Cronin's Key III (2 page)

Cronin bucked his hips instantly
and growled out, “Alec.”

Alec pulled
back the images and the lust, leaving Cronin breathless. His black
eyes were swimming, swirling with want. He took a hold of Alec’s
face and brought their mouths together in a searing
kiss.

Cronin moved his arms down Alec’s back
and held him tighter. He rolled his hips up and kissed him deeper
until Alec was lost in him.

Then it happened.

Images.
Visions flashed through Alec’s mind, visions he did not put there.
Alec had learned to protect his mind, another of his talents was to
shield his own thoughts from others. Yet someone or something had
penetrated through.

“
Alec, what is it?” Cronin
asked.

When Alec
looked down at a concerned Cronin, Alec realized he’d zoned out,
their make-out session long-forgotten. “We need to leave,” Alec
said, jumping to his feet. He pulled Cronin up by the hand, and
before Cronin could ask why, Alec pulled him close, and they
leapt.

Alec
and Cronin’s
feet had no sooner hit the floor in the New York City apartment
than Alec had called out, “Jodis! Eiji!”

They appeared not a moment later,
clearly concerned at the tone of Alec’s voice. “What is it?” Eiji
asked.

“
Eleanor? Did you see
that?” Alec asked.

Eleanor was at the table with Kole,
and they both stood up. “See what?” She shook her head. “I didn’t
see anything.”

“
Someone put a vision in
my head,” Alec said. “Like they specifically wanted me to see. It
was deliberate and aimed at me.”

Cronin pulled back so he could look
into Alec’s eyes. “Tell us. What did you see?”

“
I’ll show you,” Alec said, looking at everyone in the room.
Then he recalled the images
,
and with no more than a wish to do so, he transferred his gift of
seeing to the others.

They were
used to it now, having Alec transfer a talent to them, and they
looked upon the group of strangers in front of them, seeing what
Alec had seen.

There were five of them. They looked human on the outside,
but one of Alec’s new talents allowed
him to see a person’s true self, regardless of what
outer shell, or skin, they wore.

And shimmering under the surface of their human skins,
these
people
were wolf-like, almost
goblin-looking creatures that walked on two feet. They had
claw-like hands, and humanesque faces with the exception of wolf
teeth.

Alec
knew where he
recognized them from. With pictures flashing through his mind like
a film on fast-forward, these creatures looked like the gargoyle
statues on castles all over the world. Or similar to the dog-like
faces in Aztec and Incan carvings.

There was a collective gasp from
everyone in the room as they saw firsthand what Alec had
seen.

Kole,
Alec’s father,
being the only human in the room, stated what all the vampires had
more than likely already processed. “I can see what they are under
their skin. It moves, shimmers, like they’re struggling to keep up
their human façade.”

Alec nodded and pulled the images back into his own mind.
He looked at Cronin. “
What
are they?”

Cronin shook his head slowly,
clearly shocked at what he’d just seen. “I don’t
know.”

“
They looked familiar in
an unfamiliar kind of way,” Eiji said. “Which doesn’t even make
sense.”

Everyone nodded slowly though
, because Eiji had just summed up what Alec felt earlier,
like he had seen them before, but not directly. “I wasn’t sure if
I’d ever seen them, if something tweaked in my subconscious, or if
it was my brain and some unknown mind-talent I couldn’t make sense
of,” Alec added.

“
They looked similar to the stone carvings at the Cholula
and Tikal pyramids,” Jodis said quietly. “Or at Koh Ker in
Cambodia.”

Cronin nodded. “
Wolves?”

No one answered,
remaining wide-eyed and still. Scared, even.

Alec turned
to Cronin. “What’s a Zoan?”

Cronin
thought for a moment, no doubt scanning centuries of memories.
“I’ve not heard of a Zoan. Why do you ask?”

“
When I saw them, or when they showed themselves, the word
came to me. Whether they told me deliberately or whether the word
presented itself to me as part of a talent, I don’t know. I can see
the truth in people and vampires, what they are underneath, who
they present themselves to be. Maybe it’s possible the name came to
me without their permission.” Alec frowned. “It’s been a while
since things were unknown to me.”

“
You see nothing else?”
Jodis asked. She knew Alec’s talents left no stone
unturned.

He shook his head. “No.”

Eiji’s
eyebrows furrowed. “Alec, you said, ‘When they showed themselves to
you.’ You think the only reason you saw anything is because they
allowed it?”

Alec nodded.
“Yes. They wanted me to see them. I had the distinct feeling of
them allowing me to see what they showed me.”

Cronin started to growl. “I don’t like
it.”

Alec looked at Cronin and pulled a stray blade of grass
from the back of his hair
that was left over from their all-too-brief romp in the
field at Dunadd. He smiled at it. “I didn’t like being interrupted
either.”

“
Please
, Alec,” Cronin
said, not amused. “This is no time for jokes.”

“
Mmm
.” Jodis obviously
agreed with Cronin. “Alec, how do they possess a talent you cannot
read or even identify?”

“
They’re not vampires,” Alec stated simply. “They’re Zoan.”
His mind flicked through information like a high-powered computer
searching files for a key word. “Zoan comes from the word
zoanthropy, right? A word given by doctors in the eighteenth
century, meaning a form of madness involving the delusion of being
an animal with correspondingly altered behavior. It’s often
associated with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.” Alec stared at
Cronin. “Or clinical lycanthropy.”

Then, just as before, the Zoa
n figures appeared: five dark cloaked figures, this time
with their heads bowed. Though now they appeared in the living
room, not in Alec’s mind.

