Myths & Magic: A Science Fiction and Fantasy Collection

by Kerry Adrienne

  “I’m not much of a reader, but I can add one plus one and get two. You said your house has been on the market since August. I know your parents died in July. Sakti broke in here and killed them, right?”

  Sofia set the spoon down and pressed her fists against the hollow ache in the pit of her stomach.

  “You’re not alone in this.” Kyle sat across from her. “Sakti turned many children into orphans that day—”

  “Yes, but how many of those children were telekinetics?”

  Kyle frowned. “What were you planning to do? Pick up the terrorists and throw them through a window?”

  “Why not? Why did I get the short end of the stick? I have mutant powers, but they’re wimpy, and I still get categorized as a potential threat with all those uber-alphas—”

  Kyle leaned back in his seat. “Want to know what I see?”

  She was in love, but she would not be charmed. Sofia folded her arms across her chest. “What do you see?”

  “A woman who is smart enough to use ‘carnival tricks’ to accomplish exactly what she needs. You didn’t need awesome telekinetic powers to draw Lydia’s attention away from me. You didn’t tear down brick walls in the warehouse, but you got a hell of a long way with your escape plan.”

  “Until you showed up and screwed it up.”

  Kyle shrugged. “If we discuss it ahead of time, we’ll be less likely to screw it up next time.”

  Her gaze flicked to movement outside the window. On the far side of the street, a man in a bulky brown coat walked past her house. It was odd; she thought she had seen that same man walk past several minutes earlier. With a frown, she shook her head to dismiss that stray thought and refocused on the conversation. “There won’t be a next time, Kyle.”

  “Of course there will be. You’re a do-gooder. You can’t help yourself.” He wore a faint smile on his lips. “The point is, you’re doing amazing things with your little bit of telekinetic power.”

  He actually sounded…approving? Had she stepped into a dream? Nevertheless, the shock of his seeming acceptance wasn’t enough to melt the guilt. She shook her head. “It wasn’t enough to do what I needed when I needed it most. My father—” Her voice caught.

  Kyle leaned forward and covered her hands with his. “What happened with your father?”

  “They killed my mother first. I was too shocked to react, but with my father, I could see the bullet. I could have stopped it, but somehow, it just wouldn’t connect.” She squeezed her eyes shut, replaying the moment once more. “I wasn’t fast enough, or focused enough. I don’t know. I just know I screwed up, and my father…maybe he didn’t have to die.” A heavy sigh tore out of her. “I just wish I could do more.”

  “And saving both our lives doesn’t count?”

  “Picking a lock on a handcuff isn’t the same thing as creating a psychic wall to stop a bullet.”

  “It was spectacular enough for me. You need to ease up on yourself. Staying calm is half the battle. Everything else you can make up as you go.”

  “I’d be worried about my luck running out.” Sofia reached for a piece of roast chicken. A small frown twisted her lips as she studied the passersby moving past her window. Several of them were on their third or fourth rounds past her house. “Did you ever get the microchip and vials of Cardorin back from the Rue Marcha?”

  He shook his head. “The warehouse is under wraps right now. FEMA and the FBI got involved.”

  Sofia frowned. “But the microchip—”

  “If it’s there, they’ll find it.”

  “And the people in the warehouse?”

  “Many died, but the FBI didn’t find Luis.”

  “Luis?”

  “Luis Sanchez, one of the chief lieutenants in the Rue Marcha. The one who hit you.”

  Sofia’s gaze traveled past Kyle’s shoulder. Her heartbeat accelerated. “I know where he is.”

  “Huh? Where?”

  “He just walked past my house.”

  Chapter 21

  Kyle stared at the man walking on the far side of street for several moments before the blur of features through the lace curtain resolved into Luis Sanchez.

  “He’s not the only one,” Sofia said. “At least three more men walked past the house several times in the past fifteen minutes, but I wasn’t sure, until I saw him.”

  She was observant, but he would have to work on getting her to trust her instincts and voice her suspicions sooner.

  Kyle ducked behind the curtains. “We have to get out.”

