Gisele blinked a few times, clearly not expecting this bullet from left field. It took her a moment to assemble her thoughts. “You believe him? He has every reason to lie to you! He is doing this to divide us! So he can win, so he can have his way without consequence!”
“But we are divided, Gisele, and we will continue to be.” He paused and turned to face me. “I see that now.” He turned back to her, his expression now sympathetic. “And if you can’t see that there are deep consequences for both of you, then I feel sorry for you. You had something within your grasp that very few of us ever find, and you couldn’t find a way to keep hold of it. I pity you both.”
She looked back and forth between the two of us for several tense moments. When at last she looked at Alicia, understanding flashed on her face before she could mask it. She realized that Alicia had nothing at all to do with this, that the blame rested solely with us. Actually, she thought the blame was all mine, but we all know it takes two. I let her have her denial; it was all she had left. “If you let me leave this restaurant like this, then all that follows is on you.”
“So be it. Goodbye, Gisele,” I answered softly, pulling the emotional dagger from my chest and slipping it deep into her heart.
Hearing my words, Gisele understood that she was utterly and completely alone in this world, and she fixed me with a penetrating look of stark panic and such deep melancholy that it tore my Bloody heart into glitter-sized shreds. For a moment, I thought she might surrender, and I found myself hoping despite every bit of common sense I possess.
As I watched her walk away, I wondered why I kept letting her set me up for disappointment, but the answer is simple, really.
I love her.
The look on Octavian’s face as he watched her leave mirrored how I felt inside. A part of him wanted to stop her, a part of him was too paralyzed by grief to move, and the rest of him was glad to be rid of her. That we shared similar feelings toward Gisele bonded us in a way that nothing before it could have, and his pity brought with it an acceptance that had eluded him since my Conversion.
To be powerless to stop something was one thing, but to have the power and still fail, that was even worse. In this one regard, his life was better than mine, and that was enough for him to finally put away his ego and accept his life.
If nothing else, at least something good had come out of this mess.
“I’m sorry,” he offered as he stood.
“Me too,” I replied, both of us referring to a great deal more than this evening.
“Good night, Alicia,” Octavian stated softly, and he was gone before she could answer.
Alicia and I stared at each other across the table without speaking. Despite all the people surrounding us, we were both alone, each of us isolated by what had just happened, though for very different reasons.
I let my eyes wander over the plains of her face, making a tremendous effort to recapture even a fraction of the emotion from before Gisele’s and Octavian’s arrival, but it was as lost to me as my mortality, a fleeting remnant of another life that had come and gone without my approval or my understanding.
Raising my head, I looked at the ceiling as if it might somehow be able to tell me why the fuck I never learn. The ceiling itself held no answers, but somehow, an obscure quote from Joseph Addison popped out of the jumble in my head: "I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable."
Well, that explains it.
By silent agreement, I took care of the bill and we left.
◆◆◆
“Are you ready?” I asked later in my living room, where Alicia and I were seated on different pieces of furniture, facing each other. I thought it might be a bad idea for either one of us to stand as I lowered my shield; I expected some fallout when the part of my consciousness that resided in Alicia’s head returned to my own.
She looked frightened, but without the ability to read her thoughts, I couldn’t be sure if that was left over from dinner. She might not have sufficiently processed those events to focus her attention on the moment.
The ability to read minds has a significant drawback. It keeps a person from exercising the facility in his brain that reads and interprets body language, expressions and other physical indicators. Because that center atrophies with disuse, even if an individual possessed a knack for it as a mortal, as little as a year of being able to read minds can render it almost useless.
Once anyone begins to rely on something so heavily, having it taken away is like losing an appendage. For those who cannot read minds (99.99% of the population), this is a good point of reference: for nearly two hundred years, the industrial world conducted business just fine without the ability to instantly send documents from one place to another. Try getting through a single corporate day without a fax, email or the Internet. Get my drift?
“Do it,” Alicia whispered, and I lowered my shield, mentally cringing in preparation.
Nothing.
I think my mouth fell open. Alicia still waited for the event, unable to know that it had already come and gone without incident. I did a status check of my psychic abilities, confirming that my shield was indeed down. The centering allowed me to sense something that almost made me pass out.
“No fucking way,” I whispered in awe.
Alicia’s mind was still perfectly shielded.
◆◆◆
Four exhaustive and exhausting hours later, I leaned back and closed my eyes. My head throbbed from the intense psychic workout, and my mind continued to tornado with the implications.
Her shield was impenetrable by both stealth and brute force. I’m not even sure that calling it her shield is accurate, because even with my considerable knowledge of the metaphysical realm, I was unable to help her discover a single way to gain any measure of control over it. For lack of a better terminology, it appeared to be a fragment of my shield, completely split off from me, self-sustaining, and for all practical purposes, permanent.
