Driven (19 page)

Ben
started twitching and Geoffrey turned back to check on him. It didn't
happen often, but sometimes Ben had to be physically restrained to
make sure that he wouldn't pull his IV out. A few strands of thought
reflexively slipped free of Geoffrey's skull, but he pulled them back
before they could make contact with Ben.

He
wanted to help Ben and Jasmin out, but it was just too dangerous
right now. More and more he was coming to believe that Jasmin was who
she said she was, but that didn't necessarily mean that Ben was who
she thought he was.

There
was no telling what kind of changes had been made to his mind. Even
Rachel seemed to think that the kill switch that other vampire had
implanted was nothing more than a construct designed to end Ben's
life, but just because that was what they thought was going on didn't
mean they were right.

The
more Geoffrey thought about it, the surer he became that there was
more going on than just a simple kill switch. Any vampire who was
strong enough to implant a kill switch was going to be skilled enough
to make it work like intended and Venice hadn't ever told Geoffrey
any stories about lethal kill switches that took more than a few
hours to complete their work. Ben, on the other hand, had been stuck
in this coma for weeks if Jasmin was to be believed.

It
was very much starting to look to Geoffrey like Ben was a
metaphysical Trojan horse. If his suspicions were correct, then
touching Ben's mind with his own would result in Geoffrey being
sucked into a living trap that would slowly tear Geoffrey's mind free
of his own physical body.

It
wouldn't be an easy death, but Geoffrey still fully intended on
living up to his promise. If Jasmin and Rachel were able to take him
to Melody and help him free her then he'd do whatever he could to
help Ben. It might cost him his life, but once Melody was rescued
that hardly mattered.

The
angle was all wrong, but Geoffrey was strong and Ben's illness had
left him incredibly weak. Geoffrey gently took each of Ben's wrists
in his hands and stopped Ben from thrashing around. The twitching
never seemed to last very long and this time it was over almost as
soon as Geoffrey touched the cool skin of Ben's arms.

Once
he was sure that Ben was calm again, Geoffrey released him and
checked the IV bag hanging from the grab handle mounted above the
passenger door. It was their last bag, and Jasmin had become
increasingly distracted as her texts to someone named Donovan had
gone unanswered. Apparently Donovan was her best chance at sourcing
another supplier for everything needed to keep Ben's fragile body
from shutting down completely.

Twenty
minutes earlier Rachel had texted an address, a name and a passphrase
to Jasmin's phone. The address had led them to this medical supply
store and presumably someone willing to bend the rules enough to get
Jasmin everything she needed.

It
would be good to know that Ben wasn't in imminent danger of starving
to death, and not just to eliminate a distraction that Jasmin didn't
need as she prepared to fight multiple bouts to the death. Geoffrey
would rest easier too knowing that Ben was taken care of, but medical
supplies, especially black-market medical supplies, didn't come
cheap, and Jasmin was already getting evasive about how much cash she
had left.

The
cash that Geoffrey had saved up before his capture had all
disappeared sometime before he'd woken up in his cage, so once Jasmin
was out, they were all out. It was one more thing to worry about.
Geoffrey supposed that they could always steal or con someone out of
cash if things got bad enough. He didn't like the idea of preying on
innocents like that, but he also wasn't going to let a few hundred
dollars in gas money stop him from rescuing Melody.

Geoffrey
looked to his left once again, past the empty driver's seat, but
while he could see through the windows of the medical supply store he
couldn't see Jasmin or the clerk she'd been talking to. Geoffrey knew
he was being paranoid, but he also knew that in their line of work
that wasn't a bad thing. He was just about ready to send out mental
probes when a knock on his window made him jump.

A
casual gesture confirmed the presence of the knife he'd pulled off of
one of the dead guards back in the facility where Imastious had caged
him. Reassured that he was as ready as he could be in case the
situation became hostile, Geoffrey lowered his window a couple of
inches.

The
young man standing next to the car looked like he was in his early
twenties. He had a shaved head and skin that was as dark as any
Geoffrey had ever seen, but there was something subtly different to
his facial features that made it seem like he didn't fit in with any
ethnic group Geoffrey could name.

