by Jade Kerrion
Tim was briefly silent as he waited in vain for Danyael to comply, and then with genuine regret in his brown eyes, he looked over his shoulder at the lieutenant holding the controls for the electrical collar. If Danyael was not going to lower his shields voluntarily, then the only way to break through was to subject him to excruciating pain, and use the physical distraction—though the term was inadequate in view of the kind of pain that would entail—to smash through his shields. “Punch it,” he ordered. The lieutenant obeyed without question, flicking a switch that sent intense currents of electricity surging through Danyael’s body.
Danyael jerked violently as his dark eyes flashed open wide, unseeing. A silent scream tore from his throat. This was the only opportunity Tim would ever have. The alpha telepath inhaled deeply and spiked his power like a lance straight into Danyael’s mind, plowing through his psychic shields.
Zara knew Danyael’s screams were silenced, but she did not need to hear his screams to know that he was in extreme agony. His body arched and writhed in pain as his head tossed from side to side. She watched transfixed and admired the slender line of his throat as he threw his head back, struggling to breathe. She smiled as Danyael’s dark eyes glistened; shimmering and sparkling with unshed tears.
She was caught completely off guard by the jolt of lust that clawed at her gut. Danyael?
The mood of the crowd transformed.
Struggling to maintain her shaky grip on her emotions, she looked around. The eyes of the people around gleamed viciously as they closed in on Danyael, drawn as she was to his pain. Enjoying it. Loving it. Wanting more. He was so beautiful, so fragile, stunningly exquisite in his sheer vulnerability. She wanted—they wanted—to hear him scream, wanted to make him cry. Good God. She breathed, trying to cling on to the fact that she knew she hated him, that she did not want to be around him. The man standing next to her was actually sweating, breathing heavily as he reached down to adjust and massage his crotch. What is happening to me? To all of us?
What the hell is happening to Danyael?
The first spike of raw power, unforgiving in its brutality, would have bludgeoned Danyael to his knees had he been standing. His unshielded mind and the memories they protected crumbled before the assault as Tim’s powers tore like lion’s claws through fallen prey. Only Tim heard Danyael’s anguished silent screams and sensed the terror and panic that Danyael kept clamped under control as his memories were shattered and crushed beneath the staggering force of Tim’s mind.
He could only endure, watching helplessly as his memories were stripped from him, as the void in front of him grew dark and monstrous, threatening to engulf his sanity.
Far worse were the emotions that bombarded him from the outside, lust so potent it bordered on insanity. Without psychic shields, his unchecked empathic powers were once again driving people around him insane. The terrified memories of his childhood rose up, engulfed him. No…Please, I can’t go through this again. I can’t.
It’s okay, Danyael, Tim soothed. A memory flashed through their linked minds. A ten-year-old child sobbed in panic and terror, his beaten body throbbing in pain as he was violently assaulted by a gang of teenagers. Tim flinched, gritting his teeth against Danyael’s memories. It’s okay. I’ll protect you. I won’t let them hurt you. Relax…you’re making this harder than it has to be.
Danyael bit back a silent sob, shuddered under Tim’s touch.
We’re almost there, Danyael. We’re almost there. He glanced over his shoulder. The crowd was on the verge of turning into a mob, driven mad, compelled into insanity by the pain and suffering of an alpha empath. “Form around me,” he ordered his team of ten men, grateful that as humans assigned to support the Mutant Assault Group, their minds were protected and they were not susceptible to the tidal wave of Danyael’s unshielded emotions. “I want a fifteen-foot perimeter. Anyone breaks through that, you cripple them. If they keep moving forward, you shoot to kill.”
“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant confirmed and formed his team around Tim and Danyael. The sight of machine guns, braced against shoulders, dashed cold water against the rising heat of the crowd. The minutes ticked by and the crowd jostled restlessly, craning for a glimpse of Danyael through the wall of military fatigues. Finally, one man, his eyes gleaming with the madness of frustrated lust, surged forward.
