Touch of Madness (21 page)

I turned, and ducked my head, taking the blow across my shoulders. There was enough power behind the blow to break the wood, but the neck shield did me proud. It absorbed most of the force. The edge of the fiberglass dug into my skin, cutting me, but my spine wasn’t shattered, and I could still fight.

I gave a hard side kick to the outside of shorty’s left knee. He gave a hideous, high-pitched squeal as the joint gave way and he fell to the ground.

I felt, rather than saw, movement behind me. I dove out of the way, and rolled so that I could regain my feet. Amanda had come for me, and she was swinging a bat. Blood vessels had burst in her eyes until there was no white left. I didn’t know how she could see, but each swing of the bat was well aimed, and strong enough to make the wood whistle through the air. Her speed was breathtaking—nearly that of Monica at her peak. I couldn’t attack. It took everything I had just to avoid her blows.

The ground was uneven. I staggered and fell, slamming first my body, then head with jarring impact against the rocks. I saw stars, bright shots of light in my vision, and for a few seconds I was incapable of movement. Time froze. I had an eternity to watch her raise the bat over her head with both hands; to see the look of fierce triumphant joy on her face. Then I heard the crack of a gunshot. Amanda’s body jerked back as a spot of bright crimson bloomed in the center of her chest. The back of her torso exploded outward in a shower of blood and bone. She staggered. The weight of the bat pulled her until she fell backward, where she lay utterly still.

I rolled and turned to see who was shooting. Lewis Carlton stood limned in glorious oranges and purples made by the setting sun through clouds, his arms propped on the roof of his dark green Hummer. There was no expression on his face as he lifted the barrel of the 9mm Beretta, and started to scan the battlefield, looking for another target. If he felt anything, I couldn’t see it.

The fighting stopped. Amanda’s followers stared in stunned silence from her body to the man holding the gun. Their faces were empty, their bodies as still as any zombie I’d ever seen. It was as though, without her will, they had none of their own.

Tom’s voice called me. I dragged myself to my feet and staggered over to him as fast as I could. He was naked, human, his body battered from more wounds than I could count. Blood coated his chest. He knelt among the dead and wounded Thrall, but he paid them no mind. His eyes were all for Dusty. She sat tailor-style on the rocky ground, keening; Rob’s broken and blood-drenched body in her arms.

Someone had torn a ragged wound in his throat. He was alive, blood was still pouring from the wound, but his skin was the greenish gray of near death. But every time Tom tried to come close enough to do first aid, she turned on him, fighting, and he was too wounded to beat her off and tend to Rob. I grabbed her hands. She fought me, but I held on. “Dusty,” I dropped my shields and pushed at her with my mind as I called her name. “He’s not dead. We may be able to save him if you just let us. Tom’s a fireman. He knows first aid.”

We can help you save the wolf, Not Prey, but first you must agree to help us save our children. Dusty’s eyes widened. She could hear them. I was surprised, even though I shouldn’t have been. You hate the wolves. Why would you save one?

We do not have enough power to both heal our young and bind them to Lewis. With your help we can. We can bring them to themselves and make them part of the hive.

I looked from Rob’s ravaged body to Dusty’s tearstained face. She wasn’t begging with words, but the plea was in her eyes, in the cant of her body.

Agreed. What do I need to do?

No words would adequately describe what they wanted, so they didn’t tell me. They showed me. I closed my eyes and felt the essence of my power slip out of my skin. I could see my body as though from above, could see everything. It felt wonderful, right.

Come. The consciousness of the hive led me inside Rob’s body. I was sending power into each individual hurt. I wouldn’t heal him. His body would heal itself. My purpose was to provide the power, the energy to speed the process. I let go, and felt each injury sucking at my energy like a leech sucks blood. In my mind I watched as new flesh was born, sealing the horrible wounds, as new blood cells formed to replace those spilled onto the ground. Enough. He will live. They pulled me away, and his body fought to hold on. The more I struggled, the more tightly he clung. I felt a wave of panic and yanked with all of my strength.

I came to myself, gasping for enough air to scream. I was in Tom’s arms. I clung to him, shivering and terrified. Rob coughed. Rolling off of Dusty’s lap he rose to his hands and knees. I turned, burying my face in Tom’s shoulder, but I could hear him throwing up. When he could speak, he whispered the words “I’m sorry” over and over again.

