by L. J. Smith
"That thing can increase our powers?" Gabriel said with scorn and disbelief.
"Crystals can store psychic energy," Kaitlyn said in a small voice. It sounded small and distant even to her. She had the feeling of someone who'd walked into a nightmare.
Mr. Zetes was looking at her. "You know that?" he said.
"I... heard it somewhere."
He nodded, but his eyes lingered on her as he said, "You two have the potential-this crystal has the power to develop that potential. And I have . . ." He stopped, as if thinking how to phrase something.
"What do you have?" Gabriel said.
Mr. Zetes smiled. "The contacts," he replied. "The ... clients, if you will. I can find people who are willing to pay considerable amounts for your services. Amounts that will climb as your powers are honed, of course."
Clients, Kaitlyn thought. That letter-the letter from Judge Baldwin. A list of potential clients.
"You want to hire us out?" she blurted before she could stop herself. "Like-like-" She was too overwrought to think of an analogy.
Gabriel could think of one. "Like assassins," he suggested. His voice chilled Kaitlyn-because it wasn't at all outraged or indignant. He sounded quite calm-thoughtful, even.
"Not at all," Mr. Zetes said. "I think there would be very few assassinations involved. But there are a number of business situations in which your talents would be invaluable. Corporate espionage-industrial sabotage-influence of witnesses at certain trials. No, I would prefer to call you a psychic strike team, available for handling all sorts of situations."
A strike team. Project Black Lightning, Kaitlyn thought. The words scribbled on that piece of paper. He wanted to turn them into a paranormal dirty tricks team.
"I hadn't meant to explain all this to you so quickly," Mr. Zetes was going on. "But the truth is that something has come up. You remember Marisol Diaz, of course. Well, there has been a bit of a problem with Marisol's family. Several of them have become .. . unexpectedly difficult. Suspicious. I'm afraid that money has little influence on them. I need to quiet them some other way."
There was a pause. Kaitlyn couldn't say anything because she felt as if she were choking, and Gabriel simply looked sardonic.
"I thought we weren't assassins," he said.
Mr. Zetes looked pained. "I don't need them killed. Just quieted. If you can do it some other way, I'm very happy."
Kaitlyn managed to get words through the blockage in her throat. "You did it to Marisol," she said. "You put her in the coma."
"I had to," Mr. Zetes said. "She had become quite unstable. Thank you for bringing that to my attention, incidentally-if you hadn't mentioned it to Joyce, I wouldn't have realized so soon. Marisol had been with me for several years, and I thought she understood what we were doing."
"The pilot study," Kaitlyn said.
"Yes, she told you about that, didn't she? It was a very great pity. I didn't know then that only the strongest minds, the most gifted psychics, could stand contact with one of the great crystals. I gathered six of the best I could find locally-but it was a terrible disaster. Afterward I realized that I would have to expand my search-cover the whole nation-if I wanted to find students who could tolerate the training."
"But what happened to them?" Kaitlyn burst out. "To the ones in the pilot study"
"Oh, it was a dreadful waste," Mr. Zetes said, as if repeating something she should have gotten the first time. "Very good minds, some of them. Genuine talent. To see that reduced to idiocy and madness is very sad."
Kaitlyn couldn't answer. The hair on her arms and the back of her neck was standing up. Tears had sprung to her eyes.
"Marisol, now-I did think she understood, but in the end she proved otherwise. She was a good worker in the beginning. The problem was that she knew too much to be simply bribed, and she was too temperamental to be controlled by fear. I really had no other choice." He sighed. "My real mistake was to use drugs instead of the crystal. I thought a seizure might be very effective-but instead of dying, she wound up in the hospital, and now her family is posing a problem. It's really very difficult."
He might look like an earl-but he was insane, Kaitlyn thought. Truly insane, insane enough that he didn't realize how insane all this would sound to sane people. She looked at Gabriel-and felt a shock that sent chills up from her feet.
CHAPTER 15
Because Gabriel didn't look as if he found it insane. Slightly distasteful, maybe, but not crazy. In fact, there was something like agreement in his face, as if Mr. Z were talking about doing something unpleasant but necessary.