Tim jolted, shocked by the sharp retort of a gun. A man screamed. Seconds later, the gun fired again, and then there was silence. The telepath grimaced. So stupid and unnecessary. If Roland Rakehell had allowed him to wipe Danyael’s memories in a private room, all the insanity could have been avoided. Nothing good came out of humans interfering in mutant affairs. The humans knew nothing, and worse, cared for nothing. Driven by greed and fear, they clung desperately to the fragments of authority still available to them, even though it was clear that their time for leadership was long past.
Tim scanned Danyael’s memories before crushing them. He finally understood Roland’s insistence on destroying Danyael’s—his son’s—memories. Roland was driven by selfish ambition that cared nothing for the lives trampled underfoot. He was a human embarrassed and ashamed of a mutant son, a human who regarded mutants as rubbish to be discarded when they no longer served a purpose.
Tim checked his surging anger, unwilling to add to Danyael’s suffering. Danyael had endured enough. He had endured too much. The alpha empath was today’s sacrifice to human paranoia. There would be others tomorrow, more the day after, and it would never end, unless the mutants rose to claim the world according to the same rules that the humans had once used to stake their claim. Survival of the fittest.
General Kieran Howard was right. Tim’s jaw set in tense lines. It was long past time for mutant ascendancy, and it would begin with the Mutant Assault Group.
Done. It had taken longer than he had expected—a little more than an hour, far too long for anyone to have to endure that kind of pain because of a human’s selfish whim. I’m sorry, Danyael. Tim sat back, his expression weary, removed the electrical handcuffs and collar, and helped Danyael rise to a sitting position. “My name is Tim Brown,” he reintroduced himself. “I’m with the Mutant Assault Group. You’ve lost two days of your memories.”
Danyael reached up with a trembling hand to cover his eyes and touched his face, checking for tears. Relief passed over the beautiful features when his hand came away dry. Racking his mind, he searched for memories that had been left behind. He recalled—still cringed from—the memory of the live blood transfusion in the plane. He recalled the surprise of seeing Phillip Evans waiting by the car when he exited the plane, of learning that Lucien had sent for him.
After that, nothing, just a terrifying emptiness that taunted him with a barrage of crippling, destructive emotions, emotions for which he had no context, no memories.
Panic surged, but his training clamped down on the nameless terror. Voices from his past ingrained in his subconscious took over: Control. Your only choice in any circumstance is control. You’re an alpha empath. For your own sake, you don’t have the luxury of any other choice.
He yanked his external shields back up, suffocating under the weight of emotions he did not understand. Emotions clawed at him like living things, trying to tear their way out of him. Self-hatred, so potent, so bitter that he could almost taste it on his tongue, ripped and shredded the little that he still recognized as himself. He stared down at his hands as they clenched and unclenched involuntarily, the subtlest physical betrayal of devastating emotional turmoil.
“Is it complete?” an older man, not dressed in uniform, asked.
Danyael glanced at him and recoiled, stunned by the extremity of the emotions emanating from him. The disgust, the hate; he searched the man’s face, struggling, grasping for a memory that was no longer there. Nothing. He lowered his gaze, unable to meet the scathing dark gaze that raked him, left him feeling exposed and vulnerable. You know me. Who are you? His mind pleaded for answers, but nothing passed his lips.
; Tim nodded, his expression distracted as he searched Danyael’s mind. “It’s done.”
A smile of satisfaction passed over the man’s face. “Good. Get him out of my sight.” His lip curled as if the sight of Danyael disgusted him. “Put him on the plane and send him back to New York.”
There was no point in fighting them, not when he no longer knew what he was fighting for, or against; not when he had bigger—far bigger—battles to fight.
The emotional maelstrom twisting through him demanded all his attention, all his strength, to keep under control, to keep from spilling past his exhausted psychic shields. He did not resist when the soldiers dragged him to his feet and hauled him over to the plane. He listened as the pilots were ordered to deposit him in New York City. Home, he recalled vaguely.
