Kaitlin's Tale

by Christine Amsden

  More fear and doubt. An image of Jason and Xavier trying to break down the walls of Eagle Rock (which didn’t, to Matthew’s knowledge, have a wall around it) to get to her and Jay. They would stop at nothing.

  “Why do they want you so badly?” Matthew asked.

  Kaitlin stopped and stared at him. Apparently, this had never occurred to her. I don’t know. I should have asked Hideyuki yesterday. He seems to be willing to tell me the truth.

  It sounded like Hideyuki might be an excellent ally, but Matthew kept that observation to himself. He would try to hunt down and approach the warrior later.

  Maybe they don’t want me. Maybe it’s just Jay. He’s the powerful one. They could turn him into a vampire when he’s older and use him to fight the hunters, or to rebuild their civilization from the ruins the hunters left it in. They might only want me to help them keep Jay in line until then. It’s the only thing that makes sense, really.

  The only thing that made sense? Matthew frowned. Couldn’t Kaitlin think of any other reason that someone – anyone – would want her? She hadn’t thought exactly that, but the undercurrent was there as loud as the thoughts themselves.

  He couldn’t help himself. He lifted a hand and gently, ever so gently, touched Kaitlin’s cheek. It felt like silk – slightly damp silk as it was humid outside – but luscious. There was a jolt at the instant of contact that echoed through Kaitlin’s mind and she sucked in her breath, knowing he knew she was attracted to him. Will he use it against me? I’m not – I can’t – he can read my mind. He’d know... everything. I couldn’t fake anything with him.

  Matthew drew his hand back as if it had been burned. What was she so afraid of him seeing? What could he possibly learn about her that would be the end of her world? He almost wished he could dig around in her mind to find out, but maybe that would be going too far.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, though he rarely apologized and wasn’t entirely sure what he was apologizing for except that he’d meant to offer her comfort and instead inflicted more pain. How did normal people do this?

  “It’s okay. I don’t know if I can go back to Eagle Rock. I think I should, but I also think people will get hurt there.”

  “You don’t think people might get hurt here?” Matthew asked.

  I don’t care as much. Wow, that sounded callous. I hope he didn’t catch it.

  “I can’t promise you anything,” Matthew began. “I want to make that clear up front.”

  “Okay...”

  “But the White Guard is based in Eagle Rock, and I think we’d be as good a shield against Xavier as Alexander’s Underground is.”

  “Can you kill him?” Kaitlin asked. Not that the hunters here have promised to kill Xavier; Hideyuki even thought it was a bad idea.

  “No one can promise you that; they’ve been trying for too long. But we’ve got people. Not two thousand, but several hundred, and most of them are far more powerful than the average. Alexander recruits anyone with a spark; we’re pickier.”

  “Why do you want me to come back with you so badly? What did Cassie say to you?”

  “She said...” Matthew broke off, trying to figure out how to explain. “The thing is, Cassie and Evan and I have more of an alliance than a friendship.”

  “I can’t imagine why,” Kaitlin said sarcastically, remembering the day he’d hurt her friend.

  Matthew scowled. “Why isn’t anyone angry with Evan for what he did to her?” He held up a hand. “No, wait, don’t answer.”

  But Kaitlin had answered, at least in her mind. There was a startled hitch and then, very clearly, They love each other. And she forgave him.

  “He took her magic and she forgave him?”

  “He offered to give it back.”

  Matthew opened his mouth, then closed it. That couldn’t be true. And it was beside the point. “Forget it. Will you be ready to go when I am?”

  “How long will it be?”

  “I can’t say, but I’m hoping soon. If I were you, I’d get packed and be ready to go at a moment’s notice.” With that he spun on his heel and walked away, not entirely sure what had annoyed him so much. But he felt another pang in the region of his heart, and this time it had nothing to do with Kaitlin. If he didn’t know any better he might call it... loneliness.