All my probes returned the same feedback as if I was probing myself, except that I cannot hide anything from myself, and Phobos’ long-distance probe told her that there were two distinct and separate sets of shield signatures, both all but identical. Because she knew my mind so well, she was able to discern which shield was actually mine, but the differences were so subtle that no one else would be able to draw the same conclusion without first being shown what to look for. She was basically stymied and could offer no help or explanation.
What does all that mean in layman’s terms? Well, assuming that there wasn’t a more powerful mind reader on this Earth, Alicia’s mind was now completely unreadable to everyone on the planet. Even I do not possess the power to break into my own shield, and two psychic attacks cannot be combined in parallel, so two minds could not succeed where I had failed.
The current situation notwithstanding, that is an extremely fortunate metaphysical peculiarity, for without it, the five Ancients might have been able to successfully combine their minds against me.
More ominous than the shield’s impenetrability, however, was its psychic appearance; someone attempting to probe for me might stumble across her and be unable to tell the difference.
If my head hadn’t already been throbbing, the staggering implications of this would have given me a migraine for sure.
11 trap
Two figures stood facing one another in a dimly lit room, strains of classic rock music wafting through the walls. One dwarfed the other in every way, a mountain of a man with a thin, neatly trimmed beard that made him look even more sinister than his bulk. He had the type of face that, depending on the expression, could either scare a mass murderer or charm the clothing off a woman. He had done both. If the past was any indicator, he should have been using the latter on the woman in front of him, but his gut told him otherwise.
; He always listened to his gut.
He had done nothing but glower at her since her arrival, but she did not seem to notice. Or care. She was as beautiful a woman as he had ever seen, and he had seen plenty, but there was a hardness about her that might have scared him if it were possible after all he had seen. All he had done. All he continued to do.
He was a killer in every sense of the word, and one rarely failed to recognize another.
“I will relay this information to the boss and get back to you with a price if it is accepted,” he said, turning away from her.
“Excuse me?” she replied, placing a hand on his arm. Few people dared touch him without invitation; her boldness intrigued him. Thoughts of retaliation aroused him. He stopped, turned back, and looked at her hand on his arm. She did not take the hint; in fact, she tightened her grip. “I was told that you were the one to speak to.”
His eyes went wide. Her grip actually hurt, and it was rapidly approaching the point where he would no longer be able to endure it. He had met very few people in his lifetime capable of causing him more pain than he could handle, and none of them had been women. He sensed a life-change on the horizon, but the pain did not allow him to dwell on it.
Flexing his powerful shoulders, he made a violent motion to remove his arm from her grasp. Pain shot up his arm as the skin began to tear and his bones ground together, but to his surprise, her hand remained. Her grip tightened again, bringing tears to his eyes. He could feel blood welling in the small tear, and he knew if he continued to pull against her grip, it would start tearing muscle and tendons as well. He could feel his teeth clenching with the pain. His attack was instinctive and swift, reversing his momentum rapidly in an attempt to draw her off balance.
Incredibly, she was both faster and stronger than he, and the next instant, he was on the floor looking up at her. She had let go of his arm and moved on to his throat. Though her grip was not as tight there, it was difficult to swallow. “If you are not the one I seek, then there is no reason to let you live.” She leaned in close to speak, her face very near his, but he could feel no heat coming off her at all, even in her breath which, while not entirely unpleasant, bore the scent of something that made him want to vomit.
“Wait!” he croaked as her grip tightened. He tasted panic in the back of his throat, so foreign to him that it took a moment to recognize and process. A deadly smile crossed her face and she loosened her grip enough for him to continue. He took several hard breaths before continuing. “It’s standard practice to have one person take the request and another accept the job over the phone. Just in case you’re not on the level.”
She leaned close, and he swore that he saw a flash of fangs. Must have been a lack of oxygen to the brain. She spoke slowly, as if he were mentally deficient. “Are. You. The. One. Who. Will. Do. The. Job?”
He hesitated until her grip caused his vision to tunnel and blur. “Yes!” he bit out when he could take no more, and instantly, she withdrew her hand. He coughed violently, trying to expel what felt like shards of glass from his throat. Nothing came up, but he hacked around for a bit more just to be sure. Resting fully on one rubbery arm, his body felt like a massive bolder that was slowly crushing it. When his breathing had settled somewhat, he slowly moved to a seated position facing her, gingerly testing his damaged arm. It hurt, but none of the damage appeared to be permanent, despite the shafts of pain that ran up and down the inside of his bones.
“Good. Do you accept the job?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Of course. You will kill this woman,” she held out a picture, “or you will die right now. Choose.”
Reaching out slowly, he accepted the picture. Hmmm... one beautiful woman wanting another to depart the planet. For the first time since he began killing people for money, he found himself longing for the backstory. He tried to steel himself for the disappointment of never knowing, but all of his mettle was currently occupied with trying to keep his body from going fetal.
“On the back is a time and a place that will present you with the best opportunity. She will be with someone very dangerous and impossibly quick.”
