by Jade Kerrion
But if Maya were the assassin, he still did not understand why. She was remarkably even-keeled for someone supposedly nursing a pathological need to kill all empaths.
His nausea settled enough for him to sip from the bottle of spring water. “What were you expecting, Maya?”
“A great deal more anger. Far more hate.” She looked up and met his eyes. “I know who you are, Danyael. I was surprised when Richard and Sebastian didn’t catch on immediately when you introduced yourself yesterday, but then again, they’ve been living the life of the jet-setting ultra-rich. The genetic squabbles convulsing America mean little to them.”
“Growing pains—and they’re closing in on fifty years. At some point, we’ll figure it out.”
“Preferably before we self-destruct.”
“There’s hope. The concert in D.C.—”
“Last December? I heard about it.”
“An empath, Dum, brought people together. He channels his power through music.”
“I heard he’s your prodigy.”
Danyael shook his head. “I taught him how to control his empathic powers. Channeling happiness and love through music—it was all him.”
“And when the mood takes him, can he change the tone to channel anger and hate instead?”
Danyael stiffened. “Theoretically, yes.”
She arched her eyebrows.
Silence passed between them.
Maya broke it first. “Well? No more speeches on how everyone deserves a chance? That they shouldn’t be judged based on how they could act instead of how they did?”
“I’m not here to change your mind, Maya. I’m not a telepath, and even if I were, you know there’s nothing I can do.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she laughed, but it was a brittle sound, almost self-mocking. “Nothing to get a hold of?”
“Not enough to get a hold of,” he corrected. “The glimpses are too fleeting.”
Maya stared at him. “Glimpses of what?”
“Your emotions.”
“You’re lying. I have no psychic imprint.”
“I sensed you that night. Your flare of emotions gave me enough warning to turn away.”
“That’s impossible. Absolutely impossible.” Maya shot to her feet. Her hands fisted against the table, as if the tense muscles in her arms were the only things keeping her upright. “You’re lying.”
He shook his head. “I have no reason to lie.”
“What is the manipulation of emotions if not a lie?” Maya yanked a handgun from her jacket.
The employee behind the counter shrieked and dropped out of sight. The tearful babble of whispered words coming from that direction suggested that she was on the phone—perhaps with her family or with the police; Danyael did not know.
It did not matter who she called. His training with the Mutant Affairs Council had been unyielding on two points.
No collateral damage.
And clean up your own damn mess.
Danyael raised his gaze over the muzzle of the gun to meet Maya’s eyes. He did not need to fake calmness. He had kept close company with too many assassins to panic at the sight of a gun. He had been embraced by death too many times to fear it. “Let the girl out. Close the doors and windows.”
“What?”
“Your revenge is my problem. No one else needs to die.”
Maya’s jaw dropped. The gun quavered in her hand.
Danyael’s empathic senses tingled a warning as a familiar presence approached. Zara—her emotions ice-cold. Murderous. “No—”
A single shot rang out.
Maya’s arm jerked up, her bicep pierced by Zara’s bullet. Reflex and pain squeezed her handgun trigger. That bullet raced past Danyael’s head to shatter the glass behind the counter.
The cafe employee screamed as fragments of glass cascaded down on her. She scrambled toward the door, but another stray bullet from Maya’s gun dropped her, gasping, bleeding, behind the counter.
Danyael hit the floor. His injured hip jolted pain through his back and legs, but he dragged himself toward the injured employee. Motion flickered in his peripheral vision—Zara firing into the cafe, Maya ducking behind tables. Guns aimed across the room. Triggers squeezed. Wood splintered off chairs and tables. Danyael flinched as the countertop glass collapsed into a spray of shards. The woman hidden behind the counter screamed again, but her cry was weaker, the mewls of a wounded animal.
Danyael dragged himself over the broken glass. The pinpricks of pain scarcely registered on top of the screaming mass of agony that was his left leg. The cafe employee huddled behind the counter, her hands pressed against the crimson stain blooming on the white apron she wore over her street clothes.
He grasped her hands. “Let go. It’s all right. I can help you.”
The woman, scarcely out of her teens, stared at him, her eyes stricken, her body clenching around her injury. She was too tense, too frightened. Her instinctive defense could throw up enough psychic interference to thwart his empathic healing. Instead, Danyael wrapped a mantle of peace around her. “I’m not going to let you die.” He kept his voice low, reassuring. “Let me help you.”
His empathic powers soothed her until her fingers relaxed its grip on the crumpled apron. She blinked up at him, her lips moving even though no sound emerged. Her skin was already clammy.
Not much time. And I promised…
Danyael shoved his pain and the lingering nausea from healing the old man into the recesses of his mind as his powers surged, plunging through her now pliant mind and body, repairing the bullet wounds, closing the tears through veins and arteries, stemming the internal bleeding. Like salve over torn flesh, Danyael’s empathic healing accelerated her recovery, leaving no evidence of the injury—except for bloodstained clothing—behind.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Zara’s anger snapped with the sting of a whiplash.
Danyael fought to steady his hands and his voice. Any sign of weakness would infuriate Zara. He could not handle her turbulent emotions; not on top of everything else. “Go.” He told the woman. “Get out of here.”
