Driven (28 page)

Geoffrey
took a couple of deep, calming breaths and then closed his eyes and
knelt down next to Jeete's cage. The enforcer had passed out from the
blood loss and torture more than half an hour previously, so the
initial infiltration was relatively easy.

The
surface thoughts came first, pouring into Geoffrey's mind like a
torrent of images and feelings that were alien but still incredibly
compelling. Geoffrey's fingers had been curled inwards and he'd been
flexing them for almost two full seconds before he realized that it
wasn't him chasing Jasmin through the woods trying to tear her to
ribbons, it was merely Jeete's dream, an overpoweringly vivid dream.

The
realization allowed Geoffrey to pull back mentally enough to stop
from losing himself inside of Jeete's psyche. This was something new,
something stronger than Geoffrey had ever felt while linked mentally
with someone. It was nearly enough to cause him to abandon the
search, but he pushed on.

Geoffrey
didn't want to lose himself inside of someone else's mind, but the
stakes this time were simply too high for him to give up.

The
mental probes cored down through the conscious mind like a taproot,
minimizing the amount of contact between Geoffrey's mind and his
victim's dream. All too soon the leading edge of Geoffrey's probes
bumped up against the hard barrier that separated the conscious,
present mind from accessible memories.

It
was like cutting through solid rock, but Geoffrey forced tendrils of
thought into the wall before him, digging and coring with
diamond-hard tips. The shield that Jeete's mind had thrown up wasn't
a uniform structure and before too long Geoffrey started finding
softer spots, flaws in the barrier that he was able to exploit.

With
each new fissure he created Geoffrey shoved his probes a little
further inside and then he fed power in the hair-thin threads so that
they grew, creating ever-larger holes. A few seconds passed, but it
seemed like hours before Geoffrey felt the first of his probes slide
through the barrier and touch the goldmine of memories on the other
side.

Geoffrey
was expecting for things to get easier once Jeete's natural defenses
had been breached, which they did, but it still felt like he was
swimming against a vast current. The first tendril was followed by
others until Geoffrey had half a dozen taproots sunk deep into the
short-term memory that he expected would hold the location he and
Jasmin needed.

The
taproots spread out, branching thousands of times as Geoffrey tried
to access as much as possible before his strength gave out. It was
like bathing in a sewage pond. He'd known that Jeete was an unsavory
character, but he hadn't realized just how much liberty the Coun'hij
allowed its enforcers. As long as the hybrids who made up the
Coun'hij's shock troops showed up when called and killed whomever the
Coun'hij needed killed, nothing was denied them.

Nearly
unlimited funds was only the start of the perks for someone like
Jeete and those perks didn't end short of murder. Geoffrey saw a
string of killings that Jeete had been involved in or covered up and
was nearly ill at just how docile the humans in that part of the
country had become, but try as he might he couldn't get ahold of the
location.

He
got images, but nothing cohesive, no name, nothing that would allow
him to find the town where Jeete had lived for the last forty years.
It was inexplicable. Geoffrey had been hoping for success, but he'd
been expecting to fail in his efforts to breach the barrier if he was
going to fail at all.

He'd
never expected to successfully breach the barrier and then be unable
to find the location of the Coun'hij base. Something small, something
hidden like the location of Jeete's first kill would have been harder
to ferret out, but not the address of his home—that should have
been easy simply by virtue of the fact that it formed a continuous
narrative inside of Jeete's mind.

With
something like that, Geoffrey didn't need to form any kind of
comprehensive picture of what he was accessing, he just needed to
stumble into one of the many places where Jeete thought about home in
enough detail to include an actual location or address.

Geoffrey
felt his strength bleeding away and knew that he only had a few more
seconds in which to find the base's location. There were only two
routes open to him. He could either expand back into longer-term
memory, or he could push into the section of memory that was claimed
by Jeete's beast.