"But we can take care of that problem," Mr. Zetes said, looking up and speaking more briskly. "And once it's over, we can get to our real work. Always assuming you're interested, of course?"
His voice had a note of gentle inquiry, and he looked from Gabriel to Kaitlyn, waiting for an answer.
Again Kaitlyn felt a shock of disbelief. Those dark, piercing eyes of his looked so acute-how could he not realize what she was feeling? How could he look at her as if he expected agreement?
She had exploded into speech before she knew what was happening. All the fear, all the fury, all the disgust and horror, that had been building inside her burst out.
"You're insane," she said. "You're completely insane, don't you know that? Everything that you've said is completely insane. How can you talk about people being reduced to idiots as if-as if-" She was degenerating into sobs and incoherence. "And Marisol, " she gasped. "How could you do that to her?
And what you want to turn us all into-you're just completely, totally crazy. You're evil."
She was having hysterics, she supposed. Raving. Shouting as if shouting were going to do any good. But she couldn't stop herself.
Mr. Zetes seemed less surprised than she did. Displeased, certainly, but not astonished. "Evil?" he said, frowning. "I'm afraid that's a very emotional and inexact word. Many things seem evil that are, in a higher sense, good."
"You don't have any higher sense," Kaitlyn shouted. "You don't care about anything except what you can get out of us."
Mr. Zetes was shaking his head. "I'm afraid I can't waste time in arguing now-but I honestly hope you'll see reason eventually. I think you will, in time, if I keep you here long enough." He turned to Gabriel.
"Now-"
Then Kaitlyn did something she realized was stupid even as she was doing it. But her anger at Mr.
Zetes's insufferable smugness, his indifference to her words, drove her beyond any caution.
"You won't get any of the others to join you," she said. "Not any of them back home. Rob wouldn't even listen to it. And if I don't come back, they'll know something's wrong. They already know about the hidden room there at the Institute. And they're linked, we're all linked telepathically. All five of us. And-"
"What?" Mr. Zetes said. For the first time, a real emotion was showing on his face. Astonishment- and anger. He looked at Gabriel sharply. "What?"
"We are, aren't we?" Kaitlyn demanded. "Tell him, Gabriel." And tell him he's crazy, because you know he is. You know he is!
"It's something that happened," Gabriel told Mr. Zetes. "It was an accident. I didn't know it would become permanent. If I had"-he glanced at Kaitlyn-"it never would have happened."
"But this is- You're telling me that the five of you are involved in a stable telepathic link? But don't you realize . . . ?" Mr. Zetes broke off. There was plenty of emotion in his face now, Kaitlyn noted. It was dark with blood and fury. "Don't you realize that you're useless within a linked group like that?"
Gabriel said nothing. Through their connection, Kaitlyn could feel that he was as angry as Mr. Zetes.
"I was counting on you," Mr. Zetes said. "I need you to help me take care of the Diaz problem. If that isn't controlled . . ." He stopped. Kaitlyn could see he was making a great effort to get hold of himself.
And, after a moment or two, he apparently succeeded. He sighed, and the fury drained out of his face.
"There
's no help for it now," he said. "It's a very great pity. You don't know how much work is wasted."
He looked at Kaitlyn. "I had great hopes for you."
Then he said, "Prince, back."
Kaitlyn had almost forgotten about the dogs-but now one came straight for her, hair bristling, teeth showing to the gums. It was completely silent, which only made it scarier.
Involuntarily Kaitlyn took a step backward-and the dog kept coming. As it reached her, she stepped back again and again-and then she realized what was happening. She was standing inside the metal cage.
Mr. Zetes had gone over to a kind of console across the room. He pressed a button and the door to the cage slid shut.
"I told you," Kaitlyn said tensely. "If you keep me here, they'll know-"
Mr. Zetes interrupted as if he didn't notice her speaking. Turning to Gabriel, he said, "Kill her."
Shock washed over Kaitlyn like an icy bath-and again and again. She'd realized, all at once, just how stupid she'd been. The cold reality of her situation left her unable to breathe. Unable to think.