The cafe employee’s wide-eyed stare flicked to Zara. Her tremulous grasp of peace wobbled, crashed, and she dashed from the ruins of the cafe.
Danyael drew a deep breath. “Where’s Maya?”
“Gone. Out through the back door,” Zara snapped. She stared at the streaks of blood on his white sleeves. “Glass? You crawled over glass? Are you crazy? You knew it was her, and you didn’t tell me?”
“I suspected it was her. I didn’t know it for certain—not until a few seconds before she pulled the gun on me.”
“Damn it, Danyael. How many psychic ghosts do you think are out there? Did you think they would all happen to converge where you are? Do you actually believe in coincidence?”
“No, but I believe that killing people should never be the first, let alone the only option on the table.” Anger gave him strength to rise; leaning against the bullet-marked wall helped keep him upright. “The napkin. On the table. Take it.” He pointed to the table where he and Maya had sat. It balanced on three legs; the fourth was a splintered, jagged stump.
Zara picked up the napkin. “What’s on it?”
“Her DNA.”
Zara shot him a narrow-eyed glare, then something softened—imperceptibly—and she nodded. She rummaged behind the counter and found a stash of paper bags. Not perfect, but it sufficed as a container for the DNA-smeared napkin. “Let’s get out of here.”
“But Maya—”
“She’ll have to die another day. I don’t fully know my way around the city, and you’re too easy a target. I’ll hunt her when I know you’re safe.”
“Don’t kill her.”
Zara’s jaw dropped. “She’s trying to kill you.”
“Yes, but we don’t know why.”
“You want her to write a thesis?” Zara flung her arms into the air, almost striking him. “If you’re dead, the reasons don’t matter.”
The red-hot flash of her anger subsided instantly. “And you don’t think she is.”
He shook his head.
Zara’s lips tightened into a straight line, and a muscle twitched in her cheek. “It doesn’t change our next step—which is to get you safely out of here.” She handed him his crutch, then loaded a full clip into her Glock. “This way.”
Zara habitually planned for contingencies, but the aftermath of the cafe fight was worse than any scenario she had imagined. Danyael’s forearms bled, not much but enough to weaken his grip on his crutch and significantly impede his physical ability to keep up with her. His healing of the store employee hadn’t helped; she should have accounted for his tendency to save lives, regardless of the personal cost.
Trust him to make difficult things even harder. She ground her teeth.
Behind her, Danyael inhaled sharply, his crutch wobbling beneath him.
Zara kicked toppled furniture and large debris out of his way, and hoped he would not slip on shattered glass. She glanced out of the doorway and detected movement in the shops lining the road, but the street was clear. The gunshots had sent innocent civilians running for cover.
Just as well. She did not want to waste bullets clearing her way for a clean shot at Maya.
Zara stepped into the street, her gaze flicking across any door or window left ajar. Using her body to shield the entrance, she waved Danyael out. He hobbled out slowly.
A bullet smashed into the wooden frame of the window, mere inches from Danyael.
Zara grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the doorway before shoving him toward the narrow alley beside the cafe. She glanced out as another bullet pinged off the cobblestones. Got you. She swung her gun up at an open second-floor window and fired at a moving shadow.
The shadow crumpled in on itself. Someone screamed.
A man’s voice.
She grimaced. Danyael was right. Maya was definitely not working alone. They would have to run a gauntlet to get back to safely.
Could they?
Zara gripped Danyael’s hand and searched his face. He met her gaze steadily, and he nodded. A ghost of a smile touched his lips.
Relief surged through her. Whatever personal anguish he was dealing with, he was on top of it.
For now, her natural cynicism asserted.
He could not hold out indefinitely.
She drew on her mental map of the city. “Left at the end of the street, then the second right. Stay behind me.”
Danyael kept up better than she had expected him to, but he struggled. She could hear it in his sharp inhalations and unsteady breaths. Zara glanced over her shoulder. Danyael’s face was ashen, his skin glistening with sweat. His hand trembled on his crutch.
Something niggled at her.
He should not have been as sick as he was. What he had done to save the cafe employee was nothing in the grand scheme of the miracles his healing powers had accomplished in the past.
Was something else wrong with him?
Zara bit back a snarl. Of course something was wrong with him. He had just been shot. He was still recovering. And he was still pushing himself too hard.
The problem with Danyael was that it was never just one thing wrong with him.
She paused at the edge of the street and glanced out into the quiet intersection. The tourist hubs of the pedestrian-only town bustled with activity, but Maya had led Danyael far off the beaten path. Where they were, there were only tiny courtyards—too modest to be called squares—and narrow alleys twisting into dead ends.
Zara jerked her chin at one of the few streets that led back to the city center. “That way. Stick close to the wall.”
“There!” a male voice shouted in Hebrew.
Two men raced down one of the streets toward her. Across the courtyard, she saw another two men, and Maya. Zara grabbed Danyael’s hand and pulled him back the way they had come. They could not outrun their pursuers. Not with Danyael on a crutch. She fired a bullet into a locked door then slammed her weight against it.
