No. She was sure she would have known if that had happened. Somehow, she would have felt it. It might have been stupid—or naïve—but Shiri believed in her fellow Conditioned who were out there fighting for everyone. They were so connected, had spent so much time together, she had to believe she would know if they were all gone.
Not to mention, Madame was a notorious liar. Believing anything she said seemed like a really bad idea.
“I’ve had enough.” Madame stormed up to her and grabbed her by the shoulders. Shiri fought against her hold, but Madame was freakishly strong. For a woman who was significantly smaller than Shiri, she had a strong grip Shiri couldn’t break. But the huge bruise she sported proved she could be bested.
“I’m taking your knowledge. I’m taking it. All of it belongs to me.”
Madame squeezed her cranium. It hurt, and Shiri wildly flung her head to try to dislodge her. Her efforts didn’t work. This couldn’t be happening. Anger fueled her energy, and Shiri struck back with the only weapon she possessed: her power.
Spencer Lewis had told her time and again that while she felt as if her power were defensive at best, some day she would find a way to manipulate her energy so that it could be offensive, too.
Right now, she wanted Madame to hurt—to burn for all the things she’d done. Shiri sent her energy outward until it surrounded Madame. The other woman seemed so consumed with her quest to invade Shiri’s mind, something she was apparently having trouble with, that she didn’t notice how Shiri had stopped struggling.
Why should she bother? For the first time in her life she knew exactly what would happen. Shiri was going to burn Madame.
As if she’d willed it, Madame dropped her hands. Feeling no need to move, Shiri stayed where she was to watch what she was sure was about to happen. Madame grabbed the exposed parts of her arms.
Her eyes got huge as she stared at Shiri. “You. You did this to me? I always knew you were a dangerous bitch. I should have put you down when you first came to me.”
“Maybe you should have.” Shiri threw some more energy in Madame’s direction and the woman screamed. “This was why you were afraid of me, right?”
“I have never been afraid of anything in my life.” She scoffed even as she started to double over in pain.
“Yes, you have.” Shiri took a step forward. “I think you go through every day absolutely terrified.”
Madame fell to her knees. “Make the burning stop.”
“I can’t.” Shiri found she just couldn’t feel sorry about that. “You have all the ghost energy I could internalize from the city of New Orleans flowing into your veins right now. The energy signatures of all the dearly departed from God knows how long ago.”
“You could stop it if you wanted to.”
“Maybe I could.”
Shiri kneeled down to look at her. Truth was, Shiri didn’t know if she actually possessed the power to stop it. She’d never done this before. It had been so easy to make the decision to torture Madame. The woman had tormented her with threats of death her entire life.
“You’re not like this. You’re soft and easy, forgiving.” Madame’s eyes implored her. “Please, I’ll let you go. You have my word. I’ll leave you alone if only you stop this.”
Shiri sighed. She didn’t believe for one second that Madame would keep that promise. Even if she left Shiri alone, she would simply have someone else come after her. That was the problem with liars and manipulators—you could never believe a word they said.
But Madame had hit her target correctly. This wasn’t in Shiri’s nature, and as much as it felt good to see Madame start to turn red in pain, she couldn’t let her die this way. In her heart of hearts, even though she no longer believed she’d been damned at birth, she still wanted to go to Heaven. It might be the only place she’d ever see Ben again.
Assuming he’d even want to see her.
Shiri sighed. If she’d sent it into Madame, she could probably take it back. Centering herself, she let her mind move into the other space, the place where she could see energy acutely. Numerous shades of red, blue and pink flowed inside Madame, as they did to Shiri whenever she ingested them. But unlike Shiri, Madame’s body rejected the onslaught. She wasn’t an energy container, as Shiri was. It was as though she had poisoned the other woman by forcing her to ingest it, and now it was burning her from the inside out.
With a tilt of her mind, she called the energy back into herself—a little at a time. She didn’t want Madame to become aware all at once that it was happening. Shiri might not have wanted to be a murderer, but she didn’t mind tormenting her tormentor for a little while longer.
