The Pursuit (The Permutation Archives Book 2)

by Kindra Sowder

  He began to run toward me with an animal speed, and I knew I had to act fast, or I would be dead. I raised my hand toward him and forced what little power had returned to me in his direction, pushing against him with everything I had as the drugs began to have little effect on me anymore. The shifter was attempting to force his way past the invisible wall I had raised, only able to take a couple of steps in my direction as my power returned to me.

  “You will come with me willingly, or I will take you by force. Either way, your mother and friends die,” he shouted, his voice taking on a primal growl underneath the voice, a hint of the man left inside of him.

  “I think you’ve underestimated me,” I retorted, “because the only ones that will die today are the men working for King, and that just happens to be you and your friends.” I smirked as I closed my invisible hands around him and he gasped as the air forced its way from his lungs. “If you think you can take me in, then do it without King’s weapons or drugs. Our powers only. Then we’ll see who will die today, huh?” I knew this was brazen and probably not my smartest idea, but I was hoping he would get pissed off enough to make a mistake.

  He seemed to think about it for a moment and then nodded in agreement. I dropped the invisible wall, and he came for me, bounding fast through the trees and the brush at our feet. I planted mine and spread them to shoulder width apart, bracing myself for the impact I knew was coming that I would be well prepared for. The space between us had given me plenty of time to formulate somewhat of a plan, but I would let my power guide me as it always had. It knew what to do in a fight better than I did and I was still learning all I could from its brutal force, even how to control it and use it to my advantage instead of the other way around. It filled me and pulled at my mind, taking my body into its grip with rough hands.

  He was now within feet of me, and I raised my hands, ready for the assault that I was sure was coming with those gigantic teeth. My power gripped his body and threw him as I turned with the move, causing him to slam into a tree. He shook his head after the impact and growled in my direction and came for me again. I performed the same move, apparently playing with him, making him look like a joke instead of the powerful shifting man he was. This infuriated him. I could feel it rippling through the air toward me and move over my skin. The muscles underneath his flesh shifted, and I saw his hands change into claws at his will, his nails growing and turning into sharp claws as I watched in fascination. I had seen two people that could shift now, and both of them were entirely different. One could use the plates underneath that moved to protect him from other abilities except for Julius’s acid sting, and this one could pick and choose which wolfish characteristics he wanted to use. Definitely a very powerful tool, but I was willing to bet that mine was even more so. Not everyone could turn a living person into a walking bomb, but I could.

  We began to circle one another, sizing each other up to see what each one of us had. I felt heat flash behind my eyes and then a tingle in the palms of my hands, and the man’s eyes widened slightly, but returned to their natural coolness within seconds. He hadn’t realized I had seen his fear, and I would use it to my advantage. He lunged, but I was ready. He lashed out with one clawed hand, but I avoided it, forcing power into my closed fist and, as I saw it move through the air, I could see a slight shimmer just above my knuckles that sparkled in the moonlight. My fist collided with his cheek, but I didn’t feel a thing. The tiny shimmer had protected my hand and put more impact into the punch then I had expected. He stumbled and roared as he turned back to look at me, rage pouring out of him as he lunged at me again, but this time with teeth.

  My arm came up to defend myself and his jaws closed around my arm, but there was no pain. He gnawed at me, attempting to get past the cocoon my power had enveloped around my vulnerable flesh. My feet slid in the damp earth as he pushed me, his teeth attempting to penetrate the shield of my ability. This was something I had not seen before, and I was genuinely surprised just as he was, but grateful for it all the same. Without it, I would’ve been dog food already and bled out on the forest floor. I dug my heels into the dirt, trying to stop the slide and focusing on his gnashing teeth as saliva pooled around the barrier and fell to the ground.

  I pushed my power into his chest with my other hand, forcing him back at least a few feet so I could get my footing, and advanced on him, putting everything I had into a punch to his face. When my fist collided with his cheek, it barely had any impact on him, even backed by the force of my telekinesis. He took one step back and shook his head, growling a promise of death, and came at me again. He slashed out with his claws but this time, I wasn’t able to avoid it as they tore four rugged gashes in my arm close to my shoulder. I cried out in pain, but couldn’t stop fighting no matter how much it hurt. My arm stung so badly I wanted to stop, to give up, but I forced myself to keep moving past the agony running through my entire arm. I avoided the next swipe, ducking as his closed fist came barreling in my direction. I stretched out my leg and swiped his feet, causing him to fall to the ground. He was up in an instant like I hadn’t done anything.

  I let my power guide my next move when he came toward me, raising both hands and focusing them on the inner workings of the beast, which was more complex than I had assumed. He coughed when I forced my way into his lungs, which seemed to carry oxygen to his bloodstream more efficiently than his non-shifting counterparts. The atoms were unreachable, the force within him responsible for the change stopping me from entering his basic structure to annihilate him altogether. He coughed again, shaking his head as if to shake off the feeling of my invasion. From my best guess, each shifter that I would encounter would possibly have this ability. I cursed under my breath and dropped my hand, my arm beginning to shake with the effort.

