Driven (34 page)

The
wave of disappointment that crashed through Geoffrey was almost
completely debilitating, but he forced himself to respond.

"I
understand, you did everything you could. Any sign of whatever had
Rachel so freaked out?"

"I'm
not sure. We didn't actually see anything concrete, but right before
we headed back to the Jeep there were these weird flashes—only
they weren't light, it was like pulses of darkness."

Geoffrey
shook his head. "That doesn't make sense. Darkness is just the
absence of light. How can an absence pulse?"

"I
can't explain it, but there was something out there and it was the
darkness that was pulsing, not the light. I thought maybe that one of
Puppeteer's hybrids was still alive and fighting the werewolves, but
even that doesn't make a lot of sense because we didn't see those
flashes until after we came out of the caves."

Geoffrey
closed his eyes and tried to process the fact that his search was
over, that he'd failed, but Jasmin put a hand on his shoulder.

"Maybe
we can try to go back there and pick the trail up in a couple of
days."

Geoffrey's
laugh was a bitter-sounding thing. "That will never work and you
know it. There is almost no chance that a rain storm won't sweep
through that area before then. Even if it didn't, you lost her when
the trail was still fresh, we missed our chance. She's gone. I need
to just accept that—at least I can be happy knowing that she
managed to escape somehow on her own."

Jasmin
had an unusually obstinate set to her mouth. "Maybe Rachel can
help us some more. She knew that Melody was with Puppeteer before,
there's nothing to say that she can't tell us how to find her again."

"Maybe,
but the odds aren't good. Rachel seems to be less omniscient as time
goes on rather than more omniscient."

Jasmin's
mouth went tight at his observation, but she apparently couldn't
disagree with what he'd said. Geoffrey put one hand up against the
right side of his head. He could feel the beginnings of a migraine.
It wasn't because he'd overexerted himself, this was something
different. It was almost like his mind was working overtime trying to
keep him from realizing something.

"You
said that we're almost ready to leave Duluth. What are you doing with
Jeete and Jorge?"

"I
executed Jeete an hour ago. Based on what you told me you'd seen
inside of his mind I figured he'd earned the death penalty several
times over."

Geoffrey
nodded. "What about Jorge?"

"I
let him go. I made him swear a ritual promise that he wouldn't go to
any other packs for at least three weeks. He's also prohibited from
telling anyone anything about what's happened here during the last
week or ever joining up with the Coun'hij. I didn't want to let him
go, but I didn't have any proof that he needed to be put down."

Geoffrey
reached over and clasped Jasmin's arm. Wordlessly conveying support
and understanding of how hard it had been for her to make that call.

"That
was the right decision. We'll still probably end up fighting him at
some point, but it was still the right thing to do."

"I
guess. I keep thinking how I'm going to feel if he ends up killing
one of my friends, but I just couldn't bring myself to cut his
throat. I guess I should be glad that I still have some limits. I was
starting to think that maybe there wasn't anything that I wouldn't
do."

Geoffrey
started to turn away from Jasmin, but something stopped him. "What's
going on, Jasmin? You're acting weird."

"It's
Ben. He's gotten a lot worse over the last couple of days. I keep
thinking that he's as weak as he can get and he keeps lasting a
little longer, but I think this is the end. He's stopped breathing on
his own. We bagged him and have been forcing air into his lungs for
the last six hours. Sally is with him right now, but we can't keep
doing that. I've been hoping that you'd regain consciousness before
we had to leave Duluth, but now that you're awake it doesn't seem
fair to ask you to help, not when we didn't find Melody for you."

"Take
me to him. The deal was that I would do whatever was required to keep
him alive. You've proved that you'll honor your promises. You and
your people nearly died a number of times already. I couldn't ask for
more than that."

Geoffrey
was less steady on his feet than he would have liked, but Jasmin
pulled one of his arms over her shoulder and they made it across the
house without any mishaps. After having helped take care of Ben for
so many days, it was hard for Geoffrey to see Ben lying there
completely unresponsive like that. He could only imagine what Jasmin
must be going through.