After a few seconds, Madame must have felt the difference.
Her shoulders relaxed, and her pained, dilated eyes eased.
“You’re so easy. I would have left you to die.”
Shiri nodded. She already knew that. “I’m aware. It’s why you’ve run one of the most horrendous Institutions for the last thirty years, and why I could never do anything like that.”
Madame struggled to her feet. “You might be surprised. I was born Conditioned but no one ever locked me away. No, I was too strong for that. Too powerful. I rule all of you. I’m a billionaire. I could be even more so if Susan hadn’t gotten caught and had managed to kill you.”
“Susan? You thought she could kill me?” Finally, that made sense to Shiri. “And don’t pretend you weren’t as burdened by the Institutions as we all were.” Shiri could have laughed if it wasn’t so sad. “You’ve spent your life in that box they called Crescent, and they gave you the illusion of power. You’re still just a pawn, but so much worse than that, too, because you abused those who could have used your help.”
Madame slapped her across the face. It burned, and Shiri tasted blood from where she’d bitten down on her tongue during the attack.
“I may not be able to get into your head, but someone can. I’ll bring the entire Fury down on you.”
Shiri fisted her hands at her sides and restrained herself from responding to Madame’s physical attack. No way would she give the woman the satisfaction of seeing how badly that had hurt. “Why did you come for me when I was with Ben and his family? What had happened?”
“I didn’t want you to end up like this.” Madame snarled. “There is no saving you now. God will have nothing to do with you.”
As she rolled her eyes, Shiri knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Madame did not believe a word she said. She might not have Ben’s ability to taste a lie, but Madame had lost her cool, and her perfect façade had disappeared.
“Don’t give me the God-talk. You don’t believe that any more than I do. The Institutions have been speaking the ‘devil’ talk for over three decades to terrify the Conditioned.” She shook her head. “No, tell me the truth. Why did you want me dead?”
Madame straightened, pulling at her clothes as though dislodging a few wrinkles could somehow make her orderly again. “You destroyed my plans. I had a network of people helping me all over the place. They’d infest places with ghost energy. Eventually people would move. We’d sweep in and buy the real estate.”
Shiri’s mouth fell open, and she could do nothing to stop it. Finally, when she could find her voice, she spoke. “But you sent me out to clear those places.”
“Yes.” Madame raised an eyebrow. “It was a perfect storm for me. I got paid for your services, and ultimately I got the property I wanted.”
“Money? This whole thing was about money?” Shiri wanted to scream, to rail against how the people who had controlled her life had so easily decided when she could live or die based on a profit margin.
“You were never supposed to live through the encounter with Lavelle’s neighbors. It should have been too much for you. Half that amount nearly killed you when you were a child.”
“But I got too strong.”
It was all so clear to her. She’d been useful, profitable, for the Institutions, but Madame had known she’d eventually get too
powerful to be fooled. She was supposed to be ended before that happened.
But they’d saved her—Guy, Spencer, Roman, and the others had saved her life before Madame could make it so Shiri never gained her full power range. Even before that, Ben had saved her soul. If he hadn’t shown her love—shown her what love was supposed to be—she never could have embraced the idea that she could be more than she’d ever been.
“And now my abilities are so formed, so tight, that you can’t even get in my head anymore.” Shiri smiled at her. “It must be making you crazy to have your plans screwed up. And now Crescent is gone. Things are going askew all over the place.”
“I have ten Fury outside this door, and they will do whatever I tell them to do to you. One way or the other, I will get the news of these terrorists from you.”
Shiri had no doubt the Fury could abuse her. She’d seen it done often enough. But she needed to believe that she could withstand their ministrations. She would not break.
“I told you. I blew up the Institution. I arranged it. There is no one else involved. I’ve been hiding out for years, waiting for the opportunity to do it.”