"Hey,
man, can you help a guy out?"

Geoffrey
shook his head. "Sorry, I wish I could, but I'm tapped out
myself. I got robbed a couple of days ago."

The
panhandler didn't look convinced. "You really think people are
going to believe that when you're sitting in that kind of a ride?"

Geoffrey
looked at the luxurious leather interior of the Mercedes and then
shrugged. "It's not my car, I'm just along for the ride.
Besides, it doesn't really matter if you believe me. It's the truth."

"Might
be you could cough up a twenty if it meant that your friend's ride
wasn't going to be wrecked."

"Don't
threaten me."

"Why,
what are you going to do? Kill me?"

The
words could have been nothing more than idle talk, but there was
something about the way that they'd been said. Geoffrey's internal
alarms all went off at once. Being stuck inside of a car was enough
of a disadvantage when dealing with some punk kid, it was an
unacceptable position to be in if he was up against someone who knew
what they were doing, a real killer.

Geoffrey
grabbed the door handle, intending on opening the door hard enough to
knock the panhandler off of his feet, but there was an odd,
half-imagined flare of light like an arc welder and the car shook
slightly. When Geoffrey pushed against the car door nothing happened,
it was like pushing against solid stone.

"We're
not done talking yet."

The
expression on the other man's face hadn't changed and Geoffrey
suddenly realized that it was the kind of expression that could take
on almost any meaning the viewer wanted to see in it.

"Who
are you?"

Geoffrey's
question earned him a frown of disappointment. "That's the wrong
question. You should be asking who
you
are, Geoffrey."

"I
already know who I am."

"Do
you? Do you really? Has the hunger started up again yet? Have you
started looking at the boy behind you with an eye to how much blood
he could spare yet?"

"How
do you know that? How do you know
what
I am?"

The
words were meant to serve simply as a distraction. Geoffrey had
already extended his mental feelers. He got a single probe into the
surface of the other man's mind and accessed a kaleidoscope of images
in the split second before his probes were all sheared away by
crackling whips of power.

Geoffrey
was still trying to process what he'd seen, it was little more than
impressions of a bright light and beings that seemed made out of
glowing crystal. The other man shook his head at him before Geoffrey
could ask another question.

"So
you invade the minds of those around you? Don't you think that's
wrong?"

"I
see nothing wrong with defending myself. There's obviously more to
you than meets the eye and you're holding me inside of my friend's
car against my will."

"I
suppose there is some validity to that argument, but you spend more
time inside of people's minds than just when you're threatened.
You've made it practically a way of life, haven't you?"

"I
won't be judged by you. You have no idea what I've been through."

"That's
the thing about principles, Geoffrey. They exist independent from our
circumstances. When was the last time you fed?"

There
was something about the question that compelled Geoffrey to answer.
"It was just before I was recaptured."

"Tell
me about it, did you kill whoever it was?"

"No,
it was a girl, her boyfriend was an addict and I told her that I'd
cure him in return for her letting me feed on her. I took just enough
to beat back the hunger and then I released her."

"How
did that feel?"

"It
was amazing. It's been a long time since I've taken blood from
someone without providing some kind of value in return, but that was
the first time that someone gave blood to me voluntarily."

"Was
it? What about Melody?"

"How
do you know about Melody?"

The
man shook his head. "That's not for you to know right now. I
find you worthy of life, but alas, you aren't the one who will be
waking those who sleep."

Geoffrey
opened his mouth to ask what that meant, but at that second Jasmin's
phone started ringing. Geoffrey looked towards the phone in an
involuntary gesture and when he looked back out the window the man
was gone.

The
car door opened without any problems, but getting out of the car and
looking around didn't make any difference, there still wasn't any
evidence of the panhandler. Geoffrey reached back inside of the car
and picked up Jasmin's phone as he sent probes back out in an effort
to try and locate the man.

"Hello,
Jasmin's phone."

"Geoffrey,
is that you? It's Rachel."