"He's
still got a pulse?"

Sally
nodded. "I've been checking it every few minutes. It's still
there, but it's getting weaker too."

He
hadn't wanted to say anything to Jasmin, but Geoffrey had been more
than a little worried that the blow he'd taken to the head was going
to get in the way of his mentalist abilities. Those fears fell by the
wayside though as he sent out his first few probes and they slipped
free of his body with an effortlessness that seemed to indicate that
his mind was well-rested and ready to do whatever was asked of it.

"I'm
starting now."

The
words drifted out of his mouth out of little more than reflex and
then Geoffrey shut down all of his other senses and focused solely on
the golden threads connecting him to Ben. The surface thoughts were
much as Geoffrey remembered, but they'd become even fewer and weaker
than they'd been before.

It
was something he'd never seen anywhere else before, but it very much
seemed as though Ben's higher brain functions had been almost
completely suspended. Past experience had taught Geoffrey that there
wasn't any reason to hang around in the outer layers of someone's
mind for the kind of work he was about to try.

The
surface could accept workings and even hold them for a short period
of time, but what he needed to do with Ben was to create a powerful,
long-lasting construct to counteract whatever the other vampire had
done to the young man. Geoffrey gathered himself and then dove deeper
into Ben's mind.

In
some ways it was analogous to diving into water. The deeper Geoffrey
went into Ben's mind the more he wanted to turn around and fight for
the surface again, but as his strength started to trickle out of him,
he knew that he wouldn't get a second chance at this. Ben didn't have
the luxury of waiting for Geoffrey to rest up and try again in a day
or two.

Time
flowed differently when Geoffrey was this enmeshed inside of
someone's mind. It seemed to take forever before he bumped up against
the barrier that protected Ben's innermost psyche from intrusion, but
only a second or two had actually passed. Geoffrey matched his probes
up to the frequency of the barrier and slipped inside.

The
first time that Geoffrey had entered the seat of someone's
consciousness it had taken the form of a pool of water, but this time
he was faced with hundreds of strands of living light. If not for the
fact that he'd seen Ben gradually declining, Geoffrey might have been
tempted to think that there was nothing wrong with the picture before
him. The lights were so brilliant, so breathtakingly beautiful that
it seemed impossible that they could be anything other than perfect,
but Geoffrey kept sampling them and eventually he started to detect a
pattern, dull threads that wound their way around the strands,
robbing them of some of their brilliance.

It
was almost more than Geoffrey could grasp. He could follow individual
threads and even understand how some of the threads interacted with
each other, but the complexity he was facing was almost more than he
could hold inside of his mind.

Geoffrey
built a theoretical framework inside of his mind, placing each thread
in its place until he was finally able to see all of them together,
but even then, he got the sense that there was something there he
didn't understand. Making changes to a construct he didn't understand
was risky, but he didn't have any other choice.

Simply
destroying the constructs, dozens or even hundreds that there were,
was the safest bet, so Geoffrey reached out and snipped the first of
the threads, only it grew back almost as soon as it had been cut.

Geoffrey
cut another, but the result was no different and he suddenly
understood what he'd failed to see before. This wasn't a host of
workings all layered together to create a single result, he was
dealing with a single, multi-legged working with a complexity that
exceeded anything he'd realized was possible. Even worse, it wasn't
just designed to serve as a static working that only influenced Ben,
it was actively drawing energy from Ben's thoughts to power itself
and repair any damage done to it.

That
was something else that Geoffrey hadn't known was possible, but the
parasitic nature of what he was seeing turned his stomach. Most
constructs had to be periodically refreshed or they lost cohesion. If
they were set inside of the utter calm of the seat of someone's
consciousness they could still last for years, possibly even decades,
but there wasn't any possibility of outlasting this particular
working.