"Don't worry; it's just a Faraday cage," Mr. Zetes was telling Gabriel. "It's built to keep out normal electromagnetic waves, but it's quite transparent to your power. It's like the steel room at the Institute, and you projected easily through that."
Gabriel was silent. His stony expression told Kaitlyn nothing, and she couldn't feel anything from him through the web. Maybe she was just numb.
"Go on," Mr. Zetes said. He was beginning to look impatient. "Believe me, there's no other alternative. If there were, I would save myself the work of getting another subject like her-but there's no choice. The link has to be broken. The only way to break it is to kill one of the five of you."
Gabriel's chest rose and fell with a sudden deep breath. "The link has to be broken," he repeated, grimly.
Kaitlyn did feel something then. She felt that he meant it.
"Then go on," Mr. Zetes said. "It's unfortunate, but it has to be done. It's not as if it's the first time you've killed." He glanced at Kaitlyn. "Have you heard about that? Drains his victims' life energy dry. An extraordinary power." There was a kind of macabre satisfaction in his face.
Then it turned to impatience again. "Gabriel, you know what the rewards will be with me. You can literally have anything you want, in time. Money, power-your rightful position in the world. But you must cooperate. You must prove yourself."
Gabriel stood like a statue. Except for that one sentence, he hadn't said a word. Something artistic in Kaitlyn's brain watched him with mad clarity, thinking about how really beautiful his face was in repose.
He looked a bit like his namesake, like an angel carved in white marble. Except for his eyes, which were definitely not an angel's eyes. They were dark and fathomless-and right now rather pitiless. Cold as a black hole.
One could very easily imagine an assassin having eyes like that.
Then something like sadness entered them. Because he's sorry to have to kill me? Kaitlyn wondered.
She felt nothing at all through the telepathic web. It was like being connected to a glacier.
"Go on," Mr. Zetes said.
Gabriel glanced at Kaitlyn, then at the white-haired man.
"I'd rather kill you," he said conversationally, to Mr. Zetes.
Kaitlyn didn't get it at first. She thought he might just be stating a preference, rather than refusing.
Mr. Zetes, though, looked unamused. Forbidding. He put one hand behind him.
"If you're not for me, you're against me, Gabriel," he said. "If you won't cooperate, I'll have to treat you as an enemy yourself."
"I don't think you'll have time," Gabriel said, and took a step toward him.
Kaitlyn grabbed at the metal mesh of her cage. Her numbed brain was finally getting things together. She wanted to laugh hysterically-but it didn't seem right.
Don't kill him, she thought wildly to Gabriel. Don't really kill him-he's crazy, don't you see? And we've got to do things-police, an institution-but we can't actually kill people.
Gabriel tossed her the briefest of glances. "You're the one who's crazy," he said. "If anybody ever deserved it, it's him. Not that your idea didn't have its points," he added to Mr. Zetes. "Especially in the rewards department."
Mr. Zetes's eyes shifted from Kaitlyn to Gabriel during this exchange. They narrowed, and he nodded slightly.
Kaitlyn was waiting for some sign of fear. It didn't come. Mr. Zetes seemed calm, even resigned. "You won't change your mind?" he asked Gabriel.
Gabriel took another step toward him. "Good night," he said.
Mr. Zetes brought his hand from behind his back, and Kaitlyn saw that he was holding a dark and very modern, very nasty-looking gun.
"Baron, Prince-guard," he said. And then he added, "If you make a move now, these dogs will jump up and tear out your throat. And then there's the gun-I've always been a very good shot. Do you think you can dispose of all three of us with a knife before we can kill you?"
Gabriel laughed-a very disquieting sound. Although his back was to Kaitlyn now, she knew that he was giving Mr. Zetes his most dazzling, disturbing smile. "I don't need a knife," he said.
Mr. Zetes shook his head, gently and disparagingly. "There's something I'm afraid you haven't realized.
Joyce hasn't tested you since you formed this ... unfortunate linkage, has she?"
"So what?"
