Driven (13 page)

"Yes.
They aren't any more innocent than the vampires. They know what they
are working for, at least a little bit. They need to die or else
you'll have an execution crew after you before you can make it back
to the hotel. In hybrid form the evidence you leave will look like
the attack was done by a werewolf, but if there are any eyewitnesses
they'll know that they were up against something else."

"Okay,
I'll do it."

"Jasmin,
this is the most important part. You have to make sure that Geoffrey
survives. No matter how badly you get hurt, you can't afford to lose
control and let your beast kill him."

"How
badly am I going to get hurt?"

"Does
it matter? I thought you were willing to pay any price to save Ben."

My
breath caught, but I still managed a response. "You're right,
all that matters is that I survive so that I can get this Geoffrey
guy back to Ben. You've seen how this all ends up, so I don't need to
worry."

"I
never said that, Jasmin. Even in those instances when you can see
things, it doesn't mean that there isn't anything to fear. The man
who saw the truck coming at the last second is just as dead as the
man who never even saw it before he was killed."

Rachel
hung up on me before I could say anything else. I called her back. I
wanted to demand an explanation, but she didn't answer and before I
could try again, I saw the woman in the red dress.

I
wrapped my trench coat tighter around me and then followed her
inside, trying to look casual. The stately building, fully of marble
and mirrors, reeked of vampires. It was so bad that the stench burned
as it traveled through my nose and down into my lungs.

The
stainless-steel elevator doors opened exactly at the same time, just
like Rachel had said, and I got into the second elevator. I'd never
seen such a big elevator, and by the time the doors closed it was so
full that I almost felt like I couldn't breathe.

The
certainty I'd felt at the start of the conversation with Rachel
evaporated as I considered her last statement. I knew Rachel better
than almost anyone else. She'd been warning me there at the end. She
hadn't wanted to lie to me, but she also hadn't wanted to tell me the
whole truth.

There
was no way for me to prove it, but I suddenly knew that she couldn't
see everything. Her vision was infinitely more powerful than
Kristin's dreams, but it was still somehow limited, still somehow
constrained such that she didn't know how the next few minutes would
go. She'd talked in absolutes—the woman in the red dress, the
elevators opening at the same time. She'd acted like she was reading
from a script, but that was an illusion.

I
fought to keep my pulse steady. It was ludicrous to worry about
something so small—the fight at the hostel had proved that the
vampire hearing wasn't as sharp as shape shifter hearing, and even if
he could hear my heart hammering away inside of my chest he wouldn't
be able to pick me out of the crowd as the person who was scared out
of her mind. It was silly, but that didn't stop me from doing my best
to keep my breathing steady and any trace of concern off of my face.

I
might die, but I couldn't control that, all I could control right now
was the small things. Breathing, keeping a smile on my face, those
were the things that were inside my power right now. I just prayed
that I wouldn't have to kill any of my fellow passengers.

That
was when I realized just how far gone I was. Killing humans on
nothing more than Rachel's word that they weren't innocent, that they
knew what they were involved in, was bad enough. Killing innocents
who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time was the
kind of thing that I'd always despised the Coun'hij for doing.

I
would still despise the action, even if it was me that did it, but I
was finally ready to kill anyone who got in my way. I would save Ben
regardless of the cost, the only question was whether or not I'd be
successful. The question of whether or not I'd be able to look him in
the eye once this was all over didn't even enter into it, not yet.
I'd rather have Ben alive and hating me than see him dead. If that
happened then the fact that my hands were clean wouldn't save me from
the despair I'd felt stalking me for weeks now.

We
made it all the way up to the twentieth floor and without losing much
in the way of passengers. A trickle of people got off on the
twenty-first, but not enough to make a real difference. I'd nearly
resigned myself to the impending murders, but everyone else got off
on the twenty-second floor, leaving me with the vampire, a
gaunt-looking man, dressed all in black, who made my skin crawl.

