by Jon Davis
Then I winced as fire alarms started going off, and to add insult to injury, the sprinkler system began spraying water. Managing to rouse myself enough to look around, I saw smoke wafting throughout the area. Thick though it was, it didn’t block my sight of Demon stalking towards me with a look of sheer hatred in his crystal blue eyes. I could see waves of heat rising from him. The spray of water hitting his body instantly turned to steam. His near-white hair was too distinctive.
I muttered, “Gods, seriously, not this.”
Brand snarled as he came toward me, intending to murder me. Instinct took over as adrenaline rushed through me and I yelled, “STOP!”
The smoke and steam in the air suddenly moved apart in waves. Brand’s feet flew out from under him as he flew back into the hallway. Yasmine stared at him and then at me, she was dumbfounded. She hadn’t expected me to let loose. I just grinned at her. Her shock gave me a chance to get to my feet. Not that it did me much good. I’d just been hit by what felt like a grenade blast. I was hurting, to say the least.
But glancing down at Angela gave me a reason to move. I looked over at Yasmine and saw that she had her hands on Alan’s head. His eyes were open. Terror was showing in them, and his face twitched with a grimace of agony every time the mad telepath pressed harder. Whimpers of fear escaped his lips with each pulse of agony throughout his body.
Whatever Yasmine was doing, it was driving him insane. But his fighting her was also keeping her from attacking me. I forced down my pain and pushed myself to move towards her. Unfortunately, I knew that I couldn’t scream again; it would collapse the whole section of the building. Then I saw Angela’s sword, and I knew how to stop Yasmine.
Yasmine saw the intent in my mind. Fear filled her eyes. Quickly, she looked to the back hall, where her pyrokinetic crazy boy lay. Flinching, Brand gasped with shock and started to rise. He managed to get to his feet, but he was swaying, I could tell that he was barely conscious.
The sonic bolt I had hit him with landed harder than I’d expected. But I knew I had to decide. I either go after Yasmine—letting Brand fire at us—or go after Brand and give Yasmine a chance to fully control Alan. It didn’t help that Alan cried out at that moment. He was still fighting Yasmine, but she was winning. Brand was shaking his head, trying to clear it. But once he started moving…
“Ah, fuck it!” I snarled, and against every raging pain in my body, I broke into a run. The shoulder aches were sharp on my right side, and I could feel something grinding. But none of that mattered one damn bit.
Demon looked up just as I hit him. Screaming with rage, I tackled him full on in a bear hug. We went flying back into the doctors’ lounge, sliding across the soaked carpet. Brand struggled with me. Ramming my good fist down, I hit him across the jaw once, twice, three times. With one more to make sure.
His eyes rolled up into his head, and he was out. Breathing hard, I looked at him. I was on top of him, and, for a moment, flashes of the times we’d fought or squabbled growing up came to mind. Unconscious, without that look of raw hatred on his face, he looked like the friend I’d known all my life. Brand Houseman of the elfin chin, white-blond hair, and slightly pointed ears.
It started deep in my throat. A growl—no, a roar of raw, unstoppable rage—blasted out me. “Yasmine, you fucking BITCH!”
The plate-glass windows shattered and blew outward. Soda machines exploded in sparks and liquid. The walls shattered into plaster dust and paint chips as my scream blasted in all directions but down. I knew why. I wanted Brand to live. If there was any way to save him, I had to try. At the last second, I had manipulated the direction of the sound. Too bad, it wasn’t something I could take time to enjoy learning more about.
Snarling, I stood, turning to look down the hallway toward her. I had destroyed the hallway. Cracks filled the walls and ceiling, and the doors had splintered into the rooms. Yet, somehow, at the end of the hallway, Yasmine was on her feet, Alan standing next to her. The look on his face was filled with pain, shame, fear, and a whole load of self-hate. Whatever she was doing, he knew what was happening and couldn’t stop it.
As I slowly walked toward them, I snapped, “Let him go! No more victims, you freaking bitch!”
Smiling with contempt in her eyes, Yasmine casually pulled Angela’s sword from behind her back and pointed it at Angela.
