Bloodcrier: The Complete Two-Book Series

by Richard Denoncourt

  Ian snickered. “I’m not surprised you picked food, fat boy.”

  Eli crossed his arms. “Oh, yeah? What would you have done, Ianny?”

  They all knew Ian hated the name. And yet, throughout the trip, Ian had seemed the calmest among them, as if he’d been waiting all his life to be involved in a rescue mission out in the Eastlands.

  Looking serene, Ian pulled a rolled-up magazine out of his rucksack and tossed it at Eli, who caught it with an expression of surprise.

  “A book?”

  “They’re called magazines,” Ian said. “I found it in one of the bathrooms twenty floors down. Check out the cover.”

  They crowded around Eli to get a better look, Peter holding up a candle. The paper was wrinkled, and it had lost its glossy sheen after years of exposure to moisture. But they could still easily make out the motorcycle, expertly photographed, that graced the cover.

  It wasn’t just an ordinary bike. This beauty was an exquisite piece of work that vaguely resembled one of the patched-up bikes they rode back in Gulch—if it had gained thirty pounds of muscle and dressed itself in a suit of ceremonial red armor fit for a warrior king.

  Peter whistled. “Oh, baby.”

  Ian returned to unpacking his rucksack. “I would have been a motorcycle mechanic. I’d have opened my own shop, started a collection of bikes just like that one.”

  Peter and Eli flipped through the magazine. Arielle lost interest, so she wandered over to the window. Louis Blake, Dominic, and Midas Ford busied themselves with separate tasks—Blake putting together a propane burner so they could cook dinner, Midas unpacking the rucksacks, and Dominic cleaning and oiling a series of rifles and pistols he had laid out on the floor.

  Then Arielle spoke, and her question took everyone by surprise.

  “What do you think Michael would be?” she asked.

  There was moment of silence. Peter broke it with one of his typical jokes.

  “He’d be a street magician. What else would a Type I do with his powers?”

  Chuckling, Eli smacked Peter’s arm. Peter smacked him back.

  Ian must have noticed Arielle’s solemn expression. He took a few steps toward her, then stopped, a dreamy look settling over his face.

  “He would have joined one of us, probably—my partner in the motorcycle business, a chef in Eli’s restaurant, or he would have led some city department with Peter.” Ian shook his head. “Outside of work, he would have been a farmer, tending to his own homestead, and he would have raised a family with you, Arielle.”

  There were tears in Arielle’s eyes. “I think you’re right, Ian. He would want to help the rest of us—to be with us above all else. Like a family.”

  “We will be again,” Eli said, approaching Arielle and Ian. “I know it.”

  Peter nodded, also joining the group. “All jokes aside, he would make a great administrator in my government.”

  They all broke out in laughter. Dominic shushed them. Blake came up to the group, wiping his hands on his shirt.

  “We begin the session tomorrow night,” Blake said. “Dominic will stand guard. The rest of you will be asleep.”

  “Asleep?” Peter said. “But on the way over, you said—”

  “I know what I said, and you heard right. You’re going to help me by linking with my mind, then we’re going to connect with Michael. I won’t be awake. Most of the time, neither will you.”

  “We’re going to connect from here?” Ian asked, obviously stunned at what Blake implied. “It’s too far away. I thought we’d be…”

  “Be what?” Blake asked. “Making visits to the camp? Setting up right outside the walls? No way. I’m not putting any of you near those guards. Besides, we need sleep in order for this to work, and that means setting up where they won’t find us. Where we can allow ourselves to be vulnerable for hours at a time.”

  Midas and Dominic joined the group, Midas holding a candle with one hand cupped around it to limit the light’s reach. They formed a circle in the center of the room.

  “So…you’ll be asleep?” Arielle asked.

  With a shake of his head, Midas Ford took over the explanation. “It’s similar to a medically induced coma, except it doesn’t shut down brain function. The drug I’ll administer works differently in that it depresses some areas of the brain and heightens others.