A
couple of seconds later the elevator slowed and the doors slid open.
I could hear Rachel's warning thrumming inside of my head.

I
needed to make sure that he thought I was going somewhere else. I
slipped out of my trench coat and fished my phone out of my pocket,
walking the same direction as him as I pretended to be looking up an
address.

The
door to Suite A was a large metal affair that was only a few steps
from the elevator. The vampire pushed a button and looked at the
camera as though expecting to be buzzed through. I spun slowly in
place as though trying to figure out which hall led to wherever it
was I needed to be going.

I
caught the vampire looking at me out of the corner of my eye, but he
seemed to have dismissed me as any kind of threat. He stepped closer
to the buzzer, entered a code on the number pad next to it, and then
slid his finger across a biometric sensor.

As
the door clicked with the emotionless sound of a remote unlock, I
struck. I'd pulled my trench coat off because I hadn't wanted to walk
back to the hotel wearing nothing more than my ha'bit, but I hadn't
come up with a solution that would let me save my shoes.

I
stepped into the vampire as my beast ripped free of the chains I'd
placed around her. My massive hybrid body hit him hard enough to make
sure that the door wouldn't shut and lock us back out, and my right
hand tore into his back, killing him before he'd even realized that I
was anything other than the harmless girl I'd worked so hard to look
like.

Just
inside of the door was a security booth, but for whatever reason it
was empty. I let the corpse drop off of my right hand even as I shook
my trench coat off of my left arm. There was a huge, obscenely heavy
bookcase across from the security booth. I tipped it over, using it
to hold the door shut and ensure that nobody would be able to leave,
and then I stalked forward into the suite of rooms.

The
stink of vampires was too strong to pick out individual scents, human
or otherwise, but that was a blessing. I tore through a blur of
bodies and tried not to notice any of the myriad signs that would
have told me whether a given victim was human.

A
stocky, overweight man in a security uniform came around a corner and
went for his gun as soon as he saw me, but he was hopelessly slow. I
killed him before his weapon had even cleared its holster. A dozen
women in pantsuits and skirts went down singly and in pairs, falling
as my claws turned them into red ruin.

A
big guy who looked like he'd probably played college football at some
point came at me with a heavy metal chair in his hands, but he died
as easily as the rest. I killed half a dozen more people in less than
two minutes, but it wasn't until I made it to the end of a long hall
that I started to run into significant opposition.

A
vampire—he was too quick to be a normal human—came at me
with four feet of naked steel gleaming darkly in his hand. I knocked
his slash wide and then backhanded him into the wall with enough
force to break his neck.

Two
more vampires, females this time, stepped out of what looked like a
conference room a second later, probably alerted by the impact as the
vampire I'd just killed hit the wall of the room they were in. I slit
the throat of the closest female before she even realized how much
danger she was in and then was forced backwards to avoid the sword
her companion tried to stab me with.

I
spun to one side to avoid her follow-up attack and it was a simple
thing to pick up the body of the man and use it as a shield to allow
me to get in close enough to finish off the third vampire. I could
hear heartbeats inside of the conference room, but the fact that they
hadn't come out already to face me indicated that they were either
especially dangerous or no threat whatsoever.

Normally
I wouldn't have been able to locate either of them, not through a
wall, even a wall that was little more than two thin pieces of
sheetrock with some aluminum supports between them, but one of them
made a profound mistake. He bumped up against his side of the wall
and told me exactly where he was in that instant.

I
spared a fraction of a second to hope that I wasn't about to punch
one of the metal supports and then put my claws through the wall. I
took my prey through a kidney and then pulled my hand back a split
second before it would have been consumed by the sudden firestorm on
the other side of the wall. Even so it was scorched and my fur was
smoking when I held my hand up to examine it.

The
sprinklers inside of the conference room cut loose instantly,
flooding the room with water, but I knew that wouldn't save me if the
pyromancer set eyes on me. The most powerful pyromancers didn't need
to set you on fire from the outside in, they could cook you from the
inside out.