She said, “It has ended, Son’x. You lose. Now will you do what I say? Or do I stab Cheshyre?”
“How about neither?” someone said from the stairwell. Yasmine turned in confusion. I actually understood why she would be.
I muttered, “Dana? Why?”
Yasmine growled and brought the tip of the sword closer to Angela’s throat. “You really think a gun will kill me, Dana Sinclair? You have no idea what the Empowered are capable of.”
I froze as another voice said, “Drop the sword, Yasmine! This is stupid! We don’t need to be enemies, damn it!”
“Oh, but I think we do, Shield,” Yasmine said.
With a sneer, she dropped the sword. It clattered against the floor, splashing through water puddles. Then, before anyone could react, she grabbed the back of Alan’s neck. She said, “Away, boy. My plans have changed.”
“Yasmine! Don’t do it! Don’t!” I yelled.
Time slowed. Alan took in a sharp breath and screamed. I was hearing a man’s soul being ripped from him. He looked at me, pleading, begging me to stop what she was doing.
I heard him whisper, “Kill me…”
The two flashed out of sight in a bright sparkling halo of light, leaving Angela and the nurse unconscious on the floor. I didn’t need to look behind me to see that Alan had taken Brand, as well. And I was certain Kular was gone. I kept moving until I reached Angela. As Dana came up the stairwell, I was on my knees, taking Angela’s head gently into my good hand and embracing her. Come on, don’t die! Don’t you dare make me deal with all of this mess alone, damn it!
I felt a hand gently touch my neck. “Vaughn, come on. We have to get out of here.”
I barely glanced at her. “Not with Angela hurting like this! We need a doctor!”
Dana touched my shoulder. “Vaughn, they’re evacuating the hospital. We have to leave! No one can catch us up here! Goddess knows what they’d think! There’s a part of the building smashed out from this floor! They’ll think we’re terrorists!”
Angela groaned and began opening her eyes. I said softly, “Angel?”
She started to smile, but then her eyes fluttered and closed. Damn it, no! God, I’d only just met her! I wanted a chance!
Then BJ said, “Vaughn, she’s mind-shocked. I’ve seen this before. She should recover. Come on! We have to find a way out of here!”
I shot him a hard glare. “You knew! When we met, you knew I was an Empowered, and you knew Brand was, too!”
BJ blinked. Shaking his head, he said, “Come on, we can deal with it later.”
Dana squeezed my shoulder, but pulled back when I hissed from the pain.
She went on, saying, “I told you, he has a surprise every time he shows. Come on. I’m not happy with this, either. Let’s go.”
I looked at her, then, gritting my teeth against the near raging pain in my shoulder, I lifted Angela into my arms.
Straightening up, I glared at them for a moment. Then, I said, “Come on. I know a way out.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Getting out of the place wasn’t easy. BJ had the short sword at the back of his belt as we went down, and occasionally it would make a clunk noise when it tapped a wall. My enhanced hearing would turn it into a booming noise every so often. Yay, another ache to add to my list of pains. But I couldn’t exactly tell him to hold on to it. He had the nurse in his arms. For someone who looked so thin, he held her pretty well. I could’ve carried her, but I didn’t want to. Angela was in my arms. And she was too important to me.
But the hard part came when we reached the first floor and found two cops making a final check for stragglers. That would be u
s. And I don't think they would like the weapons we were carrying. And even if we hid them, there was still the fact that Angela was semi-conscious while I looked like I’d been caught in the explosion upstairs.
My clothes were shredded, bruises covered my body, and if anyone touched my shoulder, I would’ve screamed. And people would probably go deaf if I did that right now. We stayed out of sight and tried to figure out what story to tell people. Dana made the decision for the four of us.
She said, “Let me handle this. Time to use the fact that I'm the daughter of the police chief. Vaughn, get them out of here. I’ll have to get the car anyway, and then I’ll join you wherever you’ll be.”
I said, “We’ll be at the northwest side of the building—there’s an old concrete wall between the hospital and a large, two-story yellow house. Be careful.”