More dangerous than you? he wondered silently, the pain pulsing with every beat of his heart.
“Yes,” she answered as if he had spoken aloud. “You must stay at least five hundred yards from them at all times, or he will know you are there.” He was about to interrupt with a question, but she held up her hand to stop him. “Do not ask. Simply listen and obey, or he will kill you.” He will probably hunt you down and kill you regardless, she thought to herself, but hopefully not before you can complete your task.
Out of the corner of his eye, something came at him. His reaction was slower than usual, but he still managed to get his hands up to cover his face in time. The object slapped against the back of his forearm and then fell to his lap. He lowered his hands, one of them grabbing the object, a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills.
“Ten thousand now. Fifty more when you succeed,” she stated, turning to make her way to the door. Her movement was liquid, like she poured herself through the air, crossing the room without making a sound. The locked doorknob crunched as she turned it, opening the door and letting the light and the music into the darkened room. The light illuminated a pair of lifeless obsidian eyes, as dark and dull as charcoal briquettes. The music was Skynyrd, “Gimme Three Steps.” Her final statement came over her shoulder. “If you fail, you will die in her place.”
As he watched her go, the door closing behind her, he had the absurd thought that three thousand steps would not have been enough.
◆◆◆
As Gisele walked through the crowded bar, she should have felt elated. In a matter of hours, Alicia would be dead, and that was really all that mattered anymore.
But she felt nothing, nothing at all.
◆◆◆
I was distracted as we prepared for our meeting with the Brothers; Alicia noticed but said nothing. My guess was that she blamed the wedge driven between us by the isolation of her mind, and I didn’t bother to set her straight. To be honest, it wasn’t any one thing, but rather a landslide of worry and recrimination that sat on my chest like a pack of elephants fighting for room.
The largest of them was a buzzing beneath my skin that signified the return of the shadowy danger revealed by my Blood precognition. Tonight figured heavily into whatever events were ordained by its arrival, but I had no idea if tonight would be the end of it. For some inexplicable reason, I could not shake the feeling that the danger represented by that precognitive vision would be taking up permanent residence.
The past week had been difficult for us both. To be locked out of each other’s minds, to be denied that complex and powerful connection unknown to most, was taking its toll. The lack of mental intimacy blocked other, simpler forms, and I was ill-equipped to deal with it. As with reading people through their “tells,” the ability to express intimacy is also affected by mind reading. Why try to express how you feel about others when you can just open up your mind and let them feel it for themselves?
Despite being inseparable since that night at the restaurant, I have never felt so far away from another being in my life, and as with all things Murphy, it came at a time when being one unit was paramount. Lost in my mourning, a painful new thought occurred to me, and it ripped through my heart and stole my breath: considering how I felt, Alicia had to be even worse. Lost love is sort of a theme in my life, and though it never gets any less painful, experience has made me better equipped to handle such losses. Until me, Alicia had never known love and therefore had never dealt with any of the byproducts associated with its loss.
Blood tears stung my eyes as I turned to her, the ache in my heart growing deeper and more pervasive. My heart went out to her so completely that it had to be instinctual, something that couldn’t be squandered by neglect. She caught me staring, and as our eyes locked, I felt a jolt sizzle through me. By intellectually discerning a part of what she
was feeling, I was able to identify it in her expression.
I was across the room before she even registered my movement, a soft gasp coming from her lips as I caught her up in my arms. Our lovemaking was slow and tender as we attempted to recapture some of what had been stolen from us. We never broke eye contact as we moved together, trying to force our minds to intertwine despite not having the psychic ability to do so. When we were finished, I felt closer to her than I had in a week, but what we once shared was no longer within our grasp, and consequently, our relationship was no longer worth the wrath it had incurred.
Despondence invaded my thoughts, each breath accompanied by a dull ache, and I found myself mourning as if Alicia had died. I had now managed to lose three wonderful and unique emotional attachments because of my ineptitude, and if that wasn't bad enough, I was determined to hide all of it from Alicia now that I was capable of doing so.
I carefully schooled my expression, and while attempting to conceal my torment behind the very same mask I use to hide the monster that I am, I managed to reveal the new and improved monster that I had become.
Blessedly, Alicia figured it out a few moments after I did, so it was out of my hands.
“Everything we’ve done has been for something we can’t have anymore.” Her voice was soft but even. It hurt to hear the resignation in her tone, but I couldn’t refute her words. My arms tightened in response, but she resisted, pushing away from my chest to look me in the eye. “Can we fix this?” she asked, but she really meant “you” instead of “we.”
“Anything’s possible, Alicia,” I replied, my voice lacking the key component to make those words stand on their own: hope. “Is it likely? No.” That final word was like a fist, punching the breath from her. She was silent for a long time; tears shimmered in her eyes but none fell.
After a while, her face went blank. “Then we focus on tonight, and we deal with us later.”
Corrupting Alicia Page 39