Perfect Weapon

by Jade Kerrion

  Danyael stepped forward. "Peter, where are the others?"

  "Dead," Peter said, teeth gritted. "The attack on the two barracks killed most of them. Those who tried to save them were killed when Sakti broke through the electric fence. The survivors, including the general, are holed up in the command center."

  "Is Major Chandler with the general?"

  The expression in Peter's eyes was distant as he reached out through telepathic channels. "Yes."

  Danyael nodded. "Good. Come with us."

  "Where are you going?" Peter asked, falling in beside Danyael

  "To get the super soldiers. What are we up against?"

  "I don't know. No one can get a good count. More than us, that's for certain. Our emergency calls aren't getting through."

  "That's because the rest of D.C. is under attack. Do you know if Sakti broke into the super soldier barracks?"

  Peter shrugged. "No idea. They don't know about the super soldiers, though. They wouldn't have had any reason to attack the research annex."

  "All right. I need you to shield Zara and stay close to Reyes. Keep him safe."

  The group made their way to the research annex without incident, their quick pace limited only by Danyael's limping stride. The illusion of normality was deceptive, the silence eerie. Danyael paused outside the steel door to the super soldier barracks. His heartache was buried, the pain locked away. The peace he needed he found deep within, an acceptance of himself and of his deadly empathic powers.

  He held his key card up against the security panel. The door slid open. "Come with me," Danyael said quietly into the semi-bestial face of a super soldier glowering at him. "I need your help."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  While Scar and a small group of super soldiers stayed beside Danyael, the others roamed ahead like rambunctious toddlers on a field trip. He had no illusions as to his ability to control them over large distances, but he had not accounted for the control that Scar and the other leaders had over the larger team. When one strayed too far ahead or lingered too far behind, he was recalled with a grumpy hiss from one of the leaders.

  The group ran into the first Sakti terrorist, and the soldiers looked back at Danyael for confirmation. He nodded. The fractional incline of his head was a death sentence. With absent-minded efficiency, the soldiers tore the startled human apart like children fighting over a rag doll. Danyael looked away as blood spilled on the white tiles, grateful that the man's screams ended quickly.

  "We have to hurry," Peter called out. He led the way, while Galahad, Zara, and Reyes brought up the rear. "Sakti has almost broken through to the command center. The team's out of ammo. They'll be throwing chairs next. I can move faster; I'm going on ahead." He pushed past the super soldiers and disappeared around the corner.

  Danyael gritted his teeth against the pain that ripped along the length of his leg and lower back. He quickened his pace but stumbled against a wall when his leg collapsed beneath him.

  "I've got you," Zara's voice breathed into his ear. Her arm snaked around his waist and she tugged him upright. She had caught him, supported him, more times than he could recall, sometimes with loathing, frequently with scorn. She met his gaze, her violet eyes gleaming with amusement. "It's just like old times."

  Scraped male pride had him responding bitterly, "If you're lucky, there won't be a next time." He pulled away from her, steadied the crutch beneath his arm, and struggled past her.

  Zara caught his arm and swung him around. "I'm just trying to help."

  "I don't need your help. If you're trying to appease your guilty conscience, go in peace, as they say. I'm fine. I don't need to be saved."

  "You're throwing your lot in with the man who destroyed your friendship with Lucien?"

  Fresh agony seared against Danyael's psychic shields. "That's between the general and me."

  He brushed past her. The super soldiers flowed around Zara, who took her place beside Danyael. He had to focus. Between the pain and his exhaustion, he had precious little energy to spare. He could not afford to waste it on Zara Itani.

  "Incoming!" Peter scrambled around a corner and raced toward Danyael. Bullets and other makeshift missiles bounced off his telekinetic shield, ricocheting in different directions.

  Danyael ducked as a heavy piece of wood, spinning like the blades of a helicopter, swept through the air toward him. It took him only a split second to realize that he could not move fast enough and impact was inevitable.