The plane doors closed and the engines purred as the small, sleek passenger jet accelerated for takeoff. He stared at his misshapen left hand as he massaged it. It ached. It always hurt, some days worse than others. That day, it was excruciating, sharp shards of pain shooting up and down his wrist. There was nothing he could do about it, nothing he could ever do about his own pain.
He inhaled unsteadily and raised his gaze to stare out the window. His dark eyes were inscrutable, distant with ancient pain.
The tears remained locked in his heart.
20
Lucien hung up the cell phone. “They got him,”
Xin twisted around in the chair to look at him. “Who? Danyael?”
Lucien stood by the bay windows in his study, gazing out at the lush landscaping. His employees were hard at work both in and outside the house, repairing the damage caused by the pro-humanists and preparing for the Christmas Eve party, which would start in two hours. He saw none of the activity, even though it swirled all around him. Lucien swallowed hard through the tight, crushing feeling in his chest, somewhere in the vicinity of his heart. “It appears that his father and the military caught up with him at the airport. They wiped his memory, put him on my plane, and told the pilots to take him back to New York.”
“And Miriya?”
“No sign of her, nor of Zara or Galahad. Did you try to call Zara?”
“She’s not picking up, but she switched her signal.”
“Signal?” Lucien turned to look at her.
“It’s something she’d worked out with her employees to let us know when she was on a case and wasn’t taking calls. She’s probably trying to keep her cell from being traced. What are you going to do?”
“Call Alex, let him know Danyael is back in New York, and then I’ll fly out to New York as soon as I can—probably tomorrow morning. I need to see him, make sure he’s all right.”
“It’s Christmas tomorrow.”
“All the more important for Danyael not to spend it alone,” Lucien retorted.
Xin dropped her gaze at the implicit rebuke.
Lucien checked his temper. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be taking it out on you.” He raked his fingers through his dark hair. “There are problems money can’t solve, and it galls me to admit it. Unfortunately, most of Danyael’s problems fall into that category.”
“You can’t solve the world’s problems, Lucien.”
“I’m not trying to solve the world’s problems. Just one friend’s, and my success rate has been highly questionable as of late.”
“You care a great deal for him.”
Lucien shook his head, a faint frown on his lips. “The real problem is that no one else cares enough for him. His damn psychic shield repels people; if he got run over by a car, no one would stop to help him. He goes through life expecting to be treated like crap, or at the very best ignored, gets what he expects, and then we all wonder why he’s so screwed up.”
“I don’t think he’s screwed up.”
“Zara does.”
“Why do you care what Zara thinks of him?”
The question made him pause, hesitate. “I don’t know,” he admitted finally. “Maybe because it bothers me to see how he tenses every time they’re in the room together. She hates him, and she doesn’t even have to say a single word to hurt him.”
“As a mutant, he’s probably used to that.”
“Which doesn’t make it right,” Lucien countered with a wry half smile. He glanced at the flat-screen television mounted on the far wall of his study. A male reporter standing in front of the White House recapped the highlights of the president’s short speech, which included an affirmation that the riots had ended. Order and peace had been restored to the city. People were encouraged to go about their lives as usual.
There was absolutely no mention of the mutants or the enforcers from the council who had made it all possible.
It seemed as if America was determined to use mutants when necessary, but deny them the credit and any acknowledgment of their efforts. No wonder Danyael kept such a low profile, trying to conceal from as many people as possible the fact that he was a mutant. Humans bristled with intolerance for the derivatives, for those who were most like them, the clones and in vitros. In that world, there was no room for mutants whose capabilities set them above the humans.
There was certainly no room for Galahad.
“Will Zara be all right?” Lucien asked.