"If she had, you would have discovered by now that it's quite difficult for a telepath who is already in a stable link to reach outside that link. Nearly impossible, I believe. In other words, young man, except for communications within your group of five, you've lost your power."
Kait could feel the disbelief surging in Gabriel. His walls were lowered now, his attention was focused elsewhere. Then she felt something like the drawing back of the ocean just before a tsunami-a sort of gathering in Gabriel's mind. She braced herself-and felt him unleash it.
Or try to. The wave, instead of crashing down on Mr. Zetes, seemed to crash around her and Gabriel instead.
It was true. He couldn't link with anyone else. Not to communicate with them-and not to harm them.
"And now, if you'll sit down in that chair," Mr. Zetes said.
Kaitlyn's eyes shifted to the chair. She'd barely noticed it before. It stood on the opposite side of the room from the door, and it looked frighteningly high-tech. It was made of metal.
With the gun in front of him and a dog on either side, Gabriel backed up to the chair. He sat.
Mr. Zetes went over and made some quick movements, stooping once. When he stood, Kaitlyn realized that Gabriel was now restrained in the chair by metal cuffs at his wrists and ankles.
Then Mr. Zetes stepped behind the chair. Two winglike devices swung forward. In another instant, Gabriel's head was held motionless by a device that looked as if it were meant for brain surgery.
"The crystal can do more than just amplify power," Mr. Zetes said. "It can cause excruciating pain-even madness. Of course, that was what happened with the pilot study." He stepped back. "Are you quite comfortable?" he asked.
Kaitlyn was remembering the pain that had resulted from being in contact with a tiny shard of the crystal, a piece the size of her fingernail.
Mr. Zetes went over to the towering thing with the jagged growths in the center of the room. For the first time, Kaitlyn realized that the metal stand that supported it was mobile. The entire structure, though obviously heavy, could be moved.
Very carefully and delicately, Mr. Zetes was bringing the crystal to Gabriel. Tipping it slightly. Adjusting it. Until one of the jagged terminals, one of the growths, was resting against Gabriel's forehead.
In direct contact with the third eye.
"It will take a while for it to build. Now I'm going to leave the room," Mr. Zetes said. "In an hour or so I'll come back-and by then I think you might have changed your mind."
He walked out. The dogs went with him.
Kaitlyn was alone with Gabriel-but t
here was absolutely nothing she could do.
She looked wildly at the door of the metal cage, pulled at it with the strength of desperation. She only succeeded in cutting her fingers. It took her about two minutes to discover that there was no way she could affect it, with fists or feet or the weight of her body.
"Don't bother," Gabriel said. The strain in his voice frightened her into going over to look at him.
He was completely immobile, his face white as paper. And now that Kaitlyn was still, she could feel his pain through the web.
He was trying to hold it back, to close himself-and the pain-off from her. But even what little got through to her was terrible.
The pressure behind the forehead-like what she had experienced with the crystal Joyce had used, but indescribably worse. As if something alive were swelling there, trying to get out. And the heat-like a blowtorch directed against that spot. And the sheer black agony-Kaitlyn's knees gave out. She found herself half lying on the floor of the cage.
Then she pulled herself up to a sitting position.
Oh, Gabriel. . .
Leave me alone.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, saying it and sending it at once. I'm so sorry.. . .
Just leave me alone! I don 'I need you. . . .
Kaitlyn couldn't leave him alone. She was locked into it with him, sharing the waves of agony that kept building. She could feel them break over her, spread out infinitely around her. Spreading, swelling ... to include all of them. All five who shared the web.
Kaitlyn! a distant voice shouted.
The connection was shaky, tenuous. But Kaitlyn recognized Rob.
It wasn't just pain. It was power. The crystal was feeding Gabriel power.
Rob-can you hear me? Lewis, Anna-can you hear me?
Kaitlyn, what's happening? Where are you?
It's them, Gabriel! We've got them! It's them! For a minute, despite the screaming of her nerves, Kaitlyn was simply delirious with joy.
We might lose them any second, Gabriel said. But Kaitlyn could feel what he felt-there were no walls between them now. The crystal had annihilated those. And his relief and joy were as strong as hers.