  His low, melodic laugh floated through the air, the animal able to be heard just underneath the surface of his voice, causing him to sound like two voice emerged from his vocal chords at the same time.

  “Looks like I’m immune.” He laughed again. “Oh, this will be fun.”

  The shock had me rooted to the spot, and he came to me with lightning speed, placing his large clawed hand around my throat and pushing me up against the thick trunk of a tree, squeezing on my windpipe just enough for me to know he was done playing games. Funny. So was I. I kicked out and my foot connected with his midsection, causing him to drop me and curl around the injury. I pooled my power into my closed fist and hit him, connecting under his chin and sending him flying through the air. He landed with a grunt and rolled a couple of times before coming to a stop. I was impressed with myself at that moment because I had not known what telekinesis was capable of, and apparently, it was worth so much more than anyone would have imagined. Even me. Even though I had seen what I thought was the extent of my ability. Apparently, the power inside of me wanted me to know exactly what I was dealing with because it was driving my actions. I was just going with the flow. Now, if I only knew how to make it work for me instead of taking over.

  The sounds of fighting in the distance only drove me to do what I did next as well as the power flowing through my veins, despite the fact that I was beginning to shake from exertion. Using it was something I would be getting used to I was sure, and with more frequency, if this was to be my life now. I stood over him and straddled his hips, looking down at him with pity for what he would experience next.

  “That may not work on your kind, but I have a feeling I know what would work really well.” I decided to use his own words against him, “This will be fun.” I aimed one hand at his head and the other at his heart, which I could sense rapidly beating behind his ribcage at a furious speed with fear. “So, are you like the werewolves in those old movies? A silver bullet to the heart? Or can I kill you any way I wish by obliterating the two organs someone needs to live?”

  The head and the heart, the vital organs that every human and animal needed, were my targets, but would my
power be able to do it? Could I do it? The simple answer was yes. Yes, I could. I pushed my energy into him, starting with the head and then focusing on his heart that I took in my invisible hands, envisioning them as I increased the pressure. I dropped my hands and continued to focus my power on those two areas, walking around him and kneeling down beside his head as his face reddened with the effort to keep from screaming. His features shifted back to that of a viciously gorgeous man whose dark eyes wouldn’t look at me. We had decided our powers only, but little did he know that mine was one of the most unique and powerful that had ever been seen since the Harvest began.

  “You know,” I paused long enough to pick a small, bright green leaf off of his shirt, examining it before dropping it to the ground, “I’m getting tired of being hunted down like an animal. And by my own kind, no less. Wouldn’t that bother you? Wouldn’t that make you just angry enough?” He didn’t answer, but his eyes did shift to look into mine, the whites around the deep brown beginning to turn a lovely shade of light pink. I applied more pressure to his head and heart, the pain finally becoming visible in his face. I may not have been able to impact his atoms, but I could kill him this way it seemed. And I wasn’t picky.

  “I mean, first I’m kidnapped, then experimented on and, when I finally make my escape I am being chased and hunted by someone who won’t even come out here and do it himself. He sends his cronies to do it, and that pisses me off.”

  His heart gave out first, and I could see it within my mind, slowing as I squeezed it, my power building within his chest until everything was obliterated. He took one last breath as blood began to trickle from his ears, nose, and mouth from the pressure I had placed on his skull. I fell onto the ground into a sitting position, the power snapping back into me as if it had been let go by a rubber band, a grunt escaping me as my backside hit the dirt. And then there was a sound I had only heard once before. The metallic whir of a large engine and wind whipping at the ground as it was forced through and out of the large propelling fans.

  I jumped to my feet and jumped over the body of the fallen shifter, not even caring to pay any respect to the man who had attempted to take me back to King. Moving through the trees back toward where we had come from, toward our make-shift camp, I could see shining metal and fallen trees. When I made it into the clearing the craft had created, every tree within yards was down, causing me to have to jump and climb over large trunks and jutting branches and, when my feet hit the dirt, I slid to a stop at what was in front of me.

  I had never seen one of them from the outside, only the inside, but it brought back memories of my time inside of one. The interior flashed through my mind, the injection of the Paralisix, and then of the booster that Ryder had forced on me to keep me compliant before I knew who he honestly worked for. The plane was massive, and the strength of the air whipping around me had been enough to knock down every single tree for yards and yards, blowing each leaf and pine needle away to show only soil and what little foliage had grown to cover it.

  The ramp that took you inside of the craft was down, the sleek metal covered in a black, rubber to ensure you didn’t fall. Ryder was on the ramp as it began to lift off, fighting for his life with a man in a white suit. A man that I recognized as being the cold, stone-faced, government peon in a white suit. Clean and pressed and perfect as he stood in my apartment with the new recruit, taking our blood. Joshua Cranston. Rage filled me, threatening to overflow onto the ground around me and into the stiff breeze to reach out to him. There was no one else, but that didn’t mean they weren’t inside of the place farther back. From what I remembered about them there was a lot of space to store anything and everything, especially people.