Lewis Carlton walked over to join us. He’d retrieved Rob and Tom’s clothes from the Jeep, and dropped them onto the ground next to us.

“Do you know what we’re going to do?” I asked him.

“Yeah.”

“Are you okay with it?”

He shrugged. “Don’t have a lot of choice. They’re just a bunch of stupid kids, Reilly. I won’t just let ‘em die.” He gave me a wry grin. “So I guess I get to be king.”

“Queen, Carlton. You get to be a queen.”

His eyebrows raised and his massive arms crossed over his chest with a finality that nearly made me laugh. “Not in this lifetime.”

If I hadn’t let my butt sink onto my feet I would have been swaying on my knees. The day hadn’t been an easy one, and the thing with Rob had drained me badly. But I’d made a deal, and looking at Dusty and Rob holding each other I wouldn’t even bitch about holding up my end.

What do I need to do?

There was a long pause. I felt their impatience, their anger. I’d drained myself too much on the wolf. I might not be strong enough to be of use to them and that frustrated them beyond belief.

“Dusty.” I spoke softly. “I think I may need your help with this.”

She nodded. Laying a kiss on Rob’s lips she moved away from him. She scooted over until she was directly in front of me, and took my hands.

I, and they, felt her warmth, her strength. She had ability to burn. It was untrained and untapped, but it was there. She left it bare and unprotected, ready for me to use. Do it.

The queens’ consciousness settled around me like a mist, and then I was the mist. It was similar to what I’d done healing Rob, but it was different, too. One by one my awareness went into each of the hosts, seeking the Thrall inside. When my mind brushed against each symbiont, I could feel the wrongness of it. It should have been vibrant, glowing with life and power. Instead, each one was closed off, alone, and very nearly dead. The creatures had been born without the connection they needed. Amanda had been psychic enough to contact them, but she wasn’t a queen. She couldn’t give the creatures what they needed. When she fell, they weren’t tied enough to go with her. They weren’t dead, but each symbiont was alone and in shock. I felt the queens focus their will. They sent a current of power pulsing into each creature, trying to jump-start its awareness. One by one they came shuddering into awareness. I felt a wave of crushing need, a sorrow and loneliness deep enough to swallow your sanity.

We are here, little ones. We are here.

I felt Carlton’s presence moving to the front of my mind, so closely joined to that of his symbiont there was no separation between the two. In that instant I knew that he had chosen his fate, and knew why. Nor could I fault him for it. In the background I sensed thousands of individual personalities. Some were evil, some not. More than a few hated and feared me with a frightening intensity. They would see me dead if they could. Carlton stepped in front of me, toward the helpless hosts. I felt the queens pour power into him, until he was a glowing, throbbing, presence. The lost ones felt it, too. In my mind I saw them reach for him, connect to him, and become whole.

A weary voice in my head said, It is done.

16

« ^ »

They say the truth will set you free. So far all it had done was to piss everybody off. Carlton’s first orders to his new hive had been to cooperate completely with the police and the doctors and to “leave Reilly the fuck alone.”

The police were not happy. They were not happy at all. Neither was I. Because somehow, in the confusion of healing Rob and binding the vampires, Amanda managed to get away. I had seen the damage to her chest. She should have been dead. She wasn’t. The fact was utterly terrifying.

Of course the fact that there weren’t any fatalities helped us legally, but there were bodies on the ground. The ER

was overflowing with injured vampires, many of whom hadn’t seen their seventeenth birthday. I lay on a bed in a darkened hospital room, suffering from complete exhaustion and a migraine headache. In a few minutes the shot the doctor gave me would take effect and knock me out. I was looking forward to it. Right now the pain was a white-hot ice pick being driven into my left eyeball. Tears were running down my cheeks, and my stomach was roiling. Every time I threw up I was afraid my head would explode.

We were alive. We were all going to be all right. Tom and Rob were sharing the room next to me. I knew Dusty was with them because the migraine had given me super-acute hearing. Eventually the detectives would get around to questioning me. Right now they were busy with Carlton and his attorney.

