by Rob Horner
“Hang back a second,” Iz said softly, laying a strong hand on my shoulder.
“Damn, I hate coming down here,” Chris said, his good humor dampened.
Iz moved ahead of me, and the rest of the group followed his lead, only Mrs. Jean slowing enough to stay by my side. Gina and James, walking beside Angelica and Jason, made an effective screen, preventing me from seeing much else of the trapped Dra’Gal.
“They don’t understand what the human body is capable of,” Jean said quietly.
I looked down at her, standing on my left, but her eyes were focused on the people behind the fencing.
“They can’t transform, because of Danielle’s gift, but that wouldn’t stop any group of normal people from just rushing the fence and tearing it apart,” she continued. “Or shouting, raising hell, demanding their rights. They have no concept of our laws, our society, or our capabilities.”
While listening, I was edging around the blocking wall of bodies to my right, wanting to see more. “I thought they had access to the memories of the people they possessed.”
The older black man turned to regard us. He had a kind face beneath gray-streaked eyebrows and close-cropped hair that was more salt than pepper. He was dressed like many men from my father’s generation, in a beige, lightweight, button-up collared shirt, tucked into dark slacks that would be appropriate in just about any situation. “From what I can tell,” he said in a deep bass voice, “they know what the people know in that they have access to their memories and associations. But the things that dictate how we manage ourselves in society, those actions and reactions we learn from living here, that we don’t have to consciously think about, those are sadly lacking.”
He thrust his hand out as an afterthought, “I’m David, by the way. David Odell.”
I started to respond, something polite like It’s good to meet you, sir, but he cut me off before I could begin.
“And don’t call me sir or mister. Dave is fine. I feel old enough as it is without being reminded of it with every sentence.”
“How did you know—” I started.
“—what you were going to say?” He smiled. “That’s my power, John. I can, literally, hear your thoughts, those things at the front. Mrs. Jean there is the true reader, putting puzzles together out of pieces in your mind that you didn’t even know you had.”
“Between us,” the older woman added, “we’ve learned a lot about how these Dra’Gal think when they’re inside a person.”
That sounded terrifying. To have seen them, watched them transform, and fought them was bad enough. But to know how they thought, how they saw us, to feel their desire for our blood, that was the stuff of nightmares.
“It’s not like that at all,” Dave said. He’d backed up a bit, staying near as I continued working my way to the right. There was another set of chairs down the right side of the corral, facing the people inside the fence. “Their every thought isn’t focused on hurting us. They want to inhabit our bodies, not destroy them.”
“They seem vicious enough,” I said softly.
“Oh, they’ll protect themselves, and if that means aggressively challenging a perceived threat, then that aggressiveness will be fierce,” he said.
“Don’t take it wrong, Johnny,” Mrs. Jean said. “We’re not sympathetic to them at all. They are invaders and parasites of the worst kind. It would be bad enough if all there was to it was a desire to conquer. It’s much worse when the method of doing so is to completely dominate one of us, becoming one of us, without even leaving the option to fight or resist.”
“And before you ask, John, no, it isn’t possible to resist.”
I turned to look at him, meeting his brown eyes. “I didn’t read your mind that time,” he said. “It was the obvious question. No one is strong enough to stop them.”
“And neither of us can find any trace of the human inside,” Mrs. Jean added. “We don’t even know if the human personality remains, if it can be brought back out.”
I thought about Tanya’s mother, Mrs. Fields, who’d been possessed for just a few hours. She’d seemed to return to normal after I cured her. But was it a complete recovery? I didn’t know. She might have been a little less prone to laughter, slower to smile, but that could be nothing more than my own perception based on the assumption that what she’d gone through must have left a scar somewhere.
“So, it’s true,” Dave said. “You believe you can cure them.”
“God, I hope so,” Mrs. Jean added.
A sudden rush of noise brought our attention back to the people trapped in the fence. Standing behind Chris and Tiffany, looking over the short brunette’s shoulder, I saw the mass of possessed people moving toward the fence. Their faces were clenched in rage, fingers reaching like talons through the gaps in the chain link, clawing at the air. Iz was almost close enough to the barrier for them to reach him, and it appeared to be his proximity that prompted the surge. He wasn’t the one keeping them trapped, but they knew him for the leader.
As Mrs. Jean and Dave pointed out, even though there were more than enough of them to make a decent attempt at the fence, they didn’t push or pull and didn’t really seem to be trying to escape. There had to be enough of them to breach the gate if they tried.
Dave was right; they didn’t know what their host bodies were capable of. They reached with fingers curved into hooks, as though they didn’t understand there were no claws on the end.
Mrs. Jean nodded to the right, to the row of chairs I’d seen earlier. We’d moved enough that I was now able to see a young woman sitting in one of them, slumped forward like she’d fallen asleep and was just a second or two away from toppling out of it.
