Driven (15 page)

"That
doesn't prove anything. I worked for Imastious before I lost my
memories, he would have known that too."

"You're
not denying that the name is right though, are you? Even though you
didn't know that fact before I said it? It feels right, doesn't it?"

Geoffrey
swallowed a couple of times. "Yes, it feels right."

"Then
it will also feel right when I tell you that Lucy was so important to
you that you would have done everything possible to protect her.
Imastious didn't know about her before you lost your memories."

"How
could you know that unless you were working for Imastious?"

"The
same way that I know where Melody is right now. I see things,
Geoffrey. Things that you need to know even if you aren't ready for
them yet."

Geoffrey
knew that he was going out of his way now to find reasons to believe
Rachel. It was a dangerous thing to be doing, but he couldn't seem to
stop himself. He turned to Jasmin. "You know Rachel? She's not a
vampire?"

Jasmin
had her left arm tight against her side, trying very hard to stem the
flow of blood from her side.

"Yes,
I know Rachel and no, she isn't a vampire."

He
turned back to the phone.

"I
believe her. She hates my kind too much to be knowingly working with
a vampire, but you could be working for Imastious or another Elder
and not even realize it."

Rachel's
laugh was like the first ray of sunlight cutting through the clouds
after a storm. "Someday you're going to understand how funny
that statement was. I'm not working for any vampire."

"But
you're working for someone."

"A
few days ago I would have said no, but now I'm not so sure."

Something
about the way she'd responded sent chills working their way up and
down Geoffrey's spine, but she didn't give him a chance to say
anything else.

"We're
out of time, Geoffrey. Hand me back to Jasmin and don't forget to
check her phone for that address. She'll have a first aid kit at the
hotel."

"I
haven't agreed to help you."

"Maybe
not, but you will, it's only a matter of time. You aren't going to be
able to pass up a chance to see Melody again."

Jasmin
took the phone out of his hand and put it on speaker. "You
should have just had him put it on speaker, Rach. I don't
particularly like being within arm's reach of him."

"It
doesn't matter very much either way, Jasmin. You could hear both
sides of the conversation no matter what he did, which you just
revealed by taking the phone rather than waiting for him to give it
to you."

Jasmin
swore. "I guess you're right. Sitting here doing nothing while I
bleed to death must have made me testy."

"Shift
back to your hybrid form, Jasmin. You're going to need the extra
strength to move that bookcase off of the door. While you're at it
cut that storage thingy in half—you only need half of the
drives to make it so they can't reconstruct the data—and then
cut through the chain between Geoffrey's wrists, he's going to need
both hands if he's going to get you and the storage device back to
the hotel."

"It's
too late for all of that, Rach. I won't last another fifteen minutes.
You should have told me that I wasn't going to survive this one."

For
the first time, Geoffrey could hear worry in Rachel's voice. "It's
not too late! Change now. The shift will heal your side some more and
give Geoffrey time to get you back to the hotel."

"That
doesn't always work, Rach, and you know it. One shift, yes, but two
shifts doesn't necessarily heal any more than the one, sometime it
makes things worse."

"It's
going to work, Jasmin. The question of whether or not you're going to
survive boils down to this choice. If you shift you'll make it. If
not you are going to die and Ben will die with you. If you die you'll
just be proving that you're too weak to deserve him."

Geoffrey
would have said that Jasmin was too far gone for anything to get her
to move. She'd grounded the tip of the sword and she was slumped back
so that she was leaning against a desk and the wall behind it.

She
looked like she was only seconds away from collapsing, but Rachel's
words had kindled some kind of fire inside of her. She looked up at
Geoffrey and her eyes had changed somehow. They were harder and the
gorgeous blue he remembered from a few seconds before had turned to
the cold blue of glacier ice.

Between
one instant and the next she shifted forms, the slender, trim frame
of a young woman exploding out into the massive monster that he'd
first thought was a werewolf. Jasmin moved towards him with the kind
of speed and power that had given the werewolves a special place in
his nightmares, and for a second he thought she was going to kill
him.