  * * *

  Matthew wasn’t sure where he was going next until he reentered the compound and saw the security guards eying him suspiciously. They should be suspicious. Before this was all over he planned to find a cache of blood, document it, and destroy it. Plus, he planned to bust an innocent man out of prison, one whose daughter had hurt Kaitlin.

  Matthew headed down two floors to the kitchen to wait for Janelle to get off work. Her shift was offset from Kaitlin’s by an hour, so she would be getting off any minute now. And there she was, calling something over her shoulder to someone in the kitchen, then laughing at the response.

  She was a study in contrasts to Kaitlin, who had been pale, defeated, and lonely as she’d left work. Janelle was buoyant, full of light and life, and her eyes sparkled with merriment – or was it mirth?

  She was a pretty little thing, with dark, flawless skin, her hair woven into countless tiny braids that fell halfway down her back, a lean frame and a well-rounded butt above legs almost as lovely as Kaitlin’s. Almost. Kaitlin would always look lovelier to him because she had been brave and Janelle had torn her down.

  Janelle was still smiling when she saw Matthew. She seemed to want to maintain the outward impression that he had not ruffled her, but her steps slowed and Matthew could tell he had her on edge. Good. Fear and nerves were things he could work with, especially when they were directed against him. He could slip in between the cracks and bend her to his will, no matter how resistant she was against mind magic.

  “What do you want?” Janelle asked just as she came into his telepathic range. What the hell’s Mad Matt doing here? Can’t believe Alexander let him in.

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “What about?” If he thinks he can make me betray Alexander, he really is mad.

  “About Kaitlin,” Matthew said. “You’ve been giving her a hard time.”

  “So? She’s a little traitor. Everyone knows it. Alexander took her in, protected her, gave her a roof over her head, and she doesn’t even have any magic. And how does she repay him? She goes off with you, probably plotting something.”

  “Do you really think,” Matthew said mildly, playing off of her loyalty to the man, “that Alexander can be fooled so easily?”

  “I... no.” Yes, he can. I’m fooling him.

  Now that was interesting, but Janelle didn’t think anything else about it. Well, there were ways to draw it out of her. And he would before this was all over.

  “Well then, how could I be fooling him? As for Kaitlin, I practically forced her to walk off with me. She thought you were her friend.”

  “You did?” Janelle frowned, seeming torn. I did want to try Blessing on her, maybe I should tell people to back off.

  Matthew kept his face impassive, but it was a near thing. Blessing was the name of a new drug in the magical world rumored to boost people’s magical abilities. It even seemed to work, although as Scott Lee had once pointed out, that might be a placebo effect. People were often able to do bigger and better things merely because they thought they could – in both the magical and nonmagical worlds. But it had nasty side effects, was incredibly addictive, and could even be deadly.

  And she’d wanted to try it on Kaitlin?

  This girl was going down; Matthew didn’t care what he had promised her father, although he had already been having doubts about “rescuing her.” The bigger question now was how to convince her father that she didn’t need rescuing after he rescued him. A worry for another time.

  How could a man be so caring,
and his child be so... not? It wasn’t the first time Matthew had wondered, and in both directions.

  “Come on outside with me. It’s a nice day and I don’t like being cooped up inside. We’ll talk there.”

  Janelle hesitated, but finally shrugged. I can handle him. I handled Todd, didn’t I? He couldn’t even wipe my mind with a sample of blood.

  A challenge. Either that or Todd was inept. It was amazing how often the most “powerful” mind mages failed at their craft because they used sledgehammers where a simple push would do. For example, why use magic to get Janelle outside with him when she was so easily agreeable? He would have, if he’d had to, but he hadn’t needed to. Overuse of magic was the mind mage’s bane.

  As soon as they emerged into the humid, but not quite as hot, afternoon, Matthew led Janelle down the familiar walking path to a small copse of trees he had noticed earlier. There was a large rock where she could sit, and a bit of privacy for what he would have to do.