  “When Louis is awake, he’ll be immobile, semiconscious. If we’re attacked, we won’t be able to move him or wake him fully—that kind of stress could cause a heart attack. Y’all will be responsible for keeping up a telepathic scan during the day, which will happen in shifts, just to make sure this old boy stays with us. Wouldn’t want him drifting away into the great beyond.

  “At night—well, at night, that’s a different story. He’ll be in a deep place where his telepathy will be amplified by more than you can imagine. Enough to amplify yours as well. Sadly, I’ll have to miss the show, since I’m not like you special people, but you’ll see. Oh, the places you’ll go.”

  “You’ve done this before?” Arielle asked.

  “Twice,” Blake said. “Both times, my men won the battles in question. Under my influence, they became as one—though it nearly killed me the last time we tried it.”

  “So you’re saying you might die on this trip?” Eli said, crossing his arms as if to fend off a sudden chill.

  “It’s possible, but I’m in good hands.”

  Midas nodded.

  “Besides,” Blake said, “I’m sure you all know this by now, and if you don’t, then it’s time you learned. Those coughing spells you heard in the stairwells on the way here…” He paused, dropping his gaze to the ground. “They’re just as bad as they sounded—worse, even. It’s lung cancer. I don’t have more than three months, which is why all of this is so important. I won’t just be helping Michael accomplish whatever he’s here to do. I’ll be teaching you all one last technique used in battle telepathy. The most effective one, which only a group of highly skilled Type IIs can pull off.”

  The others were silent, solemn in their own contemplation of what a future might be like without Louis Blake. It was inconceivable.

  “What technique is that, Louis?” Arielle asked.

  Blake smiled. His eyes seemed to spark in the candlelight.

  “Words are incapable of describing it,” he said. “You’ll just have to see it to believe it.”

  15

  Michael awoke to the sight of an old man’s face hanging above his own, peering down at him through glasses marred by a spiderweb crack across one lens.

  The old man pulled back slightly, as if he’d been watching Michael sleep and hadn’t expected him to wake so suddenly.

  “Welcome to the light,” he said, smiling widely to reveal several missing teeth, the remaining ones a yellow-brown color. Michael caught a whiff of the man’s breath—an oddly chemical scent.

  “Who…” Michael found he could barely speak. “Who are…”

  “Doctor Aldous Sampson,” the man said. “At your service.”

  The doctor was a grinning skeleton with tufts of curly white hair clinging to his scalp. He wore a stethoscope around his neck, a yellow-white smock with dark red smudges running up the front—old bloodstains from some unfortunate prisoner, perhaps. “You’ve been drugged and strapped to a bed while the higher-ups figure out what to do with you. A Type II telepath…truly fascinating.”

  It took more effort than usual for Michael to turn his head. He took in his surroundings. The room had a low, stained ceiling, and the walls were mosaics of chipped paint. There were tables that had rusty old medical instruments in piles and dangling from the edges. The other beds were empty, the covers twisted and bunched as if the patients had been pulled kicking and screaming from them. It stank in the makeshift hospital—not like medicines and disinfectants, but much the way Michael imagined a butcher shop might on a hot day.

  “It’s modest,” Sampson said, “but I can take care of most common injuries here.”

>   “How long…” Michael said.

  “You’ve been asleep since yesterday afternoon. It is now…” He made a show of glancing at a cheap wristwatch, his smirk that of a man who took immense pleasure when things happened on time. “…precisely nine in the morning.”

  “Water,” Michael said.

  The doctor immediately turned, heading for the nearest table. Michael watched miserably as the man took his time sticking a long tube into a water bottle, which he then brought back and stuck into the corner of Michael’s mouth.

  Michael drank, but the warm, plastic-tasting fluid provided no relief. His mouth remained dry. It must have been a side effect of the drug they’d used to knock him out.

  “I’m to keep you alive and healthy,” Sampson said. “Anything you feel you need, you just tell me.”

  “Answers,” Michael said.

  The doctor frowned. “What do you mean, son?”