"Yeah,
it's me. What do you want?"

"Are
you okay? Is Jasmin okay?"

Geoffrey
stretched his probes out as far as he could. He could feel Jasmin and
the clerk both, and a light brush against the surface of the clerk's
mind seemed to indicate that Jasmin wasn't in any kind of danger, but
there wasn't any sign of the man who'd imprisoned him inside of the
car.

"Yeah,
we're all okay, Ben too."

"What
just happened?"

"What
do you mean? I thought you could see the future."

"I
can, just not all of it, you jerk. What just happened? One minute I
could see all of you and then all of a sudden you were gone."

"Interesting."

Rachel
tried to press for more information, but Geoffrey hung up on her. It
appeared that there was more going on here than even Rachel knew
about.

Jasmin Bianchi
Sleep Deep Hotel
Duluth, Minnesota

Things
felt more than a little weird when I got back to the car. Geoffrey
handed me my phone without saying anything, but when I checked the
call history the only activity was an inbound call from Rachel.

I
stacked most of the supplies in the back seat next to Ben and then
put the rest of everything in the trunk and climbed back into the
car. Just before I turned the key in the ignition I got a text from
Rachel's number.

Find
out what just happened with Geoffrey!

I
looked over at Geoffrey and he met my eyes with a stubbornness that
dared me to ask him what had happened, but I decided that I didn't
want to get into a pissing match with him inside such a tiny space
while I was trying to drive. I promised myself that I would try and
get it out of him later, but by the time we made it up to a small
town in Minnesota called Marshall I was too tired to play
conversational chicken with him.

Paying
for two hotel rooms used up the very last of my cash, but I wasn't
going to spend the night in the same room as Geoffrey, not if I could
avoid it. I told myself that I would deal with my lack of funds
later, but I knew that was just a lie. I didn't have any way to
replenish them, not without help from Alec, and he still hadn't
returned my last call.

Ben
had a restless night. I heard him moving around in the darkness. Even
after I strapped his arms down to the bed so he wouldn't pull out his
IV, he still twitched and even occasionally moaned. I sat there
listening to him for nearly an hour before I broke down and started
crying.

I
didn't cry very often. Crying was a sign of weakness and I wasn't
weak, at least that was what I'd been telling myself for years. It
turned out that crying couldn't make me weak though because I was
already weak. I'd been operating on borrowed time in almost every way
for days now.

I
was out of cash, I had a vampire sleeping less than a dozen feet away
from me, and every time I pulled Ben out of the car I risked someone
realizing that he wasn't just drunk and calling the cops on me.
Alec's people had mostly managed to keep the Coun'hij off of my tail,
but he wouldn't be able to stop the police from swarming all over me
if they got involved.

Nothing
but sheer dumb luck and Rachel's behind-the-scenes machinations had
kept me in one piece so far, and even they had only let me scrape by
a couple of times. There wasn't any possible way for me to fight an
entire pack one at a time and survive the experience. I'd come to the
end of the road. I didn't want to die, but I couldn't see any other
route that had even the slightest possibility of letting me save Ben.

I
cried myself to sleep and when I woke back up a few hours later
things weren't any rosier, but I was once again ready to do what
needed to be done. I pulled myself out of bed, checked on Ben, and
then jumped in the shower.

I
was down to one change of clothes, the black boots that Geoffrey had
looted for me, and a single pair of sneakers. Flash shifts were
always hard on clothes, and the subsequent fight was usually pretty
rough on the ha'bit we happened to be wearing at the time.

I
pulled out all three of my ha'bits, but none of them were in very
good shape, so I bit the bullet and got out the black needle and
thread that Donovan had packed in the bug-out bag he'd prepared for
each member of the pack. I stitched up the worst of the tears on the
ha'bit that had seen the least amount of use, and then hand-washed it
and one set of clothes in the bathroom sink. I figured I had another
couple of hours at least before Geoffrey would wake up. Unlike shape
shifters, who only needed three or four hours of sleep each night,
vampires seemed to need just as much sleep as normal humans.