Chasing Power (Hidden Talents) (23 page)

Samantha didn’t hesitate.  She slammed the door.  Acting fast, Lane shoved his foot into the jamb, keeping it from closing all the way.

“Let me in,” he said, making eye contact, “I just want to talk to you!”

#

“Sit down,” Harry said, “You’re in no position to talk to her right now.”

“You’re right.”  Lane sat.  “I shouldn’t bother anyways.  Should I?  She wouldn’t even listen.  I could write her a song and she wouldn’t listen.  I haven’t met such an ice queen in my whole life.”

“Write her a song?”  Harry asked, then shook his head, “You’re a lightweight, man.  But you’re right, she can be pretty chilly.”

“And mean.  And distrusting.  She thinks she can do this alone, fine.  We’ll let her.  We’re going home tomorrow.  The ice queen can help herself—oh god—”

Lane suddenly collapsed, tumbling to the floor.  Harry almost wasn’t fast enough to catch Lane before his head collided with the floor.  He propped his friend up as Lane moaned, clutching his head, “What’s the matter?”

“Sam,” Lane gasped.

#

When Lane had asked to come in, he hadn’t just meant it literally.  And without waiting for an answer, he grabbed her shoulder as he forced his way in both to the room and her mind. 

Sam’s block was up, of course, but she could feel it collapse under the force of Lane’s immense power, like a brick wall bulldozed by a tank.

A dark, sticky feeling stole into her consciousness.  Samantha took a step back, eyes widening as she felt the presence spread through her thoughts. 

“Lane?” she asked, already knowing the answer.  This wasn’t Lane.  It just looked like him.  The chameleon smiled again, showing yellowed teeth.  It was the last thing she saw before the flood of pain hit.

#

“Where is she, god damn it?” 

Lane stood in the middle of Sam’s empty room.  Al arrived seconds later, Harry bringing up the rear.  They surveyed the room.  The blankets had been tugged to the ground, but that was the only evidence of a struggle.  To the casual observer, it might look like she was a fitful sleeper.

“I don’t know, Lane,” Al said, “It looks like she left on her own.  Are you sure she’s in trouble?”

“Yes,” Lane said grimly, “And someone’s with her.”  It was true.  Since that initial flood of pain, another force had come in, totally severing the tenuous connection Lane felt with her.  Strange, he hadn’t noticed the connection the two had shared, not until it was gone.  Something about the way the two had been interacting must have linked their consciousnesses.  Except now it was gone, leaving Lane feeling like there was a blank in the corner of his mind.

Al looked up and down the hall, watching as screaming little kids ran to the ice machine and back to their room: “He couldn’t have taken her far.  This place is crawling with people, even this late.  Someone would have noticed a kidnapping.  Or a large body.  Even with talent you can’t account for surprises.”

“OK, so she’s nearby,” Harry said, “What next?  There are at least twenty rooms on this floor, and I doubt our kidnapper is going to open up if we knock.”

Lane stared at his friends, for once at a loss.  It was Al who finally spoke up, “Why don’t we smoke him out?”

Al told them his plan.  The three quickly split up, cell phones handy, Al and Lane each taking one of the two flights of stairs and Harry taking up a post by the elevators, hiding behind a potted plant.  When he got there he called Lane, “Ready.”  On their side of the hall, Lane signaled Al, who reached out and yanked the fire alarm.

People poured out of the rooms.  Parents left rooms with kids in their arms, an exhausted businessman came out pulling his suit back on.  And one old lady opened the door a crack and slammed it shut again.  Harry hit the speed dial, “Hey Lane, did you see that old lady poke her head out and go back into her room?”

“Yes,” Lane said, “But I didn’t see an old lady.”

Chapter
21

The pain eased, but immobility remained.  She watched his face, Lane’s face—now so wrong, so different—as he carried her out of her room and down the hall.  She knew that something terrible was about to happen; she knew this man was evil, but she couldn’t do anything.  No matter how hard she tried, her body refused to respond.  It was like one of those horrible nightmares where you opened your mouth to scream and nothing would come out, where you tried to run but your legs stuck like glue.  She wanted to fight back, but first she had to figure out how he was doing it.  After opening another door, the man placed her on a hotel bed and kneeled down next to her.

