A soft thump followed by men shouting jerked through me. My eyes widened as the ranging mystics flowed back into me without warning, frightened and bringing half-realized impressions.
Oh God, they were back, and I panted, so full of their fear that I . . . couldn’t . . . think . . . Dizzy, I tried to focus but the images they brought were confusing. What in hell were they doing back with me? I couldn’t help them.
Sensation was returning to my hands, and I curled my fingers under, the smooth feel of the chair grating across my nerves. A strap holding me pulled, and a mystic wondered why I didn’t move through the spaces in the strap and become free.
Slowly I walled them off, ignoring them until I could breathe again. My head rose when Ayer came in, his pace satisfied. I let go of my fist when he noticed it. “All set?” he said loudly, and Annie backed away from the machine, her eyes black in fear. “Glad to see you regaining your small motor skills, Morgan.” He turned to Annie. “Do we have the last of them contained yet?”
The man by the door stiffened. “Yes, sir. They’re being brought down right now.”
“Good. Good. Try to make it a good fight, Morgan. You last long enough, and we’ll have enough mystics to be out of Cincinnati tonight.”
They were going to take this madness on the road? “Just because I’m strapped down doesn’t mean I’m helpless,” I said, feeling . . . helpless.
Annie was at the machine, her shoulders hunched. Still smiling, Ayer swung the folding chair around and sat in it, the length of the table between us as he leaned back and put an ankle on his knee. A tingle of wild magic went through me, driven by a flash of fear as Annie went to the door to take the little box from the man standing there. Snaps left with him, leaving just the three of them—the three of them and that little box that held a world.
Annie hesitantly set it on the table, then dropped a mess of wires and little skin pads beside it. Shit, they were going to hook me up. Make me talk to the splinter. My heart thudded at the softly glowing lights on the containment device. It was identical to the one I’d seen at Junior’s, and Ayer gently touched it. “Please don’t do this,” I whispered, looking at the leads on the table. “She’s going to kill me.”
Kill! echoed the mystics, their feelings of loss taking on the tint of mistrust, and then a sudden, heady desire to crush everything that threatened them. My skin tingled with wild magic, unfocused and unusable.
“Demons beg?” Ayer said, pushing Annie aside to untangle the lines himself.
“Please!” I exclaimed as he attached the first pad to my temple, needlessly grabbing my chin to make me look at him. The zip strip kept me from tapping a line, but the thinnest thread of wild magic seeped through me, maddeningly present but too little to even lift a feather. My heart thudded as the last electrode was fastened to my wrist. Ayer watched, arms over his chest in mistrust at my sudden silence, and Annie gathered the cords and started to plug them to the machine itself.
“This is wrong,” I said, feeling no change as the connections were made one by one. There was probably a button to push or something. “I know the masters are a pain in the ass. I know they’re abusive and move on cronyism and backroom deals, but killing them to make the rest behave isn’t going to happen. You’re just going to piss them off and start a street war! The more vampires that die, the more undead there will be. You’re killing yourself!”
I wiggled, caught in the chair as the last wire was connected and Annie stood back, her eyes wide in indecision. The drug had worn off, but now I was caught by straps and Velcro. The man waited at the tower of machinery as if for a signal. A single wire went from it to the box on the table, and then to me. How could something so small hold something so powerful?
There is lot of space between space, a handful of mystics said, feeling my fear but not understanding how it could come from a box.
Again a soft thump shifted the air. Over the bed, the chandelier jingled. The man took his hand off the machine and put it on his pistol. My breath came fast, and I held it. Ivy? Jenks? Trent?
“Go see what that is,” Ayer said, and the man jogged out the door. Immediately Annie took his place at the bank of machinery. “We will be free of the masters,” Ayer said as he stood, moving to where he could watch both me and the door. “We will break the curse for good.”
“Do you even hear yourself?” I said as Annie flicked a switch at Ayer’s direction, and a warm feeling echoed between my ears. Within me, the mystics swirled, agitated but unfocused. “You’re killing them to make others afraid!” I looked at Annie, trying to play on her guilt. “You’re killing innocents!”