There
wasn't time to second-guess his decision or make a tentative,
half-hearted effort, so Geoffrey inserted his tendrils into the
beast's domain, branching them out to access as many memories as
possible in the time he had left. It was like trying to drink acid
from a fire hose.

The
beast, which had been quiet, almost listless even, up until that
point tore into Geoffrey's probes with a fury that he'd never seen
before. Three of the probes were sheared away in short order and the
loss of each sent Geoffrey reeling away so badly that it was all he
could do to process the flow of information coming from the remaining
tendrils.

The
destruction of Geoffrey's last probe dumped him back into his own
mind with enough force that for several seconds his body stopped
breathing. Geoffrey fought the terror that threatened to overwhelm
his mind, desperately trying to force his lungs to draw air in
without any success.

When
the first gasp of air finally streamed into his body he had only a
scant two or three heartbeats before a new survival imperative roared
to the top of his consciousness.

"I
need the blood, right now, where is it?"

"Sally
just called back down. They only had a small supply and they used it
all on Jeff after the fight with the Coun'hij."

Jasmin Bianchi
Stekensbridge House
Duluth, Minnesota

Geoffrey
looked at me with eyes full of the kind of mind-numbing terror that I
hadn't been sure he was even capable of feeling. He was shaking and
sometime in the last few minutes he'd gone so pale that I could
clearly see the blood vessels underneath his skin. I'd never realized
that there were so many of them so close to the surface of the body.

"You've
got to restrain me. I'm fighting with all I have, but there just
isn't time."

Between
one heartbeat and the next Geoffrey's sword materialized in his hand.
I thought for a second that he'd lost it already, that he was about
to attack me, but he just spun in place as though looking for
salvation that he knew wasn't there.

"Wait,
Geoffrey, I'll send Sally for some more blood. They've got a
supplier, multiple suppliers actually."

"Not
one that can have the blood here in the next five minutes."

Geoffrey
hurried over to Jeete's cage, opened the door, and then his sword
licked out multiple times, severing each of the restraints that were
holding the enforcer inside of the cage. He pulled Jeete out of the
cage and then grabbed the roll of wire that we'd used earlier to
restrain both of our rogue hybrids with.

"What
are you doing, Geoffrey?"

"Help
me by wrapping a loop around his neck while I do his arms. We don't
have much time. You can restrain him with the wire until you decide
whether or not to kill him, but the wire won't work on me. You're
going to have to stick me inside of the cage."

I
was desperately searching for another option as I cut a length of
wire and then looped it around Jeete's neck. I'd known that
Geoffrey's worries about blood starvation were serious, but I hadn't
ever even considered the possibility that the Duluth pack might not
have spare blood on hand.

Geoffrey
tightened the wire he'd tied around Jeete's wrists, and then threw
himself into the cage, pulling the door shut behind him.

"This
is crazy, Geoffrey. You'll be able to keep things together until we
can get more blood."

"I'm
afraid not. I'm already hallucinating. I did the wrists by feel, but
you'd probably better double-check them. At this point I only have a
few more minutes at the most before I lose control. From there I've
got less than an hour or two before the blood starvation is fatal.
Hopefully Sally's blood supplier is faster than I suspect they are."

"This
is stupid. Feed off of Jeete or let me go get Jorge. I'm not letting
you die because you don't want to be a parasite like the rest of your
kind. Neither of them is worth the air they're breathing right now."

Geoffrey
pressed up against my side of the cage, but his eyes were too
unfocused for me to be sure he could see me.

"I'm
not going to be able to stop you, Jasmin, not when the blood
starvation sets in. Once that happens I'll feed on anyone I can get
my hands on, but this rule is the only thing stopping me from diving
headfirst into the kind of depravity that Imastious tried so hard to
push me into. If you do that to me I'll never forgive you and I'll
let Ben die."

"I'm
supposed to just stand here and let you die? Either way it sounds
like Ben's a goner."

"Like
I said, we'd better hope that Sally's supplier is nearby."