  Janelle grew wary as they approached the trees. Why’s he taking me to Lover’s Cove?

  Definitely not for the reasons it had been given that name, although Matthew would bet that it didn’t truly become Lover’s Cove until after dark.

  “Have a seat,” Matthew said, gesturing to the rock.

  “I’ll stand, thanks.”

  He shrugged. She would sit, eventually. It would become too much for her, and that’s when he would know he’d won.

  “You wanted to talk about Kaitlin?” Janelle asked.

  “I wanted to talk about your father. You know, the man you’re draining.”

  “He stole my magic; I’m getting it back.” Her mind flashed back to the worst time in her life – when she’d been drained. Day after day, hour after hour, endless agony almost beyond bearing. The pain had gone beyond the physical, beyond the emotional, and into the spiritual. She’d lost a part of herself that she would never get back, no matter how much magic she took from others.

  For a split second, Matthew wondered if he’d somehow gotten it all wrong, if Devon had fooled him. It didn’t seem possible, since the images in Devon’s mind had been clear as day, but his daughter had definitely lost her magic.

  Then the second passed and he saw in her mind – not her father – but the old white man from her father’s memory. Todd – she gave name to the face – the head of Alexander’s security forces and one of his most trusted advisors. Todd had taken her magic.

  Matthew had met Todd his first day at the compound. He didn’t look like an old white man. But Matthew couldn’t see through illusion.

  “What happened after your father stole your magic?” Matthew asked, preparing to probe.

  She said something, but he didn’t pay attention to her words –- all lies. He only listened to the thoughts in her mind. There had been pain. Betrayal. Agony. She’d trusted Todd. He’d been supplying her with Blessing and she’d been selling to her friends. She’d made him a tidy profit in the last six months, but he’d suddenly turned on her. Her father had told her she’d been running with the wrong crowd, but she hadn’t listened. She hated that he’d been right almost as much as she hated him for walking back into her life at the age of sixteen, pretending like he cared.

  There are always two sides to any story, Matthew reminded himself. But he wasn’t here for family counseling.

  As Janelle spoke, ranting about her father taking advantage of her, Matthew buried a powerful truth spell between her pain and anger. The spell wouldn’t make her speak the truth – something she was much more likely to notice happening (and therefore fight) – but it would ensure she thought the truth. Matthew had learned from long experience that people lied to themselves all the time, but he needed facts, not self-delusions.

  She sat, completely unaware of having done so, as soon as his spell was cast.

  What followed was, to Matthew at least, two overlapping conversations. His words created the illusion that they were discussing her decision to join Alexander’s movement and her belief in his cause. Through his questions and his subtle suggestions, he created the impression that he was considering joining, and that if she responded correctly she might be a part of undoing the threat of Mad Matt and his White Guard.

  But in her mind was an entirely different conversation. She was, Matthew soon came to realize, fiercely loyal to Alexander despite the fact that she was a party to both magic theft and drug dealing, two things Alexander was adamantly outspoken against. What he doesn’t know won’t kill him, seemed to be her attitude about that. Meanwhile, she would work from the inside to take down Todd, a man who was only in the organization to further his own selfish ends. She would replace him one day, reclaiming her magic when she did, and then she wouldn’t need Blessing anymore. She could be truly loyal to Alexander then.

  A mind is not a linear thing to parse. Stream of consciousness follows patterns that only make sense to the thinker, although sometimes Matthew caught glimpses of the crazy hops from subject to subject. But he got her story. He drew it out of her one piece at a time, then put it back together like a jigsaw puzzle.

  She’d lived with her mother for most of her life. Her father had only popped in and out at random, and when it was convenient for him. He seemed to try harder when she was ten and he claimed to have gotten his act together – he became a teacher, at any rate – but by then she hadn’t wanted to have anything to do with him. And she really hadn’t wanted to have anything to do with him at sixteen, when her mother died and she went to live with him.