  With a snarl, Scar swept the piece of wood from the air before it hit Danyael. It smashed into the wall, fracturing into a spray of splinters. Next to Scar, one of the super soldiers howled, a cry that the others picked up. They galloped past Peter and threw themselves at the startled Sakti team, scattering them. The super soldiers had the advantage of surprise; they needed it. They killed the first three terrorists before the others rallied, and the battle turned. An alpha telepath from Sakti cut a swath through the ranks of super soldiers, driving them back with a single psychic blast through their unshielded minds.

  Danyael lurched forward. He had to get closer. He had to make physical contact to stop the telepath.

  Zara grabbed his arm, holding him back. "You stay out of it." She raced past him to join Galahad who was already cutting his way through Sakti's ranks with matching daggers in his hands.

  Breathing hard, Peter sagged against the wall next to Danyael. "I thought I'd thin out their ranks. Thanks for the save." He shook his head. "They don't take much encouraging, do they?"

  Two super soldiers teamed up to take down a man. One slashed across the man's stomach, tearing gashes that gushed with blood. The other pulled the man's head back and ripped out his throat.

  Danyael's soft sigh mixed guilt with the burden of necessity. "No, they don't."

  "I actually meant those two."

  Danyael followed Peter's gaze. In spite of himself, he smiled. He appreciated beauty in many forms, and there were few things more beautiful than Zara Itani doing what she did best---killing.

  With a gun in one hand and a blood-streaked dagger in the other, Zara dropped to one knee and swept her other leg out in a wide circle. A woman went down with a shriek, her machine gun clattering uselessly to the floor, out of her grasp. Zara plunged the blade into the woman's chest; the woman's cry collapsed into a bloody gurgle.

  Graceful as a dancer, Zara yanked the dagger out of the woman and twisted around sharply to fire a bullet into the leg of the man coming up behind her. The man screamed, coiling over his injury as if to protect himself. Her eyes cool, her face expressionless, Zara fired again. The second bullet found its mark in the back of the man's skull.

  Next to Zara, Galahad, his arms crossed at the wrists, ducked effortlessly underneath a man's fist. The man's attack had missed by a fraction of an inch; Galahad's perfect kinesthetic senses allowed him to escape injury by a hairsbreadth. The three-inch blades that Galahad held between the middle and ring fingers of both hands seemed small in comparison to Zara's six-inch dagger, but they were deadly extensions of his body. He slashed outward across the man's upper thighs with surgical precision, severing femoral arteries. The man's pants turned crimson in a heartbeat. The man staggered back, his face ashen, but Galahad---the angel of death---had moved on, seeking his next victim.

  Separately, Zara and Galahad were beautiful; together, they were stunning---Zara's dark hair and exotic beauty a stark contrast to Galahad's pale, sculptured good looks. They had more in common than an excessive claim on physical beauty. If Zara was like fire---dazzling, brilliant, living flame---then Galahad was like the night wind---invisible, unstoppable, everywhere in general and nowhere in particular, with a chill bite that could cut through skin and bone. They were perfectly matched, a natural disaster seeking a place to happen.

  Danyael gritted his teeth. I have no right to be jealous. Jealousy was for people who had some basis for believing that they presented a viable alternative. He didn't. Galahad's accusations notwithstanding, nothing about the
many reasons why he and Zara were incompatible had changed since they had last met.

  Logic, however, had little sway on emotions. I loved her. I could have made her happy, but---and there was the brutal and bitter truth---not without my empathic powers.

  Without moving a muscle, his expression schooled into impassiveness, Danyael unleashed the vast power of an alpha empath. It whispered, subtle and irresistible, through the survivors of the fight just as the super soldiers killed the last of the Sakti terrorists and turned to seek new targets. It sliced the crimson edge off their bloodlust. The fangs bared in Zara and Galahad's direction relaxed; the glitter in their eyes faded. "Come back," he said, his voice quiet.

  The super soldiers came obediently like trained hounds returning to the feet of their master.

  The group hurried down the corridors toward the command center, with Zara and Galahad leading the way. Danyael stopped them before they rounded the last corner. "Let me go first."