I closed my eyes and tried to relax, letting my head sink into the pillow. Eventually the drugs kicked in and I slept. I smelled coffee and felt warm sunshine on my skin. I wasn’t completely awake yet, but I was aware enough to realize that I didn’t hurt. The complete absence of pain is a wonderful thing. I decided then and there that people really don’t appreciate it enough.

“Wake up, Reilly, before your coffee gets cold.”

I opened my eyes and found John Brooks sitting in the visitor’s chair next to my hospital bed. I hit the button, adjusting my bed to an upright position, and took the coffee from his hands. There was an untouched breakfast tray on one of those metal meal carts. Most of the food didn’t look particularly appetizing, but there were some toast and a carton of orange juice that were probably salvageable.

I accepted the Starbucks cup from Brooks’s hand and took a little sip of heaven as Brooks scooted the cart over to the bed so I could reach it.

“What are you doing here?”

“I just got back in town and decided to check my messages at the office. Good thing I did. Tom had called and told me what was going on up here. He figured it might be a good idea for me to come up. Things got ugly while you were out.” Brooks sat back, stretching his legs. His navy trousers fell perfectly into place. The suit jacket that matched was draped over the back of the chair. His gun holster looked stark and black against the gleaming white of the starched cotton shirt he wore with the sleeves rolled up to reveal muscular black arms.

“Ugly how?”

He closed his eyes and let out a slow, controlled breath. “Nobody may have died last night, Reilly, but there are ten teenagers with serious injuries. Some of them are never going to be a hundred percent. All of the wounded are local high school kids. Let’s just say that the local citizens are…unhappy with you.”

“With me? How is any of this my fault?”

“How isn’t it?” He gave an angry snort. “Don’t delude yourself, Kate. If you’d called the police instead of charging up here—”

“Amanda would have killed them, Brooks. She was nuts and she had those kids under her sway, ready to do whatever she told them to. Cops would’ve died.”

“Maybe, maybe not. We are trained to handle this shit, you know, and we’re not idiots.”

I finished chewing a bite of toast and forced it down. “You said it yourself. Local kids against the local cops? It would’ve been a blood bath.”

“Hell, Reilly, it was a blood bath.” Brooks ran his hands over his head in a gesture of frustrated fury. “The only reason you and your friends don’t have your asses in jail right now is that every single one of the vamps has said that it was a trap and that you were all just defending yourselves. They’re also saying that Lewis Carlton shot Amanda Shea to keep her from murdering you by bashing in your head with a bat.”

“He did.” I shook my head. “I don’t know why he did, but he did.”

“Right now the local police are guarding your rooms and the entrances to the hospital. I’ve been asked to be here while you make your statement because, as Not Prey, you can’t lie to me. Assuming it matches up with all of the others you will be given a police escort all the way to Denver and encouraged to stay the hell away from the Western Slope.”

“Happy to oblige.” I took a deep breath and steadied myself before I spoke. “Are Tom and Rob all right?”

“Doctors say they’ll be fine. Now, if you’re done eating, I’ll let the locals know you’re ready to answer their questions.”

At my nod, he rose to go to the door. I pulled the sheets up to my waist. The thin blue cotton hospital gown wasn’t the most modest garment, and I felt strangely vulnerable. I could see the neck brace standing on the floor between the bed and the windows, its little padlock attached to the hasp. I’d needed it last night, but it couldn’t save me from the danger I was facing now.

I turned my head at the sound of the door opening. Brooks was back, along with a local detective. Rage roiled around him in an almost visible cloud. He didn’t introduce himself. I suspected it was an intentional slight. I didn’t do it deliberately, but I caught a glimpse into the local cop’s mind. He blamed me for everything, and somehow he was going to prove it. I would pay, damn it; pay for every single one of those kids who’d been hurt. He knew them, knew their parents. There was no way they’d do something like this. And another thing, all their stories were the same. That just wasn’t normal. No way. He didn’t know how I’d brainwashed them, but he was sure I had. After all, wasn’t I supposed to be some kind of a freaking psychic? Well, whatever I’d done, he’d get to the bottom of it. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Brooks, I think maybe I should have an attorney with me while we have this discussion.”