She grinned and, with BJ’s help, she helped support the nurse under her arm. Together, the two of them went down the stairwell as Dana yelled for help.
We waited a few moments longer as they left the building. Once I was sure no one else was around, I gently motioned for BJ to head down the stairs.
As we headed past the lobby toward a back hall, he said, “Why didn’t we just go out there with Dana? No one knows what she really is. We can tell them that she wasn’t in, and we were just leaving when something exploded.”
I sighed, shifting Angela for a moment, pushing down the pain. “Because, Shield, we don’t know what Yasmine is going to do next. She could always pop in and kill everyone in sight just for the fun of it. Come on, BJ! Think about it; she has Alan under her control! What do you think could happen in a large crowd?”
With a shrug, BJ acquiesced and said, “That is true. So what’s next?”
Moving ahead of him, I sighed. “Just follow me.”
Riverlite’s hospital covered a large city block area, and, like all buildings, it had entrances and exits that weren’t shown on building maps. I knew a few of the hidden ones because, like any curious kid, I had grown up exploring the place and places like it. Hey, it was a public building, with people using it night and day. Who would notice a couple of kids like Brand and me late at night? We were never caught, and small towns are boring at times, so exploring buildings was a great pastime for us.
I used my childhood knowledge of the hospital to get us down to the freight elevator and into a dock area in the back. Walking past a furnace and emergency water tanks, I led us to an old, rusty-looking maintenance door. From what I could tell from the old signs attached to it, maintenance workers used to take yard work equipment outside through this door back when the hospital had first been built.
But the neighborhood around the hospital had expanded too close to the door for it to be useful anymore. We opened the door, banging it against the tall concrete panelled wall belonging to the owners of the house next door. There was just enough space to make our way outside and get to the street.
There, BJ and I waited for Dana. Silently, I held Angela in my lap. I didn’t say anything for a while. And frankly, I wasn’t in any mood to talk to BJ. Too much had happened for me to be civil right now. He sensed that and went to stand in the shadow of a large maple tree. I just sat, looking at the blue and red flashing lights reflecting off the windows of the homes across from the hospital.
I noticed that people were watching the spectacle going on. I couldn’t blame them; it was probably quite a show. I realized that we were lucky that no one had noticed us. Then again, it was night, and we were in deep shadow. Somebody would have to be looking directly at us to see anything. If we did nothing to call attention to ourselves, like argue, we’d be out of here soon enough.
“How is she?” BJ asked me in a whisper. I just shrugged.
“Breathing is steady, but who knows what Yasmine did to her. I mean, that lady packs a mean punch to the head.” I finally answered.
I hugged Angela closer to me. What else could I do? Then I studied BJ, taking him in. It all fit now. I now understood the feeling of being watched when I held the flash drive that he had given to me. Then there were Angela’s comments about some guy that she and Alan knew in San Francisco. And lastly, there was the tingling I’d gotten when we shook hands. I had felt it with Angela and Alan, too. The problem was, until now, it hadn’t connected in my mind as to what it meant.
I said, “Shield…that’s you?”
BJ stayed silent for a moment and then said, “Yep, and Dana’s not happy about it either. But, never mind that for now, how’re you holding up?”
Sarcasm filled my words as I said, “Oh, my hometown is under attack, my parents are probably wondering where I am, and my best friend just tried to kill me. For the third time, if you count the attack on Main Street. And I’m caught up in some sort of civil war between two groups of superhumans.”
I glared at him. “So how’s your day been?”
His eyes widened. But he gave back as good as he got. He said, “Kinda sucks. A crazy ex-whore just took one of my friends. And she has some crazy plan we haven’t figured out yet about dominating humans and Empowered. And I can’t get a hold of the mystery woman who started all this in the first place!”
Narrowing his eyes, BJ glared back at me and said, “So, bad day all around?”
Angela moaned softly. I reached up and gently ran a finger down the side of her face. “Angela? Angel…”
Slowly, Angela started opening her eyes. BJ came over and bent down in front of us, looking anxious. “Hey short, bouncy, and curly, it’s time to wake up, sweetie.”