“She’s resourceful, and she’ll get word to me if she wants me to find her. As soon as I hear anything at all, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Good. Danyael’s my priority, but I’m not going to lose sight of Galahad. I couldn’t protect Danyael.” His smile was bitter. “Let’s see if I can do a better job with Galahad.”
“The responsibility isn’t yours to bear alone.”
“No one else seems interested in the job description.”
She smiled faintly. “I’ll help.”
“Won’t that get you in trouble? As far as we know, the government wants both of them.”
“I wasn’t planning on telling them that I’m helping.” She shrugged, chuckling softly. “What I do in my free time is my business, even if it is with government resources, and I can cover my tracks.”
Lucien eased into a faint smile, the first real smile he had enjoyed in hours. He looked away briefly and then back again at Xin, meeting her gaze. His smile transformed into a grin, became hopeful. “You’re staying for the party, aren’t you?”
She blinked in surprise. “What party?”
Miriya turned her head to stare out of the window. The sky stretched out in a limitless horizon before her, but she saw nothing. She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat and reached up absently to swipe a single teardrop before it rolled down her cheek.
“Miriya?” A gentle hand wrapped around hers.
She closed her eyes against the heartache that resonated through her. The voice was his voice, and yet it was not. She might never hear him speak her name again.
“They took his memory.” She kept her voice low. There were few passengers in the first-class section of the plane, but this was a private conversation on an intensely personal topic. Her mind was still connected to Danyael’s, the telepathic link so deeply buried that he was unaware of it. Even Tim Brown had not picked up on it. “He doesn’t know us anymore. He doesn’t remember me or you or Zara, though that’s probably a mercy.”
“Why? Why would they take his memory?”
“I don’t really know. Roland Rakehell commanded the Mutant Assault Group officials who arrested him. He said something about Danyael embarrassing him.” She shook her head. The extremity of Roland’s decision stunned her. If all parents erased the memories of the children who embarrassed them, the world would be full of amnesiacs. “I don’t know what he meant, though he got what he wanted. Danyael doesn’t remember him now either.”
“Miriya, why did he give me his identification?” Galahad asked softly, voicing the question that had been at the top of his mind ever since he stared in disbelief at the thin black wallet safely nestled in the motorcycle helmet he had caught from Danyael.
Miriya shrugged. �
�Because he thought you deserved a chance, and he was the only one who could give it to you.”
“In spite of the cost.”
“Danyael doesn’t really count the cost, in large part because he’s been trained not to dwell on himself. The ‘cost’ is just another difficult mile in his long, lonely road—not much different from any other—something he’ll get over with time and persistence, the same way he’s survived every other disaster in his life.”
“But—”
She shook her head and tried to change the topic. “I don’t understand Danyael much, honestly. He’s council-trained—”
“Aren’t you as well?”
“Council-trained? No, I work for the council but I joined them as an adult. The council-trained are the young alphas who were raised—and some would say, shaped—by the council. There aren’t many of them, but they all have two traits in common. They’re all extremely talented, and they’re all highly placed in positions of authority and influence.”
“Including Danyael?”
Miriya smiled thinly at the doubt she heard in Galahad’s voice. “Yes, especially Danyael. There is a profound disconnect between how the world sees Danyael and who he really is. He may have a dead-end job in a poverty-stricken Brooklyn neighborhood, but he is one of the most powerful alpha empaths alive. In addition, Lucien commands one of the largest private fortunes in the world, and as of right now, Danyael is the sole beneficiary in Lucien’s will.”
“But why would the fact that Danyael is council-trained matter?”
“Because they’re different. They see the world differently from most mutants, and even from people like me—mutants who work for the council. Some say that council-trained serve the council’s highest purpose, or its secret agenda. Those two terms are used interchangeably, though it has never been clear to me if they’re one and the same.”
“And that would be?”
“Officially? A peaceful coexistence between humans and mutants, and everything in between. The cynical might say the continued dominance of humans in spite of the genetic superiority of human derivatives and mutants.”