It
would have been in keeping with the angry hatred she'd displayed so
far towards him, but the flashing claws parted the chains between his
handcuffs instead of dismembering him and then she was moving past
him, shouldering the heavy steel bookcase to one side. Jasmin turned
back towards the storage device he'd packed all of the way from the
surveillance room and then sheared through it like it was no more
than butter.

Jasmin
looked back at him and even opened her mouth as though to say
something else and only then did Geoffrey see the bright trail of
blood that she was leaving behind. Rachel had been wrong, the
bleeding had gotten worse rather than healing. Jasmin managed a
single step toward him and then collapsed at his feet.

Jasmin Bianchi
Pinnacle Luxury Hotel
Manhattan, New York

I
hadn't expected to regain consciousness, so when I opened my eyes all
of the other smaller shocks faded away underneath the sheer
astonishment at having survived. I was back in the hotel room with
Ben, who looked like he had lost three more pounds that he couldn't
afford to lose while I'd been asleep.

My
ha'bit had been cut away from my side and bore the expected white
second-skin of gauze and tape. I gingerly pulled the tape up and
probed the pink scar that was all that remained of the wound that had
nearly killed me. A quick survey of the rest of my body indicated
that everything else was healed as well so I tried to roll out of the
huge bed I'd been sharing with Ben.

I
stood too quickly and nearly fell. I'd expected to be light-headed
after losing so much blood, but I was even less stable than I'd
anticipated. I made a grab for the bed, but I was too far away and my
legs didn't seem to want to work. I managed to get them to work for
short bursts, but not at the same time. It wasn't pretty, but it was
enough. I dropped down onto the thick cream carpet in a
semi-controlled rush that was only slightly slowed by my erratically
functioning legs.

Once
I was on the floor I wanted nothing so badly as to just close my eyes and
stay there, but I forced myself up onto all fours and slowly made my
way over to the closest chair. I was resting against it in an effort
to gather enough strength to try and stand again when I heard
movement outside the bedroom door. A second later Geoffrey opened the
door.

"Are
you okay?"

"Well,
it looks like Rachel was right and you decided against killing me in
my sleep, so I guess I've been worse."

Geoffrey
didn't respond for several seconds and I suddenly realized just how
little his face gave away. He'd been less guarded right after I'd
freed him, like the shock of no longer being a prisoner had caused
him to lower some internal veil, but if so it was back up now.

I
took a moment to more fully examine him now that I wasn't moments
away from bleeding out. Geoffrey was slender in the way that a
marathoner was slender. He wasn't bulky, but there wasn't any wasted
weight on him anywhere. He was only a little more than average
height, maybe an inch under six feet, and he had piercing brown eyes
and short, straight brunette hair. I got the feeling that his face
could be wonderfully expressive under the right circumstances, but
right now it was an expressionless mask.

"You're
probably hungry, Jasmin. I left a sports drink on the table for you.
There is leftover Chinese takeout in the fridge, but the sports drink
will get calories into your system as fast as possible. While you are
finishing it I'll go get the leftovers warmed up."

I'd
forced myself to my feet as soon as I'd seen him, not because it had
been the smart thing to do, but because some primitive instinct
refused to let him see me like that. He'd already seen me as
vulnerable as I could possibly get and hadn't acted on my weakness,
but it still went against the grain to let him see just how little
strength I had right now. It was always possible for him to change
his mind when it came to working with me.

There
was no telling what combinations of factors would trigger an attack
so I simply had to take care of as many as I could.
Control
what you can control and try not to worry too hard about everything
else.
I practically sounded
like Alec now.

The
dizziness was back full force now that I was standing up, but my
death grip on the table kept me from falling down and once he turned
away from me I lowered myself down into the closest chair. I popped
open the sports drink and took a sip. It was lukewarm and sweeter
than I normally liked, but after that first taste I couldn't stop
myself from sucking the whole thing down in seconds.