Madame spoke a string of words in French that Shiri strongly suspected were curse words. “You blew up two Institutions within hours of each other on two different coasts of this very large country?”
“Yep.” Shiri hadn’t actually heard that the one in Arizona had worked. That was good news. Still, she tried to keep her expression bland. “I set the charges in Arizona to go off, and I was just lucky no one found them.”
“Liar. The person whose blurred image spoke to the country about your so-called revolution was a man.”
Shiri shrugged. “An actor I hired. He read the words I told him to read.”
“You did? You did all of this? Someone like you manipulated this whole thing?”
She put her hands on her hips. “As you pointed out, I am so much more powerful than you ever wanted me to be. I’m evil, right? Why shouldn’t I have been able to handle this whole thing on my own?”
Shiri didn’t expect Madame to believe her. It would have been absurd to believe that only one person could have done everything by himself or herself. But she had no intention of changing her story.
“I’ve had enough of this.”
Madame walked toward the door and rapped on it three times. It opened, and she stepped out into the hall. The door clanged closed behind her, sealing Shiri back into her fate.
Immediately she started second-guessing herself. Should she not have spoken to Madame like that? Would it have been better to have simply kept quiet and said nothing at all?
She’d wanted to know. For years, she’d obsessed over the way Madame had seemed to pursue her endlessly. Why had she wasted so many resources retrieving one Conditioned girl who could easily have been picked up using less difficult means?
Now it made sense. Madame had been afraid of her. She’d been a variable element whom Madame had needed to eliminate before she got too powerful, too sure of herself.
Shiri sat down on the floor. At least she knew the reasons. Her life sometimes felt like an endless slew of questions without any real answers presented. But now at least she could understand how Madame’s sick mind worked.
There was no peace in having the answer, just a kind of numbness that her life had been driven and controlled by so many evil people.
The door burst open and three Fury filed in. Lucky her. Apparently, today’s antics weren’t finished yet. She sighed as she stood up. If nothing else, she could give the appearance of being on steady ground.
Nineteen
Ben paced in front of the phone again, staring down at the device as if it held some kind of magic answer to all his problems. Roman was on speakerphone to someone named Guy, whom the Fury hoped could solve some of their problems. So far, his response seemed less than satisfactory.
Guy spoke through the phone. “I’m telling you, it’s not as bad as it could be.”
Roman snorted. “Bullshit.”
Ben tuned out their conversation. This was the same refrain he’d listened to for the last hour. Guy felt that Seven—no. He shook his head. Shiri. She was called Shiri now—could actually get herself out of trouble. Roman scoffed at this idea, and the debate continued. Ben was basically, on a fundamental level, useless.
His daughters were with Addison Wade—now Lewis—which blew his mind, and he hadn’t been allowed to see them since they’d left with Roman earlier. He couldn’t blame the others for thinking he shouldn’t be involved in anything. It was his fault they were in this predicament.
Worry threatened to overtake him for the millionth time, and he pushed it away. Shiri was Seven. Seven was Shiri. And no matter which way you added it up, he’d gotten the woman he loved captured and killed. It was his fault for even thinking he could go along with Gene’s plan in the first place.
His body had known her. Why hadn’t he trusted himself? He closed his eyes. He’d gotten her back from the dead without even knowing it, and lost her again. In his wildest imagination, he couldn’t have conceived the amount of pain he was in right now.
If he wasn’t careful, he was going to fall into a big, giant pit of it and never return.
“There is a solution.”
Ben opened his eyes as Gene spoke from the doorway. He leaned against it as if it might support him in the event that he hit the floor. Ben had never seen him so tired before.
“I’m all ears.” Ben would take any solution anyone wanted to present.
“I think it has been pointed out about a dozen times now that we can’t storm into the building where they’re holding Shiri and bust her out. My men did that to get Ben and me out yesterday. They’ll be prepared.”