  “Okay.” Sofia swallowed her fear. “Through the back door?”

  “It’s probably watched as well, but it’ll be better than the front. Let’s go.”

  “And Danyael?”

  Kyle froze. Danyael. Damn. Danyael was in no condition to move, which meant, quite simply, that they could not leave unless they wanted to spend the rest of their natural lives hiding from Zara. Furthermore, Sofia’s conscience would never allow her to abandon Danyael. Kyle jerked his head at the stairs. “Go to Danyael. Do whatever you have to do to wake him. He’ll be able to protect you.”

  “What about you?” Sofia demanded.

  “I’ll buy you time.”

  She shook her head, “No, no, I’m not—”

  Hell, she had picked a fine time to start arguing with him. “Go!” He reached for his Glock. Another glance out the window allowed him to count three Rue Marcha, including Luis. Assuming an equal number coming in through the back door—

  He gritted his teeth. Judging by the bulky swell of their ill-fitting jackets, he was outnumbered and outgunned. Got to make every shot count.

  He spared a final glance over his shoulder. Sofia stared at him, a stubborn set to her mouth. He pulled her close and planted a quick kiss on her lips. “Go. Hurry.”

  Something in her eyes before she turned and raced up the stairs warned him that she was not happy about being dismissed, and that if they both survived, she would have plenty to say about it.

  Kyle glanced out the window again. Luis was nowhere to be seen. The remaining two Rue Marcha were walking up the pavement to the door, like two men paying a neighborly visit. They huddled close. One fiddled with the lock.

  Kyle drew in a deep breath. Not only did he have to make every shot count, he had to make sure each shot landed, and preferably stayed, in the body of the Rue Marcha. High velocity bullets could travel through walls. With a bit of luck, the town houses on either side would be empty, their residents at work, but considering how his luck had recently worked out, he would not count on it.

  The lock clicked. The door swung open quietly.

  He raised his gun and leaned forward.

  There was nothing quiet about the bullet that smashed into the wall beside him, from behind him. He ducked and rolled forward. His foot slammed into the partially open front door, kicking it shut once again. He twisted around and fired at the four men emerging from the kitchen door behind him. Hell, he had counted on a warning—curses as the men hit their heads against the ridiculously low shelf—but he had not even heard them enter.

  One of the men collapsed with a grunt. The others fired back as Kyle dove behind the couch.

  Bullets ripped through upholstery. Puffs of polyester stuffing rose into the air.

  The front door swung open. Two men entered, assault rifles set against their shoulders.

  Five on one.

  And he still did not see Luis.

  Kyle braced his back against the wall. With both feet, he pushed against the couch, sending it sliding forward into the two men at the front door. They stumbled back.

  From the side, a strong arm seized him around the neck and wrenched the gun from his hand.

  He managed to flip his first attacker over him, but two others were on him before he could regain his balance. He drove an elbow into one man’s stomach and sent him reeling. It bought him precious time to tackle the second man.

  The man suddenly stiffened. Pain exploded through Kyle’s left side.


  Stunned, he stared to his attacker as the man’s eyes glazed. A crimson stain blossomed across the man’s white shirt. Kyle stepped back, his hand going to the bleeding flesh wound in his side as the man toppled sideways. The man was dead before he hit the ground.

  Luis Sanchez stood tall in the space vacated by his henchman. He smiled at Kyle. His weapon, a bulky silencer around the muzzle, was pointed at Kyle.

  The leader of the Rue Marcha shot through his own man to hurt Kyle.

  The two men behind Luis—the same two Kyle had repeatedly thwarted in their attempt to enter the front door—muscled their way forward and wrestled Kyle to the floor, pinning him down. Two others, whom Kyle had briefly shaken off, rose to their feet.

  “Where is the antidote?” Luis demanded.

  “Why?” Kyle sneered. “You dying?”

  “You stopped my men at Proficere Labs, didn’t you? You were looking for the antidote. Is the girl still alive?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  Luis’s eyes glittered. Apparently, he did not like his questions answered with questions, and for that reason alone, Kyle intended to keep doing so.