“You know why I’m here,” he said, “I’m going to kill you.”

All right
, Sam thought,
You’re a badass.  Very scary.  I get it.  Now let me go.  Let me go so I can kick your ass in a fair fight!

Pseudo-Lane shrugged, “Sorry, fair fights?  Not so much fun for me.  Ready?”

No, I’m not ready.  I’m definitely not ready, Sam thought.  Please, monologue some more.
  Pseudo-Lane laughed.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?  Well, OK, I’ll humor you.  There’s a little game I like to play.  You see, I only think it’s fair that before someone dies, they see their life flash before their eyes.  That way, I get the info I need and you get to have one fun reminder of why life is over-rated anyways.”

And with that he went back into her mind.  His presence was disgusting, sour, curdled milk... no, slimy strong tentacles reaching into her subconscious and rifling through it like so much old baggage, picking through to find the prime pieces, holding them up to the light.  Fighting bitterly, Sam pulled her consciousness apart, keeping that one key sense of self separate. 

 The tentacles made their choices and turned to Sam’s small inner-fortress of self.  “There you are,” Pseudo-Lane said, “That’s pretty good.”  The tentacles reached and pulled her in.  They took the energy and wrapped her with it, tying it into the memories.  She tried to escape, tried to keep her mind above, clear, blocked.  But she couldn’t outrun the sticky arms that latched around her and dragged her back.  Back into memories that she had thought she’d buried forever.  Sam saw, she felt, she experienced, and she screamed, screamed louder than she ever had in her life.  If only someone could hear her.

In the real world, the quality of light changed. Pseudo-Lane stood and turned, but he didn’t have time to say anything before he crumpled like a rag doll.

But by this point, Sam could no longer see what was happening in the world around her.  She knew only one thing, and that was the horror of her past.

#

Harry and Al stood slack-jawed in the doorway.  They said nothing as Lane pushed past them, Sam in his arms, and strode down the hallway.

“Is he dead?” Al asked Harry.  On entering the room, they’d seen the man/woman/whatever, hovering over Samantha.  He’d turned to look but Lane hadn’t hesitated.  Lane had hit the man in the side of the face, one punch and he’d gone down like a sack of potatoes.  It was clear from the blow that, consciously or not, Lane had brought some of his TK into play.

Shooting Al a concerned look, Harry leaned forward and checked the pulse.  He gave Al a quick nod: still alive. Now that he was unconscious, the man looked...like a sleazy, nondescript thirty-something wearing a silk bowling shirt.

“Are you two coming?”  Lane yelled, already halfway down the hall.  Harry grabbed the shopping bag filled with Sam’s things—the chameleon must have taken it with him, to make it look like Sam had left on her own.  Al nodded in approval, holding the door open for him.  Then the two hurried to catch up.

No one noticed them in the milling crowd.  Harry was pretty sure that had something to do with Lane, or at least that was better than thinking an angry man toting an unconscious woman across a crowded parking lot would be allowed to pass without comment or question.

Lane tossed Al the car keys and put Sam in the back seat, climbing in next to her.  It wasn’t until they were a mile or two from the hotel that Al glanced in the rear-view mirror, “Is she going to be all right?”

“No,” Lane said, “She’s not.”

“He can’t still be hurting her, can he?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe he used her amplifying power, or—I don’t know, get us out of here, all right?  Let me handle this.”

 “Will she recover?” Harry said, looking at Sam for the first time.  No longer limp, now and then a hand or leg would twitch, and her eyes were roving around, staring at nothing.

 “I guess we’ll find out,” Lane said, settling in next to her and closing his eyes.