Angela looked around, then her eyes widened in shock as she cried out, “Alan? Where’s Alan?”
“Angel! Calm down. Don’t do anything rash!” I said. No, I really didn’t need her disappearing. That would be hard to explain when Dana got back.
She glared at me. “Don’t call me that! It’s Angela! You cornhusker! Do I look like David Boreanaz?”
I chuckled at the comment. “Sorry, how are you feeling?”
“Where is Alan?” she demanded. BJ and I looked at each other, at a loss for what to say. We needed to keep her from panicking and popping off to who knows where.
BJ answered finally. “He’s fighting her. Yasmine grabbed him, but he’s fighting her. I know he is; I saw his face.”
I watched as Angela dealt with losing Alan. She was going through the same thing I had with Brand, and she was working through it right in front of me. She was stronger than I had been. I had retreated when I’d thought Brand was dead. I’d frozen. She was pushing on, hoping that there was a way to get him back safe. Determination filled her eyes.
She said, “Okay. We’ll deal with it. We’ll contact Parry. We need to get the conclave together. We have to discover who’s on Yasmine’s side.”
Just then, a red sedan pulled up to the curb and its horn honked. People on the road got out of the way, not really paying attention to us. And why would they? All the action was going on in the parking lot near the emergency room entrance. That was a good thing. Just the same, we did our best not to attract attention. BJ had the sword under the duster, and I had my arm around Angela if she needed support. We quickly piled in.
Once in the car, none of us said much. In the backseat, Angela and BJ just whispered to each other about the panic it would cause in the conclave when they heard about this.
In the passenger seat, I began to worry about how I could stop Brand before he went too far. Way too far. Then I realized how stupid that thought was. He was the one who had blown up Main Street. Brand had redefined what the words ‘too far’ meant. He was going to be devastated when he was free of Yasmine’s control. Of course, that also meant that I had to find a way to do just that.
I pushed down the worries and glanced over at Dana, noticing that her hands were tightly gripping the steering wheel and her face was white against her red hair. From a flash of light in the rearview mirror, I saw the stormy look in her eyes.
So naturally, I asked, “You handling?”
She gav
e me a barely noticeable nod. “My brother shows up and tells me he’s a part of some organized underground movement of super powered teenagers. Then he freaks out, telling me we have to go to the hospital and stop this crazy woman with telepathic power who can strip a city bare of thought if she wants.”
I looked at BJ. “How’d you know we were in trouble? How’d you know about me this morning, for that matter?”
BJ gave a mysterious smile and said, “Some secrets must be kept, lest the sanity trembles.”
Dana groaned, glanced at BJ, and gave a pensive laugh. “Why yes, Vaughn, I’m feeling just wonderful, can’t you tell? But the cheesecake was good.”
My stomach rumbled. I winced. She looked at me and started to chuckle. I joined in, and after a few seconds, we were both laughing, breaking the tension. A person could handle only so much before going crazy. I realized that I was dealing with this insanity the same way that soldiers did in the foxholes in between battles. Then I realized that this was a war. Damn.
Bah, it didn’t matter. I continued laughing and said, “What? I’m eighteen! I’m a guy! Feed me!”
That brought chuckles from BJ. He started to open his mouth when Dana snapped her fingers and said, “Hush, you! I know your sick brain!”
BJ blinked and slumped back, looking put upon. He muttered, “Meep!”
My jaw dropped for a second, and I looked back at him and asked, “Did you just say ‘Meep?’”
“Meep!” BJ said.
Angela, however, wasn’t getting the humor. “Hello! My brother is missing, and we have no idea what that crazy telepath is going to do next! Can we possibly focus a little here?”
Dana sighed. “It’s likely that, now that she’s got Alan, she’s going to gather her forces. I’m just guessing, though, since I haven’t exactly been told everything…”
I nodded. She muttered something in Gaelic. Angela ignored that and said, “Oh God, he’s going to pull everyone to her, and—”