine she found hidden at the back of her cupboard.
Her second glass of red wine slid down her throat easier than the first, and the bag of chips was nearly gone when a knock at the door interrupted her quiet night. “Jake, I said I didn’t want to see you. Get it through your head, vampire.”
A growl echoed around her apartment from the other side of the door. Her breath hitched, she tiptoed to the door and peeked through the peephole. “Mr. O’Conner? What are you doing here?”
He was hunched over and slowly lifted his head to look at the hole. “I need your help.”
“Are you hurt?”
His lips pulled back into a snarl as he growled, “Why else would I be here?”
“I don’t know, maybe for some payback?” She pushed away from the door not liking the knot building in her stomach. “Go to the damn hospital; I’m not a healer.”
“Open the fucking door before I bleed to death on your doorstep. How would that look to the Agency’s Internal Affairs division?”
Her fists clenched. “Damn it,” she muttered as she opened the door. The sight of him made her gasp, his entire midsection was covered in blood again and his large body fell forward landing him face first in her entryway. It took her several long minutes to drag his hulking frame far enough into her apartment so she could shut the door. With a grunt, she rolled him onto his back and crouched over him “What the hell happened?”
“It attacked me again. It’s still attacking me. I need your help.”
Panic crept into her voice. “Who is attacking you?” She pulled up his shirt to find no visible wounds but blood kept pooling on his abdomen. “Where are you bleeding from?”
“Inside.”
“Internal bleeding? But there’s no wound, how is the blood getting there?”
“No.” He lifted his hand
to tap his head. “Inside.”
“Shit,” She cursed. “I don’t know how to help you. I’ve never—”
His breathing started to come in short bursts. “Just get in there and stop them.”
Without another word Reagan placed her hands at his temples and closed her eyes blocking out the world around her. Without the aid of the Agency’s special interrogation rooms she needed physical contact to enter a person’s Mindscape, and the contact with him unnerved her. The agency trained her to do one thing, hurt people into submission and when she was unfocused she had a problem distancing herself from other people’s minds. It wasn’t a fun thing to slip into someone’s mind just by shaking hands. But now she had to steel herself.
A familiar wave of nausea, a side effect of the Mindscape without the interrogation rooms, assaulted her as soon as she felt herself slip into Liam's subconsciousness. Again the Mindscape was erratic and volatile but this time when the wolf emerged it pawed the ground and started its way towards a crystal lined doorway in the distance.
"Is he on the other side?" She asked, instantly feeling stupid for talking to a wolf while expecting it to give an answer.
It shouldn't have surprised her that the beast turned slowly and nodded before leading her again. With a sense of urgency settling in, Reagan quickened her pace and kept up with the now loping beast.
On the other side of the door was a serene and peaceful meadow, but the skies were dark and foreboding. "Where is he?" She pleaded.
The animal threw his head back and let out a sorrowful howl before bolting to the middle of the field with Reagan quick on its heels.
Liam lay on the damp ground, she dropped down beside him and waved her hand over his abdomen while whispering a spell to reveal what was hidden. A purple shard of crystal jutted out from the alpha’s abdomen in the exact spot where the blood had drenched through his shirt in the physical world. “This is unreal. I’ve never seen an attack like this.”
Code Name: Fox / Mind Games (Syndicate Series Book 1) Page 10