  “When…send me away?”

  “Oh, that won’t be for another day or two.” Sampson dropped his voice to a whisper. “The general will be back today. He’ll want to know about you before you go.”

  “Hal…sidier,” Michael said.

  “That’s the one. Now, you’ll want to rest. There’s a bedpan on the table next to you. I’m happy to assist if necessary.”

  Michael closed his eyes to fend off a dizzy spell. His bladder was full, but he lacked the strength to use the bedpan. This was hell, and it was only going to get worse from here, once Harris Kole got ahold of him.

  “Oh, don’t cry,” Sampson said.

  Michael felt a tickle on the side of his face. A tear had rolled down, gathering in the hollow of his ear. It was a sign of weakness. Suddenly, he hated himself. If only he had died back in his parents’ restaurant that night in the basement…

  “Put me…to sleep,” he said, not wanting to feel anymore.

  The doctor nodded. He glanced up at the IV bag hanging over Michael’s head.

  “I could administer a sleeping aid,” the doctor said, “but in this state, too much could cause you harm. I’ll have to be extra careful.”

  “I don’t care… Kill me…”

  The doctor chuckled. “Oh, stop that talk. You have every reason to live. They’re taking you to the People’s Republic. I’ve never been there myself, but I hear the streets are paved with gold and everyone works together for the benefit of all. No one goes hungry, and no one lacks for any material comfort.”

  Anger suddenly bloomed in Michael’s chest—a hot, pleasant feeling that rejuvenated him.

  “Lies,” Michael said. “I…grew up there. Misery, famine…punishment.”

  Sampson’s brow twitched, though his dreamy smile remained. He wore it like an uncomfortable mask.

  “Shush, now,” he said. “I’ll help you get some sleep, but try not to talk like that around the general.”

  Sampson busied himself at a nearby table covered in needles and tiny bottles. When he returned, he stuck a needle into a tube leading down into the IV bag.

  “When…” Michael said, feeling his thoughts grow heavy. “General…”

  “He should be arriving this afternoon. I’ll wake you up then. He’ll want to speak with you, I imagine. A Type II telepath. Just incredible.”

  General Halsidier’s procession of trucks and armored vehicles entered the camp with little fanfare, though Simon Keagan knew every man inside the camp—from the guards right down to the prisoners—had been turning the meaning of his return over and over in their heads.

  The rumor had spread like wildfire. Prisoners overheard guards talking about it, and the guards had gotten it from a leaked report. Punishment for the latter had yet to be administered, but it seemed just another mindless task on Keagan’s plate.

  Halsidier joined the officers for dinner. He seemed to be in a lively mood—and a hungry one. The general wolfed down his food with an intensity that silenced the others at his table. The cooks had prepared roasted chicken for the general—his favorite—and Keagan imagined the prisoners in the mess hall salivating at the delicious smell as they picked at their grits and cabbage soup.

  Keagan sat to Halsidier’s left, itching for the moment in which the general might put down his knife and fork and listen to what he had to say. A Type II telepath—it was a miraculous find.

  The general didn’t seem to care.

  “He’s been strapped to the bed and properly drugged?” Halsidier asked, barely glancing at Keagan as he pushed away his plate and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “You checked on him yourself?”

  “Yes. I’ve been visiting every two to three hours, just to make sure. He’s completely under. Did you intend to speak with him?”

  “For what reason? I don’t want some ment punk getting into my brain.”

  “But the drugs…”

  “Yes, yes, yes. But taking risks like that is how the enemy gets top-secret information. You know how I got this far in my career? By staying the hell away from ments. Ship him to Harris Kole. Break his jaw, his arms, his legs, and keep him sedated in the truck. Easy-peasy. You might even see advancement in the future for such a find. The One President likes his ments, that he does. Now, when we’re done here, I’d like to meet in my office to discuss the prisoner-reduction plan.”

  General Halsidier abruptly stood from the table, then began to make his way out of the building. He walked so briskly the two guards attending to him had to hurry to catch up.