#

It was easy, really.  Her defenses had been obliterated, and the chameleon had no reason to put up any blocks for her.  And all Lane needed to do was take her hand.  Stuck as she was, in a state of semi-consciousness, it didn’t take much for him to renew the link they’d had earlier, to use his own skill to strengthen it further.  Having done so, Lane waded past the superficial stillness into deeper emotions of fear and anger and desperation.  He felt, more than saw, the inky taint of power that had implanted itself in her mind.  Lane reached for the inkiness and felt it slip out of his grasp and back into place.  He wished he had the power of the chameleon, even one-tenth of the ability that would allow him access to her mind the way he could access her emotions.

But all Lane could do was hold her and hope she had the strength to live through it.  He closed his eyes and prayed.  Sam’s hand on his arm tightened slightly and Lane felt his mind start to slide away.

#

They sat in the back of the car, strapped into a safety seat and pounding her legs on the side.  It was dark outside, and the lights of the distant city and the passing streetlights fascinated her.  One hand clutched a cheap plastic bear, a toy from Lucky’s.  The other was wrapped in a cast.  A little doll from the drugstore lay next to them on the seat, thrown there hastily by Mommy in a desperate attempt to coax her into good behavior.  That and the promise of a Lucky Kid’s Meal had bribed her into content silence and kept her from questioning this strange midnight excursion.

Mom smiled brightly, talking about a grand adventure.  The babble seemed more for Mom’s benefit than Sam’s, but now and then she answered a question with carefully formed sentences: A new home would be fun.  An exciting new town.  Just the two of them, forever and ever.  The stars outside the window echoed the thought, stretching out forever and ever.

#

 A few years later, a couple of feet taller, but the car was the same one they’d always had.  Only now they were sitting in the front seat.  Tall enough to see over the dashboard now, old enough to recognize that something was wrong.

“Mom, stop!”

Mom said nothing but gripped the emergency brake, pulling as hard as she could.  They continued towards the red light.

Panic swamped her, “Mom, STOP!”  The car barreled down the hill and into the intersection, and she watched with dread as another car, oblivious to the honking of the horn, continued forward—straight towards them.  Mom must have seen this too, because she yelled something about holding on even as she pulled the steering wheel hard to the right, spinning the car around.  The world seemed to slow and Sam knew if she could just hold it still, she could do something, could change something if she could.  Just think, if she could just concentrate, she knew she could stop it, but instead the world stopped on its own—

—Starting again as someone pulled her out of the passenger seat, asking if she was okay.  But her side was undamaged, turned safely away from oncoming traffic.  It was the driver’s side that had been crushed on impact.

#

Good intentions paved their way back to the front stoop of her first home, clutching a suitcase and staring at peeling paint that seemed both familiar and alien.  Her impression of her long lost father was similar.  He was the same handsome man she remembered.  He had smiling eyes and an easy laugh.  But there was something else at work behind those eyes, something indistinct and not quite normal. 

#

They stared down at her hands.  The sticky, hot blood, she realized, was her own.  Putting her hand gingerly to her face, she touched her nose.  The pain was incredible.  The wall was stained with blood where she’d hit it.  The stain would stay there, despite scrubbing.  And her father, afraid of questions doctors might ask, refused to take her to the hospital.  Instead, he told her he was sorry, he hadn’t meant to.  He sat her on the bathroom counter, carefully cleaned the blood away using alcohol and cotton balls and promised a milkshake to make it up to her.

#

Lane fled back to his mind.  He let go of Sam, separating their bodies.  That was all he could take. Almost too much.  He felt overwhelmed, swamped by the power of the connection, shivering in shock and amazement.  This was more than he should be able to do.  More than he had ever done before.    

But now, at least, he knew what the chameleon had done.  He’d trapped Sam in memories and places of power, moments in life where anger and energy combined, the moments that created people like them.  In doing so, the chameleon had made a feedback loop that was focusing and refocusing Sam’s own energy.  He’d taken away all of the breaks and fail-safes that her mind might have, essentially putting Sam’s brain into self-destruct.  Already the twitching had increased to tremors.  If the memories didn’t stop, Sam would have an aneurysm.  She would die.