by Jade Kerrion
Not today.
Not when joy was far more powerful than the blackness of an alpha empath’s despair.
Like Sunday visits with his daughter…
Danyael flung his strength, his emotions, and his memories into the depths of John’s tempest.
* * *
“Daddy!” Laura’s voice rang through his mind. The joy of her delighted greeting, the love in her touch as she pressed a kiss to his cheek…
* * *
The blackness of the storm shuddered, as if struck at its heart.
Danyael’s thoughts flittered back to the clinic.
* * *
Wednesday night was always the hardest, when he was already exhausted from three days of work, but was not even halfway through his week. Danyael stepped out into the cool night air, and as always, his cellphone rang. He picked it up. He always accepted this call. Wednesday night. Ten p.m. Without fail. “Hi, Xin.”
“Hello, Danyael,” Xin greeted, a smile in her voice. Odd how his weekly conversations with Xin had evolved from tense check-ins to lighthearted conversations between friends, exchanging stories of their workweeks. She never sounded rushed or impatient even though he knew how busy she was. “How is your week going?”
* * *
The storm cloud trembled, quivering around the edges.
In Danyael’s mind, the memory shifted, night blurring into day.
* * *
The small park across the street from the picnic was almost always empty at 2 p.m. when the crowd at the clinic thinned enough for him to escape for lunch. Danyael approached the park, surprised by the familiar figure of his brother sitting on a bench, still waiting for him.
Jason Rakehell waved. “Put your sandwich away. I picked up some food for us. You’ll have leftovers for a few days.”
Danyael stared at the packages his brother pulled out of the grocery bag. “Did you buy out the store?”
“I certainly tried. If you leave me your key, I’ll run them up to your apartment so you don’t have to lug them up after work. Here…” He handed Danyael a box. “The chicken salad with apples and cranberries is excellent.” Jason slid a bottle of spring water across the seat to Danyael. “Cheers, little brother. To us. To family.”
* * *
The storm cloud of John’s emotions shook violently. Its edges thinned into gray wisps, but its core still churned pitch black.
Danyael’s thoughts returned to Laura, and naturally, to Zara. More than anyone else, they anchored him. His daughter’s love. Zara’s…something. Perhaps not love, but it was not hate, and it was not indifference.
Whatever it was, it was everything worth living for. How many times had he glanced up, only to realize that Zara had been staring at him with an expression he couldn’t make out in her eyes?
Fight for me. Fight for us.
Memories piled on—
The many times she showed up, uninvited and just in time, to offer him a ride across town…
The ever-growing stash of decaffeinated teas and coffees at her home, even though she inhaled caffeine as if it were oxygen…
The nights she spent, unknown to him, in his home, sitting outside his bedroom door, breathing in his tormented emotions, enduring him…
For me.
All the changes she has made in her life…for me.
And she’s here. With me. Because of me.
Whatever it takes, whatever it costs me, she will make it through this.
Danyael pulled everything within him, his physical strength coalescing around his empathic powers, and hurled it like a spear into the heart of the darkness above him.
The endless black shattered like onyx glass before a diamond blade. Fragments sprayed out, each piece as deadly as the whole, but his empathic powers absorbed them. There was enough in him for that. Enough of him to counter the pain without being consumed by it.
Danyael finally embraced the truth.
He was greater than John’s pain. He was even greater than his own pain.
The fragments of John’s empathic storm dissolved like a trickle of acids into the unending depths of the ocean. It had no power to alter, to change.
No power to kill.
There was only life, with all its promise. Never a shout. Always just a whisper, sometimes scarcely audible. But it was always there.
Danyael was living proof of it.
His empathic powers—the only power left in the vast auditorium—flowed out, sweeping over all present. It breathed peace—simple yet profound. It filled every person.
Hope was the flutter in every heart. Love was the tear in every eye.
Zara stared at Danyael’s unmoving body, sprawled over John's. She blinked back the tears in her eyes. The pressure in her chest threatened to close her throat. Beside her, Maya pushed to her feet. “Good call betting on Danyael…”
Always.
Zara walked across the stage to Danyael. She heard the murmurs in the crowd; low, stunned voices described how the retching despair and suicidal compulsion had been repelled by memories of their greatest triumphs and joys—but those triumphs had not been what they’d thought they would be. Not college graduations, nor career advancements. Not the moments that they boasted about on social media and resumes, but the ones that passed unnoticed. Breakfast with a loved one, drinks with friends, dinner with family. A picnic out in the sun, a walk on the beach. A peaceful afternoon reading beneath a tree, an evening curled by the fire.
The simple things that passed for joy in the life of an alpha empath who had known only fragments of it. Who knew that Danyael, as broken as he was, possessed enough joy to counter the death throes of a far more powerful alpha empath?
Danyael was a monster. His darkness coexisted alongside brilliant, stunning light.
And when it mattered most, the light was far stronger than the darkness.
She knelt beside Danyael and turned him over gently. His eyes fluttered open. Danyael’s face was ashen, his breathing uneven and shallow, but the corners of his mouth tugged up in a faint smile. “You’re all right.”