  Zara scowled. "No."

  "The soldiers will come with me. They'll attack if they see I'm in danger."

  Her eyes widened. "Is that how you're controlling them? You're putting yourself directly in harm's way? God, you haven't changed. You're as suicidal and masochistic as ever."

  "Stop." He slammed her back against the wall. Furious black eyes locked on startled violet. "You can think whatever you want, feel whatever you want about me, but that doesn't give you the right to be cruel." Belatedly, he realized that he had been able to catch her off guard only because she had not expected him to strike back. He fought to control his temper. "Zara, I need to focus on what I'm doing. Don't---" He caught himself before the word "weaken" slipped past his lips. "Don't distract me."

  Danyael pushed away from the wall and hobbled down the corridor. The super soldiers trailed after him. He turned the corner first and sent out a blast of fear, short but intense, at the large group of terrorists clustered around the partially destroyed blast doors. Men and women recoiled, cringing in terror. By the time they recovered, the super soldiers were on them.

  The wide corridor became impassable, consumed by the large bulks of super soldiers striking out indiscriminately at anything in their path. They forged ahead of Danyael, driving panic before them and leaving blood in their wake. Sakti's pretense at an organized assault fell apart; survival was both paramount and unlikely. Sakti had far superior numbers, but the odds slowly shifted, one death at a time, until someone shouted, "Kill the empath!"

  Sakti's focus changed, and the heart of the battle shifted. A small group of super soldiers fell back to form a protective circle around Danyael, but the sheer weight of numbers thinned their defenses. A super soldier collapsed in a hail of bullets, and a terrorist stepped through the gap.

  Several feet away from Danyael, Scar roared. The super soldier ripped a man's head off his shoulders and then scrambled, skidding across the blood-streaked tiles, in a desperate attempt to reach Danyael.

  Salvation, Danyael knew, would not arrive in time. Unarmed and unafraid, Danyael reached out and touched the terrorist's bare hand as the man swung his machine gun around, his finger tightening on the trigger. The man, a telepath, was psychically shielded, but it did not matter. Psychic shields provided no defense against direct contact from an alpha empath.

  Emotions from memories raw with pain---memories of his ruined childhood, of his lost year at ADX, and of friendships ravaged by betrayal---churned past Danyael's internal and external psychic shields. The emotions channeled through physical contact. They crested and then burst through the telepath's psychic shields like a tsunami.

  The telepath's eyes widened and then blurred with tears. A low moan of inconceivable anguish rippled from his throat. His grip tightened, the muzzle of his machine gun shifted, and he pulled the trigger. Bullets entered the base of his jaw and exploded through the top of his skull. Blood sprayed. The telepath slumped to the ground, a marionette with strings cut.

  Danyael closed his eyes briefly. Sorrow pulsed through him, but denial and horror lay mercifully quiescent. He understood, finally, what Reyes had once told him many months prior. It's not about choosing one path over the other, once and for all time. It's about accepting everything about who you are, and knowing that each time you act, you get to make a choice. That's freedom. That's true freedom.

  When he opened his eyes, he found Zara's gaze on him. "You've changed."

  Yes, he had. Pain made him powerful, and in that moment, his pain and his power would make the difference between life and death.

  When other terrorists broke through the cordon of super soldiers, Danyael reached out, and with a touch, drove them to suicidal madness from the amplified pain of his emotions. The tiles were slick with blood, the floor strewn with bodies, when the fighting finally ended. Danyael tallied the cost of lives to the assault group and to Sakti. He had lost five of the super soldiers in fighting his way through to the command center, and another seven were injured, two critically. Sakti had sacrificed at least four score in the fight, perhaps more. Most were dead, but some were still alive, grievously injured. Scar, bleeding from bullet wounds in his left arm, returned to Danyael's side. The ferocious expression on the super soldier's face transformed first into a pitiful pout and then eased into a smile as Danyael healed the injury.

  Peter rushed forward and pounded on the blast doors. "Open up. It's clear out here."

