Miriya

by Jade Kerrion

  ~*~

  Miriya lingered in the library until Lucien’s voice whispered through her mind. Miriya?

  What is it, Lucien?

  We could use some of your opinion-altering capabilities out here. The detective insists on talking to Danyael and has threatened to bring him in for questioning. The cops can’t do that, right?

  Not unless Danyael has actually committed a crime, which he hasn’t. All mutants fall under the jurisdiction of the Mutant Affairs Council. I’m on my way.

  She set her book aside and hurried to the front door. Lucien stood outside, facing down a heavy-set detective and his team of cops. Miriya arrived in time to hear the detective say, “Well, there’s no one here now from the council, is there?” The man sneered at Lucien. “We’re bringing him in. Tell us where he is, or do we need to obtain a warrant to search your house?”

  Miriya stepped forward onto the paved driveway. “Actually, I’m a representative of the Mutant Affairs Council. Danyael Sabre is under my watch.”

  “You?” The detective snorted. “You’re just a girl.”

  “Are you calling me short?” Miriya asked, a testy tone in her voice. Her telepathic powers lashed out, and the detective dropped to the ground, screaming, his hands clutching the sides of his head in agony.

  The other policemen stared in shock and horror. Some of them rushed toward Miriya, drawing their weapons, but they were felled by a single precise telepathic blast straight into their minds. As they lay groaning on the ground in pain, Miriya pulled out the badge that identified her as an enforcer in the Mutant Affairs Council. “The next time,” she said to the humiliated detective, “just ask for my identification. You’re relieved of duty, officer.” She turned to the other policemen, who were staring at her with reluctant awe and no small degree of sullenness. “Who’s the most senior officer here?”

  A baby-faced officer stepped forward. “I’m Sergeant Brooks, ma’am.”

  Miriya smiled warmly at him. “You’re in charge now. Please coordinate with Lucien’s chief of security to protect the house in case those creatures return. If there are any issues, I’d like to hear about them right away.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he responded with a great deal more enthusiasm than he had previously displayed.

  “Nicely done,” Lucien said as they watched the young officer give orders to his men. The detective was skulking back his car. He appeared shrunken, his shoulders hunched. “I take it ‘How to make friends and influence people’ wasn’t part of your enforcer training.”

  “I was absent from class that day,” Miriya said with a flippant smile.

  “I thought that those telepathic abilities would have allowed you to be a bit more subtle.”

  “Oh, you mean like the Jedi mind trick? I could have, of course, but then what would have been the fun of it? Ordinarily, I don’t go out of my way to hit people over the head with my power or authority, but he had it coming. He’s slime. I wouldn’t trust him around women.”

  “Are you serious?” Lucien glanced over his shoulder at the detective. “Should we report him?”

  “Just for thinking nasty thoughts about what he’d like to do with whips and chains to non-consenting women? We can’t, Lucien. He hasn’t actually done anything illegal. Yet.”

  “Zara would say that the point of having power is to prevent those things from happening in the first place.”

  Miriya shrugged. “It’s a good philosophy, but she’s not accounting for willpower. I’ve learned not to underestimate it. That officer is a jerk. His mind is a sewer, but willpower has kept him on the straight and narrow. Willpower is what got Danyael through that fight—well, that and an incredible tolerance for pain. More to the point…” She looked directly at Lucien. “Is what you would say.”

  “Why is what I believe important?”

  “Because you’ve appointed yourself Danyael’s protector. Many—likely including Zara—would conclude that the best and safest option is to lock Danyael up, because he is a huge threat, even though he hasn’t done anything wrong. Ten mutant containment facilities have been built in the United States in the past three years, and they’re all overcrowded. The population grows daily. The council is doing everything it can to minimize the appearance of mutants as a threat, but paranoia is making the rounds here. Mutants—and most certainly Galahad—are first in the line of fire. Clones and in vitros won’t be far behind.”

  “I won’t let anything like that happen to Danyael,” Lucien said.

  “That’s good to hear. I hope you’re up to the task of protecting him, because he will likely need it. There’s just no way sharing a face with Galahad could be anything but profoundly bad news.”

  “Lucien!”

  He looked up at Xin’s voice and saw her waving at him from the balcony. “She’s found something.” He returned to the house, Miriya beside him. He stepped into the study and closed the doors. “Anything interesting?”

  “We may want to accelerate our plans to take care of Jason Rakehell.” Xin waved a slim hand at the computer monitoring the news frequencies used by pro-humanist groups, including Purest Humanity. “He’s just issued a call to arms, and has apparently figured out that you’re harboring Zara and Galahad. He doesn’t mention Galahad, but the coordinates he’s delivered to his members are right here in McLean, just a mile down the road. Either he picked the wrong house, which is unlikely since he’s not actually that stupid, or he’s using that place as a meeting point prior to converging on this house.”