“You made certain of it.” She glanced over her shoulder. “The EMTs are here. They’re going to take you to the hospital. You need to get checked out. Everything’s going to be all right. I’ll be with you.”
He nodded, too exhausted to object. His eyes closed.
She wiped John's blood off Danyael’s face.
Danyael’s lips moved, his words inaudible.
She leaned in. “What is it?”
“I’m all right,” he murmured.
“Yes, you are.” It wasn’t until the EMTs gently placed Danyael in a gurney and carried him out past a silently respectful crowd that she realized that Danyael, for the first time, had spoken in the present tense.
18
Zara paced outside Danyael’s hospital room, pausing with every turn to look in through the glass window and ensure he was all right before turning her irate attention back to her smartphone conversation with Alex Saunders. “I don’t care what Danyael asked you to do. You’re not locking him up.”
“He believes he’s a threat just being out there.”
“Danyael neutralized John’s suicidal despair. He castrated death. He saved tens of thousands of lives in that auditorium…hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions in Tokyo by quenching John’s empathic release with the joy and peace he managed to find within himself. Danyael saved lives without killing anyone. Yes, he is a great deal more powerful than anyone realizes, and than he himself knows, but it’s not power we should be afraid of. It’s purpose.” She glanced into the hospital room. Danyael had not moved in hours, his exhaustion trapping him in sleep that bordered on a coma. The machines monitoring his condition, however, confirmed his stable if weakened state. Her chest ached. She did not know if it was love for or pride of Danyael. Perhaps it was both. “We both know what’s in Danyael’s heart. The world needs more, not less, people like him.”
“You’ll talk to him, then? Convince hi
m he’s all right?”
“He knows he’s all right. He said so himself. Present tense. None of that future tense, wishful thinking bullshit.”
Alex was silent for a long moment. Zara was no empath, but she could sense his shock and disbelief over the phone. “Maybe he is all right,” Alex said finally. “Keep him safe. We’ll catch up when you get back to D.C.”
“We’ll be on a plane as soon as Danyael’s strong enough to travel.”
Zara disconnected the call and slid the phone back into her pocket. “You can come out now.”
Maya stepped out from behind the corner. “Who needs psychics when they have you?” Her gaze flicked down to her boots for an instant before she looked up, meeting Zara’s eyes. “Danyael is not the monster I thought he was.”
Zara tried not to roll her eyes. “Anyone even partially observant would have found a great deal more than darkness in Danyael.”
“Sometimes, it’s hard to see beyond what Danyael sees in himself.”
But that’s what love is supposed to do. Zara folded her arms across her chest and tilted her head, studying Maya.
“So, what now?” the other woman asked, her calm voice betraying none of the urgency Zara knew she must be feeling.
Multiple international organizations were converging on the hospital. All of them were coming for Maya Serach. She had killed alpha empaths. She was the reason a hundred innocent civilians had committed suicide. She had aided and abetted John in his maniacal plan to drive millions of people to suicide.
And yet Maya had saved Danyael’s life—Danyael, who had been the key to stopping John. In the end, perhaps Maya had more than contributed her share toward the saving of millions of lives in Tokyo.
Alex Saunders would be furious if Zara let Maya leave, but Zara—despite her claims to the contrary—did owe Maya. She would have lost Danyael at Kivisuo if not for Maya. Zara shrugged. “We do what master assassins do when they meet professionally. We promise not to get in each other’s way. You should leave.”
“What will you tell the Mutant Affairs Council and the International Genetics and Ethics Council when they show up for me?”
“Explanations are tedious. I never tell them anything. Just take the Sicarii with you. I assume you’re playing nicely with them again.”
“Almost.” Maya nodded. “John’s dead, and with him, his influence on the Sicarii. They’re free agents now, although it will be a while before I fully trust them again, or they me. But we’ll figure it out. We will find a new purpose.”
“Don’t trust governments. Or corporations. Or people.”
Maya laughed. “We’ll make it a point not to.” Her smile turned pensive, reflective. “You bet well, Zara.”
“I didn’t always. I do now.”
Maya paused for a beat before asking, “May I see Danyael?”
Zara folded her arms across her chest. “I don’t think so.”
The Sicarii assassin nodded. “Then give my regards to Danyael. I’m pleased to have known him. Goodbye, Zara.”
They did not shake hands.
Zara waited until Maya disappeared around the corner before returning to Danyael’s hospital room. The room was cooler than she preferred, but Danyael seemed comfortable beneath layers of blankets. She wrapped her fingers around his left hand. His fingers, subtly crooked, were familiar to her now. Broken on the outside. Not on the inside. A smile curved her lips as she pressed his hand against her cheek.
As if he were somehow aware that she had returned to him, the intangible restlessness in the air—driven by Danyael’s unconscious emotions—settled. Peace wrapped around the room like a warm and heavy comforter. Beyond the hospital room, Tokyo was still reeling from how close it had skimmed to near complete annihilation, but here, at Danyael’s side, Zara knew only peace, for herself and for him.