  The blast door ground open haltingly, its faltering electronics supplemented by the strength of several backs. Peter stepped into the command center, his face paling. "Damn."

  Less than ten soldiers stood upright. The rest curled on the bloodstained carpet, protected behind a barricade of furniture, Amanda among them. Danyael knelt beside her and swept his healing powers over her, halting the blood loss from the two bullet wounds she had sustained. The bullets, however, would have to be surgically removed before he closed the injury. Unable to fully heal her, he dulled her pain, gritting his teeth against the echo of her pain as it pulsed through him. Her blue eyes locked on his briefly, before fluttering closed.

  He glanced around, his heart sinking when he counted the number of injured. "Where's Carson?"

  "Dead." The general holstered his pistol. "He was one of the first to die."

  Danyael dragged a hand over his face. How many could he save before his strength gave out? Not enough. "I can stabilize the critically injured, but we'll need to get them to a hospital."

  The general nodded. "Is the compound clear?"

  "We think so. There may be more injured men in the two damaged barracks."

  The general turned to look at his exhausted men. "Jackson, take two with you and clear out Barracks B. Martin, you and two others are on Barracks D. Bring the injured to the infirmary. Danyael can triage them there. Erich, you're on the APC---round trips to the army hospital. The most critical will go first."

  Danyael glanced at Peter Dieter. "Can you call the hospital? They'll need to know that we're coming in with at least twenty people."

  Peter nodded and sat at the communications console.

  While Peter worked, Danyael moved among the wounded. By the time he pulled the sixth soldier back from the brink of death, his head was reeling, and his stomach pitched with nausea. He took a moment to brace himself before slowly pushing to his feet. Reyes, concern pasted over his haggard features, took a step toward him, but it was Zara who caught Danyael, dragging him upright when he could barely make it off his knees.

  He pulled away from her, but she did not let him go. Instead, she snorted in his ear, "Don't be a stubborn prick. Take a break. Catch your breath before you heal someone else."

  "I'm fine."

  "We both know you're not. You don't have to act strong around me."

  A sigh escaped him. "I can't afford to be weak, either, so where does that leave me?" Danyael slumped in a chair and buried his face in his hands. "I just need a few minutes."

  Peter cursed aloud. He yanked off his headset and slammed it down on his desk. "The area h
ospitals are filled, and the army hospital is stepping up to handle the overflow. The army says we can bring our soldiers there, but they're overwhelmed. It's going to be---"

  Danyael looked up. "Wait, what do you mean the hospitals are filled?" Miriya?

  I don't have time for you right now.

  Make the time. What's happening?

  Sakti's everywhere. The attack on the National Mall pulled the emergency responders out there, and then all hell broke loose elsewhere. Sakti is all over D.C. They're breaking into homes and killing parents in front of their children. The police can't respond quickly enough, and the phone lines are jammed. Telepathy is the only damn thing that still works.

  And the council?

  We're doing the best we can, but we're outnumbered. Can the assault group help?

  The assault group was the first to get hit. We've probably got ten or twelve left standing. Galahad and Zara are with me; they're fine.

  We could use everyone. There's too much ground to cover. Sakti is moving in teams of twos and threes---big enough to do major damage to unsuspecting families, but small enough to avoid detection. We don't know how to corral them. They've been seen as far north as McLean.

  Danyael's eyes widened. Lucien?

  He's probably fine. He's got a security team. It's everyone else I'm worried about. Tell Zara that Laura's fine, too. Xin grabbed Laura and her babysitter from Zara's townhouse when she heard that Sakti was behind the attacks. Laura's safe with us at the council HQ, if any place can be considered safe.

  We'll join you at the council as soon as we can. Danyael looked up and met Zara's quizzical gaze. "We have to go. The city's under attack---Laura's fine, she's with the council."

  The general asked quietly. "How do you know this?"

  "Miriya Templeton."

  "The alpha telepath? The enforcer from the council? You've been in mental contact with her all this time?" The general's blue eyes were cold. His hands curled, ready to strike.