  Her mother wasn’t much of a witch, and Janelle refused to learn magic from her father, so in high school she sought out others with strange abilities. She found them, too. Many only had gifts or small, barely-trained magics, but she felt she had more in common with them than with her father. And when Todd approached her about taking Blessing, she’d jumped at the opportunity to improve her own power. One day she wanted to be more powerful than her father.

  Then Todd turned on her. She’d been a stupid kid then – only two months ago, but it was amazing how quickly people grew up sometimes. Her father had rescued her, but when he’d gone seeking justice, he had made a mistake. He’d come to the compound and spoken to the head of security – the very man who had drained her in the first place. Todd had been very interested in Devon for one reason in particular – to Devon, Todd looked like an old white man. He maintained an illusion of youth that both Devon and Janelle had managed to see through. So he’d wiped Devon’s memory and set him loose. Only, the memory charm hadn’t taken. Devon began to remember, and that’s when Todd made up the story about Devon being the one to steal his own daughter’s memory.

  That’s when Devon had run. Todd had gone to Janelle to work on her memory as well, needing to keep the truth from Alexander. And it had worked... for a few days. When the memory spell faded, Janelle went to Todd with a proposition: He would help her get her magic “back” from her father and she’d keep her mouth shut about him. She convinced Todd that her ability to throw off mind magic made her invaluable, and he’d bought it.

  Or maybe Janelle had. Matthew wasn’t sure, from her memories, who was using whom, but he wouldn’t trust either one of them. They were both dealing drugs right here under Alexander’s nose, and Janelle was interested in trying Blessing on someone with no magic at all to see what it would do.

  She made him sick.

  But he’d gotten what he’d come for. He knew what had happened to her, what had happened to her father, and where he could find Devon – and she wasn’t any the wiser.

  It was on days like this that Matthew loved being a mind mage. This was what power should feel like. Victory. Sweet, sweet triumph.

  * * *

  Nothing was settled, of course. Matthew still had a lot to do, and precious little time to do it. He felt like he was in a race against the clock, but he didn’t know what time it was or when hi
s time would be up. He only knew that Alexander had gotten to him in the past and could get to him again. He needed to find that blood. He needed to get Devon out. He needed to get Kaitlin out. Janelle could fall on her own sword for all he cared – and he had no doubt that she would. But the others were his responsibility, like the town of Eagle Rock that Alexander had attacked, however he tried to spin it.

  It took no convincing at all for him to get Hideyuki to meet him at the playground shortly after dark. No children played there now; the swings only moved with the breeze. The place was nice, like every part of the compound, well-tended and extravagantly built. It was a child’s fantasy land, and it made Matthew think of the toddler who had raced from place to place just the other night while his mother looked on.

  “Thanks for meeting me,” Matthew said politely when Hideyuki joined him on the same bench he’d shared with Kaitlin.

  “I was curious,” Hideyuki said. “Everyone is talking about you.” And I want to know if what they’re saying is true. “You didn’t do Kaitlin any favors when you spent time with her the other day, you know. And word is already out that you two met again.”

  “I thought she could help me.”

  You mean you thought you could use her, Hideyuki thought, his gaze becoming more remote.

  “And I thought I could help her,” Matthew added. “Her friends want her home. I happen to have an airplane.”

  “She should go home.” Images of several hunters flashed through his mind’s eye, almost too quickly for Matthew to catch, but the gist of it was: They want to use her too.

  “If it helps,” Matthew said. “I don’t think she can help me after all.”

  “Really?” Hideyuki twisted to face Matthew. “That seems short-sighted of you.”

  “Why would you say that?” Matthew tried to sense the answer from the hunter’s thoughts, but there was no need. He spoke his mind.

  “She’s a special girl. More special than she realizes, perhaps. Her son got his magic from somewhere, and I don’t think it was just his father.”