In that moment, it was all they needed. It was enough to know that the future she wanted for the both of them, although not yet within her grasp, could, someday, be real.
We’re not there yet, Danyael. But we will be.
Hope was finally more than the fading ghost of a wish. Bet on me, Danyael. Zara turned her head to breathe a kiss against his hand. Bet on us.
Fight for us.
The pressure against her hand tightened, scarcely noticeable. Danyael’s lips moved in the hint of a smile. His breath whispered out of him. A single word. A prayer. “Zara…”
Epilogue
The night was no warmer at the end of April than it had been at the beginning of the month. The chill air still seemed to cut right through Danyael’s worn leather jacket, but at least his body no longer ached from the injuries he had picked up during his most recent misadventure with Zara. The old issues still plagued him—his crippled leg was no stronger than it had been, and he tired more easily than was usual—but otherwise, he was back to normal, in as perfect health as he had been in the past two and a half years.
He locked the door of the free clinic then, hunching his shoulders against the wind, turned for home. Residents of Anacostia still loitered on the streets. Heads angled to watch his slow progress, but no one attempted to follow him.
He was safe now. The Mutant Affairs Council no longer had several telepaths trailing him. Zara had recalled her employees. His life was once again his own.
When Danyael returned to Anacostia, Alex had not brought up the issue of permanently securing Danyael away from society. Danyael had not raised it either. Both understood the issue was not settled, but neither did it have to be addressed immediately.
Danyael was neither the threat nor the monster they had both imagined him to be.
He heard the footsteps first, then felt the warmth of her body as she walked up beside him. He gave her a sideway glance. “Hello, Maya.”
The Sicarius assassin smiled at him. “We never did complete our tour of Kotor.”
“Perhaps another day. Although, if you like, I could give you a tour of Anacostia.”
“I don’t need one. I scouted it out the night I tried to kill you.”
Danyael’s grip tightened on his crutch. “Did you change your mind?”
“I’m withholding judgment, for the moment. I told Zara—and I believe it—that you’re not a monster, at least not wittingly. But that doesn’t mean you’re not dangerous. You’re the deadliest person I know, Danyael, and considering the company you keep, that’s a hell of a compliment or a condemnation, depending on your point of view.”
He stopped walking and turned to look at her. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing yet. I am not…unaware or ungrateful of how you salvaged what I so badly screwed up.”
“John lied to you.”
Maya tilted her head, and her eyebrows drew together. “Do you make excuses for everyone, Danyael?”
“Only those I care about.”
A flicker of surprise passed over her face, but she did not pursue their sidetracked conversation. It seemed as if he was not the only one who avoided discussing awkward topics. She glanced away from him to look down the darkened alley. “I still believe that no man should command another’s soul, or determine its fate. Alpha empaths should…never be.” She expelled a jagged breath.
Danyael smiled faintly. “I’m too damaged to be an example of the good an alpha empath can do, but there will be a new generation of alpha empaths. The Genetic Revolution has matured. We’ve all learned from the mistakes of our past. There will, one day, be an alpha empath who isn’t screwed up, and he’ll prove you wrong. We can and will be a blessing.”
Maya stared at Danyael as if contemplating his words, then shrugged as she turned away from him. She took a few steps down the street, before glancing back over her shoulder. A faint smile touched her lips. “You already are.”
She continued on her way, her footsteps fading into silence as she vanished into the darkness between the pools of streetlights.
A familiar voice cut through the illusion of his solitude. “It was smart of her not to p
ull out her gun.”
Danyael turned toward Zara’s voice, sultry and pitched low—the voice of an assassin poised to kill. She emerged from the alley and made no attempt to conceal the Glock in her hand. He stared at her. “How long were you there?”
Zara shrugged. “I’ve been hanging out, keeping an eye on you, ever since I heard that Maya slipped back into town.”
“You’re tracking her?”
“Maya doesn’t strike me as the trustworthy sort, or the kind who gives up easily on a point of view. Fact is, I don’t trust her—or anyone, for that matter—around you.”
“Zara, the only person who regularly carries guns around me is you.”
“Good.” She patted his cheek. “And it better stay that way.” Zara’s eyes narrowed as she glanced down the way Maya had gone. “She’ll be back, but if we’re lucky, not for a while. Perhaps, by then, she’ll be less indecisive about you, and then I can kill her once and for all.”
The casualness of Zara’s tone was even more disconcerting than her choice of words. Danyael managed a rueful chuckle, and he shook his head. Everything changed, and yet, nothing did. The master assassin had appointed herself his guardian angel. No one better. “Thank you for watching over me.”
Zara did not slide her arm through Danyael’s, probably because it would have hampered her ability to easily aim her gun or flick a dagger in his defense, but she settled into a comfortable pace beside him. Their eyes met, and Zara smiled. “Come on. I’ll walk you home.”
THE END
* * *
Intrigued by Zara and Danyael? Meet them in THE DOUBLE HELIX COLLECTION or continue your adventures in the world of the DOUBLE HELIX with XIN.
* * *
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