“The masters are not innocent!” Ayer shouted, his face reddening. “It’s not murder if they have no soul!” He strode to the bank of machines, and the woman backed up, scared. “Is it ready?” he barked.
“Yes, sir,” she said, and Ayer reached in front of her and flipped a second switch.
Energy washed into me, thousands of voices circling in madness. A harsh moaning grew until I realized it was me and I choked the noise off. My head pounded, and I tried to stand only to fall back, bound to the chair. Insane mystics poured into me, swamping the meek and frightened ones I’d grown accustomed to. They rolled my thoughts upside down, tumbling them like waves spinning a swimmer into the rocks.
Wild magic was a flash behind them, and I grasped it, shoving everything else away and using it to ground myself, building a bubble about me to numb the force, but it did no good.
“Sir, it’s pegged!” Annie shouted, and from somewhere outside myself, I felt my hands digging into the hard chair. “It’s going to kill her!”
“Leave it where it is! Shoot her if she gets free!” he said, and fear rolled about my mind, jumping from one mystic to the other like an electrical storm until fear was all I was. I hung my head, trying to find one tiny space where I could catch my breath. The insane splinter ate away at me, their wild magic sparking through me in painful pings. It demanded an outlet, demanded action. But I had no control, and it simply became harder to bear.
“God, make it stop!” I heard myself moan, heart thudding. But I couldn’t escape. I was going insane. It would be easier that way. One by one, my barriers began to crash, the loud bangs echoing in my head.
“Down! Get down!” someone yelled, and I realized the thumps were real. Something was happening.
“Edden?” I whispered as the squat but powerful man spilled into the room, his eyes alight and a bellow of outrage coming from him. With the sound of a thousand wings, the splintered mystics rose up from me.
At least I thought it was Edden, and I stared, my head lolling as the splinter hazed the room. He was head to toe in black, little half-moons of charcoal under his eyes. A cap with no insignia was on his head, and a clearly non-FIB-issue rifle was in his hand.
“Get away from that machine!” he shouted, and a little sob escaped me. Confusion rose among the splintered mystics, and I felt a shift, a tiny bit of control.
Ayer had his own weapon pointed. “The FIB?” He laughed. “Are you serious?”
“I’m not FIB tonight,” Edden said grimly, and I could hear David shouting in the hall. “I’m running with the pack.”
Ayer’s confident motion to bring his pistol to bear hesitated as Annie shoved the barrel of her weapon into his kidneys. “Sir,” she said, and Ayer froze.
Betrayal! the mystics screamed, recognizing Ayer’s emotion. I gasped, head dropping as I tried to calm them. “Get this off me!” I cried, but no one moved.
“Annie?” Ayer put his hands slightly up and away from his body. “They killed your father. You’re going to let that happen again to another innocent?”
“This isn’t right,” she said, nervous but her hand steady. “It’s a choice everyone makes. You can’t make it for them.”
“Put your weapon down!” Edden said as he edged closer to me. “Now!”
I gasped as Edden jerked one, then another of the electrodes from me, eyes never leaving Ayer, muzzle never wavering from the vampire. But it made no difference. There was enough splintered mystics in me that I’d become a battlefield. The savage need to survive sparked from one to the next—and like a tree catching on fire, I was suddenly fighting the desire to destroy every thought but my own. Problem was, I couldn’t decide who I was anymore.
Wild magic prickled along every nerve. It hurt to breathe, and I held my breath—eaten alive as the mystics looking to me tried to mend the splinter I’d taken in, calming them with the elasticity of my own thoughts and turning their circling into growth and change. But it wasn’t enough.
Ayer breathed deeply, his eyes flashing black as he took in the fear of the room. “You can have my weapon when you pry it from—”
“Your cold dead hands,” Annie finished for him, digging her muzzle into him a little harder. “It ends here. You said we could leave any time we wanted. Consider this my notice.”
Panting, I hung my head. I could see my feet. I was in socks. I am in socks? That seemed important, and I concentrated on it, letting the mystic noise roar in the back of my head. I, as in singular. Am, as in existing. In socks, meaning I had feet. I was solid. I was real.