  “I’ll let the cops know,” Lucien said after scanning the Purest Humanity news feed. “Xin, find out where Jason is right now. It’ll take his mobs a while to gather, and in the meantime, we’re going to take the fight to him. Where’s Zara and Galahad?”

  “In her bedroom,” Miriya responded, her voice sweet. She did not elaborate. She did not have to.

  Lucien hesitated. Miriya chuckled at the image that went through his mind. Dark against light, the contrast startling, beautiful. Zara, slim and lovely, her skin the color of golden dusk, coiled around Danyael—no, Galahad—Lucien corrected mentally. The image did not change though. Damn, I’ll have trouble getting that picture out of my head now. “I’ll get them after I debrief the cops. Miriya, you’ve probably got the strongest shields. Can you wake Danyael?”

  Miriya picked the location of Danyael’s bedroom out of Lucien’s head and made her way up the stairs. She knocked on the door, not really expecting a response. With her strongest psychic shields locked around her mind, she opened the door, slipped in, and shut it behind her.

  Her telepathic powers uncoiled, and she gently slipped a hook into Danyael’s unprotected mind. The act violated every tenet of privacy, but it was likely the only chance she would ever have to understand the alpha empath.

  He was too powerful, too deadly. She could not afford to be wrong about him. The world could not afford to be wrong about him.

  Miriya closed her eyes and inhaled as she rooted deep into his psyche and searched his memories.

  Waves of unrestrained, uncensored emotions pushed against her shields, but they were not what she had expected from Danyael. She had anticipated a great deal of anger and bitterness, the kind of emotions powerful enough to drive others to suicide, but he had locked the pain and terror of his childhood away so deeply that conscious effort was required to access those emotions.

  Instead, she sensed his loneliness, and to her surprise, emotions that were akin to pleasure, gratitude, and hope. He enjoyed his work and found contentment within the limited boundaries of his life. He did not have many friends, but cherished the ones he had. He had no plans for the future, no expectations for a marriage or a family, but he was grateful for the semblance of normality that he did have. He focused on getting through one day at a time, always with the hope that someday he would look up, look back, and be awed by how far he had managed to come.

  In his sleep, Danyael stirred as if he were aware, on some level, of Miriya’s psychic violation. He h
ad no defense against her. Everything about him—from his strength of will to his hard-won emotional equilibrium, from his fractured heart to his unyielding compassion—she knew far more deeply, far more intimately than anyone ever could.

  The emotions do not lie.

  A smile came to her lips. She blinked tears from her eyes.

  He amazed her. He was everything she respected, everything she wanted to be.

  Something in her warmed and melted.

  It was inevitable. Loving him was inevitable.

  A smile that wavered on her lips reflected the wobbling of her heart. I guess you didn’t get run down by the truck after all.

  “Danyael.” She shook him gently. Three hours of sleep would not have made any dent in his exhaustion, but it was all he could afford just then.

  It took several minutes to coax his conscious mind to awareness, but she sensed when he was awake enough to draw the emotional and mental barriers around him. The pressure against her psychic shields vanished as if all the emotions that had hung so heavily in the room moments before had been sucked up by a vacuum cleaner. His dark eyes—the pain locked deep within—flickered open and focused on her.

  “I know we haven’t been officially introduced,” she said gently. “First, I’d like to apologize for attacking you earlier today. I was impatient and acted in ignorance. I’d like a chance to start over. I’m Miriya, and I’m with the Mutant Affairs Council.”

  He averted his gaze. She did not need access to his thoughts to know what he was thinking. He did not trust her. No, it was more than her. He did not trust the council. Well, no surprises there. Some days she did not particularly trust the council either.

  Danyael. It was easier for him to think than speak just then. Good…to meet you.

  “We have a bit of a crisis, and we need you to join us. How soon do you feel up to getting out of bed?”

  Miriya eavesdropped on his internal debate as uncensored answers flew like nervous, fluttering sparrows through his mind. She winced at the exhaustion evident in his thoughts. Next week…five days at least…maybe three. Don’t have that kind of time. One day, perhaps just overnight or a few more hours. I can do this…Just take it an hour at a time.

  He finally mustered the strength to respond out loud to her question. “I’ll be down in ten minutes.”

  He did not just amaze her. He humbled her.

  Miriya nodded and stepped back, leaving the room to give him physical privacy. Mental privacy, however, was no longer an option for him, not with her psychic hook in his mind. Danyael would likely not discover their connection for a while, but he would eventually. No doubt, he would be furious at the psychic intrusion, but God knew, regardless of what he said, Danyael needed friends far more than he craved privacy.

  Danyael needed her even if he did not know it.

  Her thoughts and emotions churned. What would it take to be his friend?

  Miriya drew in a deep breath and lingered outside his bedroom door, prepared to wait.