  Keagan had already begun to suspect it, but it wasn’t until he watched the general practically run away from the conversation that he became certain of one interesting fact.

  General Stephen Forrest Halsidier—stone-cold torturer of men, sent by the One President himself because of his calculating and fearless nature—was terrified of telepaths.

  16

  As soon as night fell and they had finished an uninspiring meal of cured meat, spinach leaves, and oatmeal, the group came together by the light of a single candle.

  “You’ll wake up tomorrow, right?” Arielle asked Louis Blake.

  The old man sat cross-legged on his sleeping bag as Midas Ford went about prepping a needle full of the drug that would sink him into a comatose state. Peter, Eli, and Ian sat across from him. Dominic stood by the window, gazing out at the distant lights of Camp Brazen.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Blake said. “But in case anything does happen, you’re to terminate the mission and return home. Under no circumstances do you attempt to try to help Michael without me. And under no circumstances are any of you to infiltrate the camp. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” Peter said, and the others followed with their agreement. Arielle was the only one who kept silent. Blake glared at her.

  “I understand,” she said.

  He pulled off his shoes, then eased his tired, old body into the sleeping bag. Arielle couldn’t shake an image of him lying dead in a wooden casket.

  “You better wake up,” she said.

  Smiling, Blake gave her a thumbs-up.

  The next hour consisted of Midas Ford tending to Blake as he slept—hooking up an IV bag full of saline solution, preparing different injections in case of an emergency, and positioning Blake’s body just right so his airway wouldn’t be obstructed.

  Dominic spent the hour meditating, trying to sense the moment in which a link with Blake’s mind became possible.

  Arielle, Peter, Eli, and Ian nestled into their own sleeping bags and tried to sleep. Arielle found it difficult at first. Her mind spun with worries and possible tragedies. Louis Blake and Michael Cairne were the two most important men in her life. Imagining a life without them, she felt as lost as a little girl finding herself alone on the sidewalk of a crowded metropolis with no idea where her parents had disappeared to.

  At Eli’s suggestion, the four of them used telepathic hypnosis to soothe each other and themselves into a deep slumber.

  Arielle wasn’t sure how much time had gone by when she awoke again—but this new place was not the conferenc
e room in the abandoned skyscraper. Far from it.

  She found herself suspended in a pitch-black void, without hands or arms or any sort of physical body that she could see, aware only of her own consciousness. Here, there was nothing to see, no smells or sensation of hot or cold, no air with which to fill her lungs—yet she sensed an enormity of space, as if the universe had been cleared of all stars, planets, and galaxies, and now only her thoughts could be said to exist. Time itself seemed to have been erased.

  You’re safe here, a voice said.

  She knew at once it was Dominic, though the voice did not have a distinctive sound, pitch, or tone by which to identify him. Arielle felt it was him, as if her emotions were a set of taut strings and the telepathic voice had gently strummed its fingers across the complete set of them.

  She had never felt closer to him than at this moment. His mental voice had become hers, and when she responded, his relief at not being alone simultaneously became Arielle’s.

  Where am I?

  Good, he said. You’re with me. Now, the others.

  Peter, Eli, and Ian momentarily joined them. The relief grew tenfold as Arielle felt them emerge into her consciousness like the warmth of flames in the dead of winter.

  I can’t see anything, Eli said.

  There was laughter in Dominic’s response.

  That’s because you don’t have eyes in this place.

  And Louis? Peter said.

  Dominic chuckled, and Arielle vibrated pleasantly. He’s here…sort of.

  What do you mean? Ian asked. Is he here or not?

  He isn’t here…He is here.

  Arielle was beginning to understand. Are we inside Louis’s mind right now?

  Yes and no.

  Damn it, Dom, Peter said. Can you give us a straight answer, please?

  They sensed Dominic’s cheerfulness, which resembled the nostalgic pleasure a grown man took in visiting his childhood home and stumbling across his old bicycle half-buried in the dirt. It was the joy of a man who finally felt like he was home.