“Put the weapon down!” Edden shouted. “Now!”
“Hold on, Rachel,” someone whispered, and I felt the last of the electrodes being plucked from me as the spicy scent of Were sparked a memory of David. I. Am. Real.
I breathed. Groaning, I tried to move, my hands unresponsive since they were still bound to the chair. David was at the machine flipping levers with a reckless abandon. I felt the thrum of the air shift, and the ache of wild magic began to pull from me, lifting like a fog, most of the mystics drawn away by a brighter light than my own. The insane splinter was flowing past my awareness with the coldness of a January moon. Slowly my confusion abated.
Kneeling, Ayer put his weapon on the floor.
“All the way,” Annie demanded, and he lay down, gaze never breaking from mine.
“I think that’s it,” David said, thumbing off the power and turning to me. He looked anxious as he dropped to kneel before me. “Rachel. Are you okay?”
I was tied to a chair, but yes, I thought I was okay.
“Rachel?”
He touched me, and I twitched. Mistrust flooded me, born from the mystics. It’s David! I hammered at the ones who had ignored the pull of the machine, demanding that they heed my single thought. But he’d seen my fear, and pain had filled his eyes. “I’m okay,” I said, not moving as he undid the straps. Still in the chair, I rubbed at my wrists. It was hard to focus. Remnants of the wild magic lingered in me, spinning like purple eyes. I was afraid to touch the line—the air already crackled with a lingering cloud of mystics.
Within me were more mystics than before, most tainted with the quick bite of insanity, but the ones I’d saved were circling, trying to absorb them like a white blood cell absorbs a virus. The confusion I felt wasn’t mine, but it was still real, and I sat and breathed as it slowly eased and abated. “I’m okay,” I said again, wanting to believe it.
“Can you move?
Looking at David, I was shocked with how angry he was. His hands had been so gentle. Somehow I managed a smile. “Yes.” Edden was standing over Ayer. The man was facedown, his gun kicked away and his hands on the back of his head as Edden recited the Miranda. “How many people did you bring with you?” I asked, hearing noise in the background that couldn’t be good. “It will take many singularities to end his dream.”
Aghast, I put a hand to my mouth.
David straightened, exchanging a nervous glance with Annie standing guard over the Ayer. “Thanks for your help. I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to cuff you.”
“Use mine,” Edden said, reaching behind himself for his cuffs.
“Look out!” I shouted, falling back into the chair as Ayer lurched from the floor, grabbing Annie and yanking her to his chest.
“Resignation accepted,” he snarled, and my heart sank at the sudden twist and snap of her neck.
“No!” David shouted as he dove for Annie, now falling as Ayer ran for his weapon. She was dead dead, the second death. I couldn’t tell you how I knew, but the energy from her mind was suddenly not there. I hadn’t even realized I could sense it until it was gone.
She shouldn’t have trusted the singular, the mystics thought, most of them siding against me. Many outweigh the one, they scolded me. You will become and do as the majority say.
I’d had enough. Give me that! I shouted in my mind, taking control of the wild magic still spinning through me. “Rhombus!” I screamed as Ayer’s stretching finger touched his gun and pulled it to him as he spun to aim it at me.
My bubble rose up, dismaying the mystics until they realized they could go through it with impunity. Their delight quickly turned to thoughts of outrage as Ayer sprayed us with a hail of bullets, all of them harmlessly bouncing off.
“No, wait!” I cried, reaching out as they turned their thoughts to gleefully dealing out death. Not so much! I protested as they spun control of the wild magic away from me and a blast of white-hot wild magic exploded from my fingertips.
“Stop!” I cried out, knowing it was his death, but Ayer had leaped out of the way. Magic hit the wall and passed through, effortlessly dissolving the matter. Glowing, the leftover energy fell in on itself and vanished with a hiss. Crap on toast, I’d made a hole in the wall.
Edden stared at the new four-foot hole before turning to me. David looked up from Annie to Ayer, more anger in him. “You killed her!” he exclaimed, furious. “Twice!”