The cool and silent interior of a storage facility welcomed them. The warehouse was untidily stacked with wooden crates and cardboard boxes. The room was not wide, but it was deep, the far edges swathed in shadow. The crates, stacked high, formed walls.
Almost perfect. Zara led Danyael into the maze, perfectly and painfully aware that his weight sank more heavily against her with each step. “Stay here.” She settled him against a natural corner created by the wall of crates.
“Zara—” He glanced up sharply.
Zara followed his gaze to the entrance.
He held up four fingers.
She mouthed, “Maya?”
“I…don’t know,” was his inaudible reply.
The faint gleam of light pouring through the open door of the warehouse vanished. Someone had closed and locked their only escape route.
Zara pressed her hand against Danyael’s wrist in an unmistakable order. Stay here.
She darted behind the crates and crept through the nearly absolute darkness, as silent and invisible as a ghost. She caught a glimpse of Maya, but the other woman was on the other side of the room and vanished into shadows before Zara could get a clear aim.
She mentally revised her target list. Five.
The deep shadows were Zara’s natural environment, and hide and seek was her favorite game. The key was to always keep moving, and—she stepped around a corner and found herself face-to-face with a startled man—always be prepared to fire.
She squeezed the partially pressed trigger. Her handgun, held at the perfect height to deal devastating center damage, fired.
The man fell back, a bullet wound in his heart.
Zara vanished around the corner as footsteps raced in her direction, then clambered up a stack of crates with the grace of a cat.
Shadows shifted in her peripheral motion. She swiveled and fired.
Another man dropped like a marionette with cut strings.
Maya’s voice emerged from the darkness. “It’s over, Zara. We’ve got Danyael. Come on out now. Slowly. Gun over your head. Go on, Danyael. Say something.”
Silence.
A low gasp of pain, then Danyael’s voice. “Get out of here, Zara.”
She heard his words for what they were. A warning. Danyael did not have the range to protect himself against distant attackers, but up-close, he was more dangerous than she. He was also far more likely to take stupid risks if he thought he were protecting her.
He wanted her out before he cut loose, but he should have known that she would never leave. She had walked away from him one time too many.
Never again.
She had a lifetime of wrongs to make up for.
Zara’s jaw tightened. Danyael held the cards now. It was time to let him play them.
No point delaying the start of the game. Or the end.
Zara tugged a palm-sized pistol from her pocket and concealed it in her left hand. With her Glock in her right hand held above her head, she walked back to where she had left Danyael. She was not surprised to see Maya behind Danyael, her gun held to his temple. Two men stood in front of Danyael, their weapons aimed at her.
Danyael met Zara’s eyes. His voice was calm, absent of fear. The tone of mild rebuke was almost amused. “You never listen.”
A smile tugged up at the corner of her lips. “Neither do you.”
6
Zara slowly, deliberately let go of her Glock. It tumbled from her right hand.
Their mistake was watching it fall.
Their attention was nowhere near her left hand when she fired a pistol almost too small to be real. The bullet, however, that hit Maya’s chest was real. Maya staggered, falling, as her two men swung their weapons up at Zara.
Zara knew she would never be able to take down both of them before one of them cut her to her knees in a spray of bullets.
But she had acco
unted for Danyael.
He lunged forward, his hands landing on the assassins’ shoulders. The two men instantly crumpled to the ground, folding up like accordions.
Badly injured, Maya tried to reach for her gun, but Zara kicked it away from her. The weapon skittered across the room, into darkness. Zara patted down and stripped Maya of her other weapons, then scowled at Danyael as he examined Maya’s chest wound. His face was drawn, but his eyes were alert and focused. “Damn it, Zara.”
Zara knew Danyael’s why-are-you-so-damned-trigger-happy tone all too well. “You’re welcome,” she snapped with irritation.
Danyael’s fingers lingered on Maya’s wound. Her blood pumped out, turning his fingers crimson. His brow furrowed, and then he cursed under his breath. “The emergency first aid kit. It’s on the wall closest to the door. Bring it.”
“What?”
“I can’t heal her. My healing powers aren’t working on her. I’ll have to do this the other way.”
Zara’s voice rose. “You’re going to heal her? She tried to kill you!”
“The emergency kit, Zara.”
What the hell! Zara yanked the first aid kit from the wall. Willpower kept her from throwing it at Danyael’s head. He was going to save that damned assassin’s life, after all the trouble Zara had gone through to kill her.
Danyael ripped the plastic covering off a sterile gauze dressing and packed it into Maya’s wound. “I need another dressing,” he told Zara.
Gritting her teeth, Zara handed Danyael medical supplies. The next time, she was going to shoot Maya multiple times through multiple organs and make sure there wasn’t a single breath left in Maya before she allowed Danyael to get close enough to examine the woman.
Her frustration simmering like a cauldron boiling over, Zara watched Danyael work with the swift sureness of a combat medic. For someone who had the ultimate backup plan—empathic healing—he was more than competent without it. Maya’s wheezing breaths steadied then strengthened.
Maya would not die.
Zara’s eyes narrowed. More so’s the pity.
Danyael taped around three sides of the wound. “She’ll be all right, but she’s still going to need a hospital.”