  A muffled sound came from the second floor.

  Luis’s gaze darted to the stairs. He looked back at Kyle, his familiar smirk on his lips. “Keep him there,” he ordered his two men, and nodded at the other two. They turned and ran up the stairs, ahead of Luis.

  Kyle wrenched hard, but could not pull out of the vice-like grips that held him down. “Sofia. Run!” he shouted.

  Sofia struggled to support Danyael’s weight. He was Kyle’s height, though he was not as heavily muscled. Still, he was nearly a foot taller than she was, and at that moment, he was not able to stand upright.

  She had shaken him hard enough to wake him from his near coma, but not even the whispered urgency in her tone jolted alertness back into him. He slumped against her, eyes closed. Every now and again, his eyes opened, but his gaze was unfocused.

  The sound of gunshots cut through the silence of the house. Muffled sounds of a tussle, then male voices, edged with violence, filled the house.

  A familiar voice shouted, “Sofia. Run!”

  The only “running” option meant leaving Danyael and Kyle. Sofia’s response was a resounding “hell, no” to that order.

  Footsteps pounded up the stairs.

  Danyael’s eyes flashed open. His body tensed as if struck by the sudden surge of emotions from the Rue Marcha. He pulled sharply away from Sofia, then reached out and touched the first man who rushed into the master bedroom.

  An expression of inconsolable loneliness purged reason and intelligence from the man’s eyes. Sofia’s mouth dropped open. She pressed herself against the bedroom wall and watched the vivid play of emotions race across the man’s face, one after another. Stunned betrayal. Wrenching heartache. Unrequited love. Endless moments of mute misery and silent despair, stretching out into forever. Ingrained distrust winning the war over a desperate yearning for human connection. The brutal silencing of his needs, of his soul.

  Danyael’s soul?

  Sofia’s gaze tore to the alpha empath for a split second and then flashed back to the Rue Marcha henchman as he groaned. Stripped of humanity, it was a terrible sound. The anguish that flared through the man’s eyes quivered on the brink of madness.

  Without fear, he stepped over the edge.

  She would never have believed that she could see a mind snap, but in that moment, she did. Madness drove the clinging shreds of sanity away. The man reached for his gun.

  Sofia threw herself between Danyael and the man before she realized that she and Danyael were never at risk.

  Without hesitation, the man placed the gun against his temple and pulled the trigger. Blood, flesh, and brain matter splattered over the adjacent wall.

  Sofia cringed, closing her eyes briefly. Her mind reeled.

  The hushed whispers, the rumors about Danyael were true. He could kill with a single touch. The emotional trauma he had survived, the lingering heartache he had learned to live with, amplified by his empathic powers, were devastating enough to drive others to suicide.

  What she had not expected to see was the sorrow and regret in Danyael’s dark-eyed gaze.

  Another man ran into the room. His eyes flared wide with equal parts shock and horror.

  Sofia recoiled when Danyael touched him. He stumbled back as his emotions crumbled before the dominant power of an alpha empath. He too reached for his weapon and raised it to his temple. His finger tightened on the trigger. An expression of relief, of peace flashed across his face a moment before his body joined his companion’s on the floor.

  Luis burst into the room.

  “Danyael!” Sofia shouted a warning, but it was too late.

  Luis pistol-whipped Danyael across his face. Danyael stumbled against the wall and crumpled unconscious to the ground when Luis brought the butt of his pistol down on the back of Danyael’s head.

  Luis turned on Sofia. His gun pointed unwaveringly at her. “The antidote. Where is it?”

  Sofia’s gaze darted to the empty syringe on the bedside table. “It’s gone.”

  Luis’s face mottled with anger. He seized the syringe, stared at it, and then flung it aside. It landed in front of her. “All of it? He wasted it all on you?” A moment later, a shrewd gleam entered his eyes. “It’s in you, no? I take you with me, and we’ll find a way to get it out of you.”

  Sofia shook her head. “No, you won’t.” She snatched up the syringe.

  Luis burst out laughing. “What you gonna do with that? You and your little injection against me, my weapons, and my men?”