Roman made a loud grunting noise. “Yes, you were lucky. I assume this plan is going to go better than the one you made that got Shiri taken in the first place.” The Fury stared at Ben as if he wanted to run him over with a truck.
Ben held the Fury’s gaze. He knew his own culpability. If something happened to Shiri, he didn’t know if he’d survive it.
Gene took an unsteady step forward. He sported all kinds of new bruises since the fight in the living room with the Fury who’d invaded the house. Ben wasn’t sure his older brother could take any more abuse without expiring.
“I take full responsibility for that blunder. Ben had nothing to do with it.”
Roman rolled his eyes. “Bullshit. However you altered the plan, Ben was involved in its first inception.”
“Roman.” Guy sounded as if he gritted his teeth as he spoke. “Not helping.”
“As I was saying, the bad plan I came up with aside, we can’t storm the place with massive power and bust Shiri out.”
Ben wished they could. His heart hurt thinking about her being in there. He had so many questions he wanted to ask her, but mostly he wanted to hold her, to press his head up against her chest and listen to her heartbeat, to find a way to make sure they never had to be separated again.
Roman took a step toward Gene. “What, then, do you suggest?”
“Since you’ve made it clear that you can’t do that popping in and out thing you do—”
“I can’t. The Fury is all over that place,” said Roman. “They’ll sense my presence, and I’ll never be able to help anyone again. I’ll be named an enemy.”
“I thought you said you loved her.” If Ben’s voice sounded harsh, he really didn’t give a shit.
Roman put his hands on his hips. “I do.”
“No, you don’t. Because if you loved her, if you really loved her, you wouldn’t give one crap about whether or not you got caught and your days of subterfuge were over.” Ben took a step toward Roman. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do. I would die for her. I would kill. I would take her place.”
“That’s good.” Gene’s voice interrupted their power-play, and Ben took a deep breath. He wanted to pound someone, and Roman seemed a good candidate.
“Because one man has to
sneak inside.”
“Good. I’m your guy,” said Ben.
“You?” Roman threw his hands in the air. “You, Mr. Lawyer? Are you going to break the law?”
“For Seven, I would do anything.”
Guy’s voice from the phone broke into the conversation. “I think you have to get used to calling her Shiri, Ben.”
He’d call her anything she wanted if only he could see her again and assure himself of her safety. But part of him would always think of her as Seven. When she’d become his girl, her name had been Seven.
Gene sighed. “Want the details, Benedicte?”
“I’ll do anything, Eugene.” Anything at all. No way would Shiri not be coming out of that building alive.
Ben scratched his neck. Roman’s Fury uniform itched like hell. Maybe it was why the other man existed in a perpetual bad mood. With all the money pouring into the Institutions, they couldn’t find a better way to dress their Fury?
He approached the door. Roman had told him to look pissed and annoyed. No one would dare question a Fury entering the holding cell areas. The Institutions had taken over a floor of the Orleans Parish Prison on Gravier Street while they were out of their own building.
Ben was ushered quickly through the top floors into the elevator that would take him to the basement without anyone even asking his name. Hell, he’d had a harder time buying a lottery ticket once. No identification? The fake driver’s license they’d spent hours working on burned a hole in his pocket.
He stepped into the elevator, and it dinged as it started its descent. It must only go to that floor, because he hadn’t pushed any buttons. This situation called upon him to be basically inconspicuous. Still, he needed to act the part. One way or another, he had to be unnoticeable while also being as assertive and frightening as Roman.
Ben fisted his hands. He wasn’t afraid, just anxious to see Shiri and to get her out of there.
The doors opened with a creak. This was New Orleans. Things like public safety in elevators didn’t rank very high on the priority list. He smiled thinking about it. There was something about living here that other people didn’t understand. If he got Shiri out, they’d have to leave his beloved city. That was fine. Moving and living a life hidden from others would be a small price to pay to know that the people he loved could all finally be safe. But he would miss the little quirks of this place.
Illicit Connections (Illicit Minds Book 2) Page 19