“When Ben is here,” Mrs. Jean said, “he can use his power on the fence, and turn the whole area inside into a purple-glowing prison. His power freezes them in place, too, so there isn’t any of this bunch-of-birds flocking from one side to the other.”
“Ben is gone,” Dave whispered. “I can see it in his mind.”
Mrs. Jean’s hands went to her mouth. “I’d hoped that wasn’t true. Oh, the poor dear.”
“I think she already knows,” the black man said.
Tiffany turned to look at us. “They met like me and Ricky, right here.” She gave Ricardo’s hand a squeeze, prompting him to also turn from Iz and look at us. “He could set the whole place on fire with his purple light; it was so pretty.”
“What Danielle does isn’t quite as spectacular,” the Hispanic man said. He had a clipped way of talking, with no discernible accent. “She emits sound on a wavelength that we can’t hear, but which disrupts their ability to Manifest.”
“That’s not all she can do, of course,” Tiffany added. “She can emit sound on all different wavelengths. She can break glass—”
“Or shatter eardrums,” Ricardo added.
A remembered bit from a news story popped into my head. “Is she from Europe?” I asked.
“Not to my knowledge,” Tiffany said. “But she was already here when I got here, so who knows?”
“Where Ben could kind of set it and forget it,” Ricardo said, “Danielle has to maintain her field. She says it’s not difficult, but it still takes a lot out of her.”
Tiffany lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “Fish and Iz say they’ve got enough boxes charged with Ben’s power to maybe keep these people contained for a few more days. But with him gone, I just don’t see how Danielle is going to be able to keep it up once they run out.”
I’d edged out enough now to get a better look at Danielle. She was slumped forward, but it was more a head-resting posture, face in hands, elbows on thighs. She had brown hair that hung down on each side of her face, hiding her features. I couldn’t see much else, because of her posture.
“Look at that,” Iz called, drawing our attention. “Johnny, come on out here.”
There were looks now, the expectance an audience has before a show begins. I could feel the eyes of everyone in the roo
m turning, finding me, as I walked around the Hispanic man, closing the distance between the watching group and the waiting military man.
As a unit, like the flock of birds Mrs. Jean mentioned, the people reaching through the fence backed away, feet moving in practiced unison. If you took away the bird analogy, they moved like a troop of soldiers performing maneuvers to a shouted command.
“Do you see, Johnny?” Iz asked. “The hive mind at work. None of these Dra’Gal were worried until they saw you. None of them are from last night, so there’s no way they could know you to be afraid of your power.”
I remembered. A hive mind, the ability to share thoughts instantly with other members of the hive. What one knows can be known by all.
“They know you because they’re all part of the same hive.”
“Angie?” I called, looking back at the older brunette, still clad in her black turtleneck and slacks. I waited until she met my eyes before asking, “Are any of them…Chosen?” Five different words cycled through my head before remembering the term they’d adopted.
Her eyes left mine, though I kept watching her, noting the motions as she scanned left and right. “Son of a--” she swore softly. “I’m going to have to remember to keep checking, I suppose.”
“Is there one?” Iz asked.
Angelica pointed into the milling throng. “Yeah, one. The big guy in the middle.”
Both Iz and I turned to look. The Dra’Gal were in all shapes and sizes, of course, female and male, young and old. Toward the center of the group was one man who fit the description of big in both height and the width of his shoulders. He reminded me of the gigantic demon I’d fought in the coliseum parking lot. If anything, this guy was larger, giving more a sense of strength to the set of his shoulders than just width because he was made big. People who were born big like that tended to run to fat, while someone like this guy made you consider the hard work it took to get and maintain that size, like a football player or a—”
“He was a cop,” Dave said. “Not a federal agent, or—” He paused, drawing my attention. His hand was pressed to his forehead, the classic pose used in comic books when the telepath is trying to read someone, life imitating art. He hadn’t needed to do that when he read my mind, so either I was much more open, or being a Dra’Gal made it that much harder. “I can’t get a read on his ability, I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay,” Iz said. “We’ll sort it out after they’re cured.”
The watching eyes turned to buzzing voices, smiles on faces that looked back and forth. They’d heard what I could do, probably from Gina and James, maybe even Angelica, though she didn’t seem the gossiping type. But hearing about it from someone, and hearing it promised by a voice in command were two different things.
I wasn’t sure what to do. I’d helped people before, of course, had willingly walked into a smaller version of this pen and cured twenty people. But those twenty forced me to come to them. They were held motionless by Ben’s power, the guy who’d been impaled back at the carnival. If something bad had happened to me, there’d been a way out. One or two quick steps would have placed me out of harm’s way. I didn’t remember worrying about it or considering it at the time, but now, faced with five times as many people who had complete freedom of movement, it concerned me.
I tried to ignore the whispers and the hopeful stares as I walked to the gate. The eyes of the people inside the corral were a different matter. They glared at me, afraid enough of my ability to not rush the fence, but more than ready to attack if I placed myself in their reach. I had power, yes, and could do a lot of damage, but there were so many. And I didn’t want to hurt any of them.