Geoffrey
realized he was going to have to uproot the entire working at once if
he was going to have any chance of defeating it. He tried to work
fast, severing the attachment points of one strand and then holding
it away from the strands of light while he worked on stripping
another thread away, but after only a few minutes he'd reached the
end of his strength. He still had energy that could be dedicated to
the battle, but he wasn't strong enough to continue to hold the
writhing threads away from the glowing tendrils, and he'd only
managed to strip away roughly half of the threads.

There
wasn't any way around it, Geoffrey had failed. The dull grey threads
snapped back into place, ripping holes in Geoffrey's mental fingers
as they did so, and the glowing pillars of Ben's mind darkened
perceptibly as the working drew power into itself to heal the damage
that Geoffrey had just done to it.

Geoffrey
could continue to try and fight the construct, but it was obvious
that doing so would just kill Ben even faster. Geoffrey backed up to
the very edge of the pocket of calm in an attempt to take in the
whole of the working and saw something even more amazing.

The
guttering lights of Ben's mind strengthened, inexplicably growing
brighter until the strands of light were almost as bright as they'd
been before Geoffrey's latest attempt to rip away the construct. It
took several more minutes before Geoffrey was able to figure out what
had just happened, and even then it was mostly sheer dumb luck that
allowed him to find the tiny golden thread that led from the base of
Ben's mind out of the bubble of calm.

Geoffrey
didn't follow it any further than that, he couldn't leave the bubble
of calm or he'd be too tired to return for at least a day or two, but
he was confident that the golden thread must lead to something or
someone exterior to Ben. Geoffrey plunged one of his mental fingers
into the golden flow and it was like bathing in a pool of warm water
that rejuvenated and healed in a way that no water had ever been
capable of doing.

For
one glorious second Geoffrey felt his mental reservoirs being topped
off with energy and then the thread seemed to recognize him as not
belonging and pushed him away. The next time that Geoffrey tried to
dip into that miraculous stream it twisted away from him. It appeared
that he wasn't going to get another taste of the nectar that had kept
Ben alive for so much longer than should have been possible.

Geoffrey
had been surprised that the kill switch had taken so long to run its
course, and one as powerful as what he'd actually found inside of
Ben's mind should have finished Ben off in a matter of minutes, but
instead of dying Ben had found a way to tap into a power source
outside of himself and that had made all of the difference.

There
was no way for Geoffrey to ever hope to replicate what Ben had done.
He had no idea where Ben had gone in order to tap into such
incredible power, but there was one thing that he could do still.

Geoffrey
worked as quickly as he was able. The extra energy he'd siphoned off
a few minutes ago was the only thing that even made what he wanted to
do possible, but even so he was working at the very edge of his
capabilities.

It
was incredibly hard to force a better connection between Ben and the
power source that was keeping him alive, but in the end Geoffrey
managed it by creating workings on the far side of the link that
forced the glowing tendrils of Ben's being down so that they rested
more broadly against the glowing thread.

Once
that was done, Geoffrey created another series of workings that
boiled down to single-word commands designed to begin counteracting
the construct that Ben's old vampire master had implanted inside of
him.

Live.
Thrive. Survive.

The
workings were simple because Geoffrey knew that simple workings
lasted longer, but they were strong, the strongest he could manage.
They laced back and forth around the glowing pillars of Ben's psyche,
forming a lattice of support that helped counteract the imperative
that was draining his will to live.

There
was just one last thing to do. It was risky and it would take every
bit of energy remaining in Geoffrey's reserves, but it was what he
would have wanted done if their positions had been reversed. Geoffrey
reached out and fed his energy directly into Ben.

Jasmin Bianchi
Stekensbridge House
Duluth, Minnesota

Geoffrey
opened his eyes and I knew immediately that he hadn't been able to
save Ben. He didn't look like someone who was about to deliver good
news, he looked like someone who had given his all, just like he'd
promised he would, but who'd failed.