He'd
been right, I'd needed that even more than I'd realized. I sat there
for a couple of seconds until the tiny microwave in the main room
beeped and then levered myself back up onto my feet and made my
unsteady way across the soft brown carpet to the bedroom door.

"I
would have brought it in to you."

I
shook my head as I gently pulled the bedroom door shut behind me. I
still wasn't up to any kind of fight, but some combination of the
sports drink or simply just being awake for a few more minutes was
doing the trick and I could at least walk without falling over.

"No,
it's fine, I need to be up and about. Besides, I'd rather not disturb
Ben any more than we have to. How long have I been out?"

"About
a day and a half. You're just about out of full IV bags. I used one
for you when we first got back here and then have been hanging a new
one for Ben every few hours."

I
sat down, picked up a fork and started in on the leftovers. We
probably would have just sat there in silence for the next hour if my
phone hadn't started ringing. I didn't recognize the number, but
these days that usually meant it was Rachel calling.

I
answered it and then stuck it on speaker phone when she started
talking.

"I'm
glad the two of you made it back to the hotel safely without any more
problems, and that you're up and walking around now, Jasmin."

Geoffrey
cut in before I could respond. "You promised to tell me how to
find Melody. Where is she?"

I
shook my head. "No way, you help Ben and then she'll tell you
that."

"What's
wrong with him?"

"Do
you really expect me to believe that you didn't already ransack both
of our minds?"

The
words jumped out of my mouth of their own accord. I knew I shouldn't
be provoking him, but I couldn't help myself. A couple of seconds
passed in silence before I realized that my beast was leaning against
the bars of her metaphysical cage. She didn't like Geoffrey and that
was bleeding into my feelings, reinforcing my own natural dislike of
him.

Geoffrey
looked uncomfortable, not like someone caught in a lie exactly, but
like someone who was doing something that they weren't sure was in
their best interest. "Believe what you will, I haven't scanned
either of you. Why don't you give me the benefit of the doubt and
just explain what is going on since you're so desperate to have me
help you."

"I'm
not desperate."

"Fine,
let's just sit here for the next few days then. I'm sure that Ben
will get stronger rather than weaker while we wait."

Rachel
sighed. "Ben was working for a vampire here in New York a little
while ago. Once he realized who he was working for he tried to get
away but they locked him up. Jasmin and another of our friends broke
in and got him out, but he freaked out as soon as they left and
Jasmin had to knock him unconscious in order to get him away."

"He
never woke up after that, did he?"

My
mouth had gone dry. "No, he didn't. How did you know that?"

"It's
called a kill switch. The really powerful, really old mentalists
implant them in their people as a way of stopping them from running
away. Usually they aren't actual kill commands. Mostly they are
designed to make it easy for their master to track them down,
preprogrammed behaviors and ways of thinking that seem innocuous, but
which lead them right back into captivity."

"Usually?"

"Sometimes
the person in question is too valuable or dangerous to be permitted
to fall into someone else's hands. In those cases they'll program the
kill switch to literally kill them. Sometimes their hearts will stop
working, other times they kill themselves for no apparent reason, but
usually they just go to sleep and never wake back up."

"Like
what's happening to Ben."

"Yeah,
like what's happening to Ben."

The
room wobbled around me, but my grip on the table with my left hand
kept me from falling out of my chair. I had to be strong, for Ben's
sake if for no other reason.

"Can
it be reversed?"

Geoffrey
shrugged. It was an unconcerned gesture, but I got the feeling that
he was
trying
to give off that impression.

"Not
by the person they are implanted in. Usually a full-on kill switch
takes effect so quickly that there isn't any chance for anyone to
intervene. It's not like there's a ton of really powerful mentalists
running around, and sometimes a kill switch isn't really a kill
switch, it's a trap designed to incapacitate or kill any vampire who
tries to mess around inside of the victim's mind."