A shift moved through the gathered Dra’Gal as Iz pulled his card out again, passing the golden square over the heavy lock that secured the gate. As if by magic, the lock opened. The horde edged forward, a wave of shrugged shoulders and tightened legs that made them ripple like the wind blowing across a field of tall grass.
“Don’t worry,” Tiffany called. “Ricardo can heal better than anybody.”
It shouldn’t have to come to this, I thought. I could fight and had the power to fight well, expelling force that gave every strike the strength of ten men. I could slam my hands together and make a shockwave that could topple an attacker before he could get to me. And somehow, as a part of that, or a side effect of it, my power could cure the possession, or Purge the Dra’Gal consciousness, or whatever fancy, capitalized term they wanted to use.
If I could find a way to make my force cover an area, by clapping my hands together, why couldn’t that also work for curing?
So far, I’d worked out a way to make my curing power work without striking, just as I’d figured out how to punch without expelling force and had recently discovered a way to do the opposite, expel force without intending to strike.
Was it all just in me, just a matter of desire and intent?
“His hands—” someone whispered.
My hands were clenched at my sides, fists shaking with a combination of rage and frustration. I wanted to help these people, not hurt them. There was no way I could walk into that cage and somebody not get hurt.
“Jeez—”
By the very nature of a free-for-all like that, I wouldn’t be able to pull my punches. In order to live to be able to help anyone, I’d have to swing for the fences, make every strike count.
“Johnny—”
It was Iz, standing next to me who got my attention. His arms were raised, shielding his face even as he turned away. The glow rising from my hands drew my eyes. Wonderingly, I raised my hands in front of me. They shone like miniature suns. Something was building, focusing in my hands but coming from somewhere else, somewhere deep inside of me. I could feel it growing as well as see it, like the pins and needles you get in a foot when you sit the wrong way. Only instead of subsiding, this grew stronger. It wasn’t unpleasant, but rather a necessary thing, a power coalescing that could only build so far before it demanded release.
I found that source and squeezed it. It was all about need. I needed this power to do what I wanted. I needed it to help these people. I needed to do it without hurting anyone.
The glow intensified.
Sounds of gasped astonishment filled the room.
My hands were stars, thrumming with power. My body weakened, all the strength of my legs, all the strength everywhere within me, rushing into my hands.
I fell to my knees, my hands now up before me in a supplicant’s pose, my eyes squinted against the blinding brilliance.
A noise as of sudden motion.
“Hey, watch it!” someone said.
“Hey! Where’s he going?” another voice yelled.
Unable to see, I can only imagine what the Dra’Gal in the cage were doing. Snarls of anger and fear, but made with human mouths and throats, reached me. The sounds of a hundred people huddling together, eyes averted, trying to escape the reach of the light coming off me, struck my ears. The frame of the gate vibrated, giving off a metallic hum that might have been its response to what I was doing, or might be something changing with Danielle’s power, my ears coming in tune with her high-pitched noise.
It wasn’t going to be enough. I needed more.
So, I gave more, pushing everything I had, everything I was or ever hoped to be, into the growing power in my hands. My eyesight weakened, the lids closing fully, though I could still see the brightness through them, like staring at the sun, the insides of my eyelids glowing red in the darkness.
I brought my hands together, not in a clap, but gently, like each held a water balloon filled with nitroglycerin. As soon as they touched, a jolt like connecting the terminals of a car battery slammed into me, throwing me backward. All my training failed me in that moment, my arms were too weak and slow to come down to arrest my fall. My head slammed back against something hard.
Blackness claimed me.
Chapter 7
Glimpses of possibilities
Flashes of sight, li
ke short clips from a movie reel or a preview of coming attractions, stuttered through my brain. No dreams, per se, but rather a melting, merging collage of images that might have been memory and might be the future. I was convinced the difference lay in the circumstances. I wasn’t sleeping. My brain had been traumatized by the blow to the back of my head, and I was unconscious.
First came the large underground cavern where the possessed people had been held, prevented from transforming by Danielle’s power, but the planks and chain link were gone. There was just the machine near the door, and I was sitting at one end of it with Angelica perched on a folding chair nearby. The enormous space was darkened except for red lighting along the perimeter, and I understood there had been a power outage, and these were the emergency lights.
“They’re still above us, John,” the buxom brunette said. “With any luck, we’re holding in the meeting room, where you came in from the stairs.”
I remembered the room, with its bulletproof furniture. “Who could be attacking us?” I asked.
“Probably the police, after what we did to them,” she replied. “Especially after that stunt in the mall. They’ve got to be gunning for us.”
I started to rise from my chair, only to be struck by a wave of dizziness. The room spun, and suddenly we were no longer in the underground cavern, but were instead back in the large room Iz led me through when we arrived at Mandatum.