Most
buildings were wired so that if any single fire alarm was tripped it
would trigger a full evacuation. The rest of the alarms inside of the
building hadn't gone off yet, which was a good sign, but only an
idiot would program their fire suppression system to continue to pour
out hundreds of gallons of water per minute into the conference room
without eventually triggering some kind of building-wide escalation.
I didn't have much time left.

For
a moment I was out of ideas and then I saw the huge, metal clock
hanging on the wall next to me. It didn't fit my hand very well, but
it was heavy and the edges were thin and hard. I pulled it down from
the wall, took a deep breath and then spun past the doorway to the
conference center, hurling the clock like a giant metal Frisbee in
the instant when I was able to see the last vampire inside, just
before my momentum carried me safely past.

I'd
moved quickly, but once again it almost hadn't been fast enough. The
air had shimmered with heat and the walls had started to smoke for
the split second that I'd been in view of my enemy. He'd used his
dreadful power and he'd come close to burning me, my skin felt
crinkly and tight like I had a bad sunburn, but the sound of his
heartbeat had stopped now. I ducked inside the conference room just
long enough to confirm that the clock had taken him through the
chest, and then headed back down the hall.

The
last man who tried to stop me attacked with the curved sword of a
samurai. He was fast, much faster than anyone else who had faced me,
and I had a sneaking suspicion that his slender blade would shear my
limbs from my body just as easily as the two-handed monstrosities the
twins at the hostel had been using.

His
sword equalized the reach advantage I otherwise would have enjoyed,
and he moved with quick, economical motions that left no openings in
his defenses for me to exploit. His sword licked out half a dozen
times and more than half of his attacks landed, albeit for shallow,
nonlethal gashes rather than the mortal wounds he'd been aiming for.

My
beast was angry that he'd stood us off for so long, but more
importantly, I was getting frustrated. I needed to resolve this now,
before he bled me out and made me slow and clumsy. We danced down the
hall, him always moving forward, me always moving backwards, for
another few seconds before I saw the opportunity I needed.

Once
again his sword slashed at me in a horizontal blur, but instead of
retreating I moved forward. Both sets of claws were down at my side
and I used them to form a basket that was harder than steel, a basket
capable of stopping his strike cold before it could cut me in half.

It
worked, but I'd severely underestimated both the power behind his
attack and the leverage disadvantage I was working under. I stopped
his blade, but not before it scored a deep gash into my side just
above where my floating ribs would have been in human form.

The
vampire lashed out with a kick to my legs, hoping to take advantage
of the fact that both of my hands were still tangled up with his
blade, but I checked his blow with the talons on my left foot and
then leaned forward and bit him at the juncture of his shoulder and
neck.

I
was still bleeding from my side as I stumbled down the hall, but it
wasn't enough to kill me, at least not quickly. I searched all of the
remaining rooms and predictably it was the last one that contained
Geoffrey.

I
sheared through the stainless steel lock with my claws and then
walked inside the room and saw Ben's savior. He was in a giant cage
and his hands were manacled together, but that wasn't what made my
beast cut loose with a wave of power that came within a hairsbreadth
of shattering my control.

I
wanted to deny the truth of what I was facing but there was no
denying the scent that had permeated every square inch of the room.
Geoffrey, the one man who could bring Ben back to me, was a vampire,
a parasitic bloodsucker that I couldn't possibly trust no matter what
Rachel might say.

Geoffrey
Imastious' Nassau Operations Center
Manhattan, New York

The
pain in Geoffrey's head had subsided to something nearly
muted enough for him to begin using his mentalist powers again,
which meant that it was nearly time for someone to administer
another round of drugs to him. Geoffrey had been expecting the
door to his room to open for nearly an hour, but when it did
finally open, it wasn't another vampire standing in the doorway.