  Sofia pulled out the plunger, filling the syringe with air.

  Luis lunged at her. She stumbled back on the bed—the bed where her parents had died.

  She would not die there.

  Carnival tricks were all she could do, but sometimes, carnival tricks were enough. Sofia stabbed the syringe into the bulging vein at the side of Luis’s neck, but he was faster than she expected. He slapped her arms away and raised his hand to swipe the syringe out of his neck.

  Focus! Her telekinetic powers slammed into the plunger of the syringe, releasing a bubble of air into Luis’s bloodstream. Moments later, the syringe tumbled to the floor.

  “Hah! You think you can hurt me?” Luis mocked. He pinned her down to the bed. His rank breath warmed the side of her neck, but she refused to turn her head. “You’re his girl, aren’t you?” he sneered. “What say I make you scream nice and good? What do you think that would do to him?”

  She could not see the air embolism, but Kyle had taught her to trust her psychic touch. She did not need eyes to see. She understood human anatomy; she had spent hours staring at detailed anatomical maps of the arteries and veins, connecting like complex waterways, in the human body. She knew exactly how to guide the bubble of air to the brain.

  Luis’s hands tore her sweater off. A chill trembled over her body, but she did not react. Almost there.

  Directed by Sofia’s telekinetic powers, the air embolism bobbed in rivers of crimson, propelled up specific channels. The walls of the blood vessel narrowed. The air bubble lodged firmly, like a boulder blocking canyon walls. The gush of blood around it slowed to a trickle and then stopped entirely.

  Luis’s heartbeat flickered, a scarcely perceptible skip.

  Sofia swung her legs up and kicked Luis away.

  She should not have been able to move a man who weighed two times as much as she did, but she desperately wanted to get him moving in the right direction before the air embolism cut off blood flow to his brain and paralyzed his body.

  Luis swayed. For several moments, he teetered on his heels, rocking unsteadily from side to side. His eyes glazed and rolled back in his head. He toppled backward, mighty Goliath felled by an air bubble.

  “Sofia!” Kyle’s cry preceded him up the stairs. He burst into the room.

  Sofia shot to her feet. He wrapped his arms around her, and his
stunned gaze swept across the room. “How did you—?”

  She twisted around in his arms and looked at Luis. “I paid attention in anatomy class. Danyael…Danyael did the rest.” As she moved, her arm pressed against a wet patch on his black shirt. She pulled her hand away to find it smeared crimson. “You got shot?” Her jaw dropped. “Again? We have to get you to—”

  He grunted. “I know it’s starting to seem like the standard operating procedure around here, but it’s not. I’m usually better at not getting shot. I’ll have to call Zara and Xin to let them know what happened here anyway. They can send a medic over to take care of me. Is Danyael all right?

  “Just unconscious, I think. Luis hit him pretty hard on the back of his head.”

  “Lucky for us he didn’t kill Danyael, or we’d probably all be dead from Danyael’s empathic super nova.”

  She pulled back from him and stared up into his face. “Are you sure you’re okay? Are we okay?”

  “Yeah. We’re clear. The shots up here distracted Luis’s men just long enough for me to break free and take them out.”

  Her breath shuddered out of her. “So it’s over?”

  “Yeah, except for the paperwork, but we’ll leave that to Zara and Xin.”

  “Let’s get Danyael back to the bed. I want to check his head. Maybe I can reduce the bruising and the headache he’s going to wake up with.”

  “Fine.” Kyle moved away from Sofia. He hefted Danyael over his shoulder and lowered the alpha empath onto the bed. He stepped aside as Sofia, her sweater hastily tugged over her head and slightly askew, leaned over Danyael and probed the swelling knot at the back of his head. “I guess I’ll go call Zara’s cleanup crew,” Kyle said. “It would suck if Danyael woke up and felt this compulsive need to heal people and undo everything we did.”

  He looked around the room. His breath caught. Sofia knew he had come to the same realization she had. The slaughter in the room was beyond Danyael’s empathic healing capabilities. Blood splattered on the walls and carpets. Three bodies lay prone in death.