Alec spun
around and waved his hand, casting a protective shield around
Cronin and the others. In a nanosecond, he put himself in front of
his friends and family and threw out another wave over the
intruders, this time a shock of immobility.

The Zoan didn’t move, but
Alec somehow knew it was their choice to be still, not
his.

The leader, the taller
one at the point of their arrow formation, lifted its head.
It was male, but his human face flickered, barely concealing the
grotesque figure underneath.

“
What are you doing here?”
Alec demanded. He crouched into a defensive position. “How did you
get in here?”

“
Your mental blockades do not impede us,” he said
softly.

“
What are you?” Alec asked. He felt no immediate threat from
them,
like they wanted
information not confrontation, but their very uninvited presence
was exactly that.

The leader bowed his head. “We have been called many
things.
We call ourselves
Zoan, though given your vampire nature, you may recognize the
name
Vukodlak
.”

“
What do you
want?”

“
We came to see if it was true. The human key does indeed
exist, though he is not human anymore.” The leader looked up and
smiled. Alec could feel no malice coming from him, though his smile
was a horrifying muzzle full of sharp teeth. “We should thank
you.”

“
For what?”

“
For granting us life once more. We were reborn with you.”
He bowed his head again. “For every birth of light comes the birth
of darkness. It is an honor to call you our enemy.”

Alec bared his fangs and growled
but the leader only laughed. He glanced over Alec’s
shoulder, and Alec could see into his mind and look through his
eyes. Behind Alec stood his friends and family completely silent
and still, as though stuck in time.

Alec spun on his heel to face them, to look at a
stock-still Cronin. The sound of the Zoan’s laughter rang
out
, and then like a vacuum
of sound exploding, time restarted. It literally knocked Alec off
his feet.

“
Alec!” Cronin cried,
grabbing him before he hit the floor.

Vampires didn’t fall over. They didn’t lose
their balance, ever. Especially when
that vampire had every conceivable talent in the history of
vampires: mind reading, foresight, protective shields…. The list
was endless. He should be indestructible. Yet Alec looked as though
he’d been struck by a great unseen weight that stole the air from
his lungs. And Sammy, the cat, arched his back, his fur static, and
with a feral hiss, he flew out of the room.

In that split second, Cronin almost took
Alec and leapt. His first instinct
was to remove Alec from danger, protect and keep him safe. But
something told him to stay. “What is it? What happened?” Cronin
fussed, putting his hands to Alec’s face, searching for anything
amiss.

Everyone was clearly alarmed, crowded
around him. The room was silent, in shock and waiting.

“
Did you not see…?” Alec shook his head. Cronin helped him
to his feet, and Alec looked to where the Zoan creatures had stood.
“Did you guys not see that?”

“
See what?” Cronin asked
quietly. It appeared that Alec looked around the room at the faces
staring back at him, waiting for someone to laugh. “Alec, there was
nothing to see.”

Alec paled. He looked at Eiji and
Jodis, then to Kole, and finally back to Cronin. “It wasn’t in my
head. I swear to you. They were standing right there.”

“
No, it wasn’t in your mind. The cat saw whatever it was you
did. Was it the Zoan?” Jodis asked.

Alec took a deep breath
and nodded as Eiji disappeared, and Cronin could hear him
doing a perimeter check of the apartment. He came back in a second
later, his long black hair fanned out with his speed. “We’re
secure.”

Jodis’ tone was short and sharp.
“Eleanor? Did you see anything?”

Eleanor shook her head. “No. I cannot
see them. Only what Alec showed me before. I have no visions of
them at all.”

“
They were right there,” Alec said finally, pointing to the
space in the living room near the wall of Cronin’s antiques. “There
were five of them, in a V formation. The leader at the front was
the only one who spoke. It was the same people… things, wolves,
Zoan, whatever the fuck they are.” He looked at Cronin, his eyes
pleading, yet wide and wild. “They were right there.”

“
They spoke to you?”
Cronin asked.

Alec nodded.

“
What did they
say?”

“
I can show you,” Alec
said, quickly looking at everyone. “You’ll see I’m not making this
up.”

Cronin put his hand to Alec’s face and spoke low and
fervent. “I don’t doubt you, Alec. No one here does. You’re not
going mad.
Sammy didn’t like
their presence either, remember? Show us what you saw so we may
share this burden with you.”

Alec took one last look at the faces staring back at him,
and with no more than a soft breath,
he showed them. He’d described this telepathic transference
to Cronin once, like extending synapse-like fingers directly from
the limbic system. As easy as thinking it himself, he could think
it in someone else’s head, sharing the memory with whomever he
chose, no matter where they were in the world.

And this was a memory. It wasn’t a
vision. It wasn’t a delusion. It was a memory. He saw it, breathed
it, lived it.

Just moments
ago,
there were five of these creatures a few feet from them, and only
Alec saw it.

Even through
Alec’s memory, Cronin could sense time had stood still. He heard
them converse, in a space and time that did not exist. It was
bizarre and absurd, yet it was the truth.

And as quickly as it appeared in his mind’s eye, it was
gone. Cronin grabbed Alec by the shirt and pulled him in
close.
You’re safe,
m’cridhe
, he thought, knowing
Alec would hear him.

Alec nodded against Cronin’s neck
before finally pulling back. “You saw it?” he asked
collectively.

Everyone
nodded, wide-eyed, pale, and speechless.

“
What are the Vulkodlak?” Kole asked. “I’ve never heard of
them, but he said that’s what we’d know them as.”

Cronin swallowed hard. He didn’t like this. He didn’t like
this at all.
“In centuries
past, vulkodlak was a name the Greeks used for Vampire. It’s also
the same name used throughout Eastern Europe for wolf.”