I
watched the transformation come over Geoffrey a second later. I
hadn't really believed him, not deep down, but he hadn't been joking.
The guy I'd spent the last few days helping look for Melody wasn't
looking out of his eyes now. The
thing
wearing his body had more in common with my beast than it did with
me.

Geoffrey
threw himself at the cage with enough force that the cage rocked
slightly back and forth. I wouldn't have said that he had enough body
mass or enough room to make that happen, but he hit the bars a second
time and for a second I thought he was really going to manage to tip
it over.

I
put a hand on the top of the cage to help steady it as I pulled my
phone back out. I started dialing Sally again, but I nearly dropped
the phone when Geoffrey threw himself at me. The space between the
bars wasn't wide enough for him to get his hands through, but he
raked the outside of my arm hard enough to draw blood.

"What
do you want now?"

"How
long before you could have more blood here if you pulled out all of
the stops? Can you be back here in an hour and a half?"

Sally
was on the road already, I could hear her signaling as she passed
someone. "I've got to make it all the way down to Minneapolis,
there's no way to make it that quickly. Maybe if I took a helicopter
there and back, but even then I'm not sure it's possible."

I
could see the light in Geoffrey's eyes changing. I'd thought he was
savage before, but that wasn't anything compared to what he was
becoming before my eyes. There wasn't time to call anyone else, I
knew what I was going to have to do.

"Listen,
Sally, please listen very carefully. When I'm done talking I need you
to hang up and then call Chad and the rest. Geoffrey has already
entered the final stages of blood starvation. They need to lock the
doors so that no matter what happens he can't get up to them. I'm
really sorry about nearly losing control earlier. I know it's a lot
to ask, but if the worst comes to pass I hope that you'll help
Geoffrey rescue his friend. It's the only chance that Ben has."

I
hung up before she could respond. I didn't want to know what her
answer was going to be. If I heard her say no then I wasn't sure that
I would able to force myself to go through with what I was about to
do.

Geoffrey
had continued to savage my arm while I was talking to Sally. It felt
like my arm was on fire, but that didn't matter, I hadn't lost enough
blood to make any kind of difference and the wounds should heal
enough to stop bleeding once I shifted.

I
reached up to the top of the cage with my free hand and pushed down
the release. The door flew open with enough force to knock me across
the room. I shifted in midflight, but I still hit the rock floor at a
bad angle and with enough force that I was stunned for a split
second. That was all that Geoffrey needed, he was on top of me before
I could make it to my feet.

He
went for my neck, trying to tear out my throat, but I managed to get
an arm up in his way and he latched onto that instead. The pain was
intense, even with the muted pain sensors that were part and parcel
of this form. Geoffrey wasn't just trying to feed, he was worrying at
my arm the way that a dog works over a bone.

It
went against every instinct of self-preservation hardwired into my
being, but I reached up with my left hand and grabbed the back of his
head. He fought me the entire time, but I pressed his head down
against my arm, forcing him to feed instead of just tearing the flesh
of my arm.

"Let
me know when you've had enough, Geoffrey."

He
didn't respond, but after a minute or so I could feel myself starting
to get dizzy from the blood loss. I was about to try and force him
away when I felt the most incredible sense of peace settle over me.

I
was basking in the feeling for several seconds before I realized that
the tranquility was coming from somewhere
outside
of me. There was only one explanation, it had to be something that
Geoffrey was doing. I half-expected for my beast to fight the
feeling, but she seemed more than happy to just observe without
interfering.

The
peace deepened into something incredible, a two-way link with
Geoffrey that was more intimate than anything else I'd ever before
experienced. I couldn't read his thoughts or access his memories, but
I could feel him, feel his nature and character and I knew he was
experiencing the same thing.

The
connection between us felt simultaneously right and wrong. Right
because I could feel his iron-hard determination, and taste his
commitment to saving Melody, but wrong because for all of his good
qualities I knew that he wasn't the one for me, not in the way that
Ben was.