  Ryder was now on his back, fending off punches from the other man and doing pretty well for himself. He kicked out, causing the other man to stumble back only a few paces, and advance on Ryder again as he rose to his feet in a crouched defense position.

  “Ryder!” I screamed into the air, hoping he could hear me past the whipping winds of the propelling fans pointed toward the ground as the plane rose higher and higher.

  Both pairs of eyes turned to me, one with shock and the other with determination. I watched in horror as the aircraft continued its ascent and knew it was now or never, knowing it was possible that I couldn’t reach it in time to jump and grab on. There was no one else around, so I knew they had to be inside. Either that or they had taken off. I planted my feet, eyeing the edge of the ramp, and prepared to sprint as fast as I could to reach it in time. And then I was off, the wind whipping my hair and stinging my eyes as I ran and, once I was in prime position, I pushed myself up with the help of a downed tree and jumped.

  Chapter

  TEN

  Everything happened in slow motion. The air around me was strong, attempting to steer me off course and my hands reached out in preparedness. My fingertips grew closer with each second and, as they reached the metal and rubber, time sped back up. I gripped the edge of the ramp with every bit of strength I had left, pulling myself up so I could climb onto it, which proved harder than I had expected. Hooking both arms over the edge, I saw Ryder’s back, crouched before me and ready to defend me with his life if it came down to it. I summoned every ounce of strength I had left and pulled myself up onto the ramp as the man in the white suit whom I had only seen once before charged Ryder. He tackled him, sending them both falling to the rubberized metal beneath them. Ryder pushed him off and then kicked out, sending him to the ground with a grunt. Then Ryder was on top of him, and I jumped to my feet and yelled out to keep him from beating him to a bloody pulp before I could get some answers.

  I bent down and looked the man in the eyes, and he was just as I remembered him, but now his face was fearless, nothing in his cold stare. He was different somehow, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  “Where are they?” I shouted at him so I could be heard over the loud whoosh of the engine and the propellers as we rose further into the air, now a deathly drop if any of us were to fall from the craft. And, considering that a co-captain had not been to the back to help this man, they had not yet been alerted to the fact that we were on the aircraft.

  He began to laugh, his uproarious laughter already starting to grind on my already frazzled nerves. “Oh, it’s you they’re after. I knew something was different about you.”

  “You don’t know anything about me,” I said through gritted teeth, my jaw clenched so tight it was beginning to hurt.

  “I knew the moment we entered your apartment, and I saw the defiance in your eyes you would cause trouble.”

  Ryder punched him and pulled him up by the collar of his nicely pressed shirt, no longer clean as blood rolled from his busted lip and down his chin. “Answer the question, or I can promise you there is more of a beating waiting for you.”

  “You working with the good doctor, Ryder?” He smirked, the gash in his bottom lip spreading with his mouth. “We had her pegged from the beginning.”

  “And you didn’t do anything? Why?” I asked.

  “Doesn’t really matter now. We have all the proof we need.” The laughter started up again, and I was beginning to lose my patience.

  “Where are they? If you don’t answer, the least of your worries will be Ryder beating the shit out of you. You’ll have to deal with me and trust me, you don’t want that. The soldiers’ dead bodies can attest to that.”

  “Oh, is that a promise?” he asked, the smirk only widening as he stared at me with the same defiance I had shot in his direction in my own apartment all that time ago.

  Ryder pulled his fist back for another hit, but then groaned, grabbing both sides of his head and backing away as quickly as he could. But, even then, he still couldn’t find reprieve from whatever was happening. He stumbled back a few steps, nearly collapsing.

  “Ryder?” I kneeled down next to him, knowing I couldn’t do anything. “Ryder, what’s hap
pening?” Panic caused my chest to constrict, making it nearly impossible for any air to move in.

  “Oh, you’ve been a naughty boy,” the man in the white suit said. His name was Josha Cranston but, as far as I was concerned, he was the man who helped condemn me and those around me, changing everything and turning the world I once knew into a monster. “A very, very bad boy.” He rose to his feet and straightened his suit jacket, pulling the lapels together and buttoning the top button.

  My head snapped in his direction. The confusion must have been evident on my face because he laughed, placing his hand over his heart.

  “Get out of my head,” Ryder screamed, now on his knees with his cheek resting on the cool rubber beneath our feet.

  I reached out with my hand and let the power build, forcing him to stand in just that spot without being able to move even a finger.

  “What are you doing?” He dropped his hand, apparently immune to my ability as well.

  How was I supposed to know who I could use this against and who I couldn’t at this point? With the first shifter, I couldn’t really hurt him on an atomic level unless the plates that moved underneath his skin had been melted away by acid. With the wolf, I couldn’t affect him at that level period, but could do anything else I wanted to him. But this man in front of me, I couldn’t touch him at all now when I had been able to before. I was only hoping that was temporary.