Mind Tamer, page 26
She sparred with his feeble blows, and when she barged past his mental barriers to access his memories, she could feel the damage she wreaked in her wake. Even if he survived, he would be a basket weaver if not a vegetable. A frantic obstacle course—Lyssa quit transmitting the data to Kyros and simply cataloged the information as it drained. Everything dimmed; the man was growing weak. It would be over soon.
Images flashed through her head, like files downloading, but she hadn’t anticipated experiencing second-hand memories. Her balance wavered as vivid snapshots of the man’s barbaric crimes flashed in her mind, mingled with the intelligence she successfully gathered.
She lost contact with her surroundings as she saw still deeper yet a densely guarded secret. She pried at it, ripping the surrounding tissue, and still the man fought her. The information was sealed shut by a more sophisticated power; it would’ve seemed like wards or spells if she didn’t already know it was Merodach’s handiwork. She had to open it.
A groan pinched her throat, and she trembled with the effort to lift the heavy seal. Her mind lashed out, her energy surging and in dangerous balance—it could go either way. She felt Kyros jump into action. He wanted to end it, but she stayed him with a shaky hand. He grunted in disagreement, and she understood that between Kyros being twitchy and the prisoner dying on the table, she only had seconds left.
Lyssa flexed inward to gather her strength, then unleashed it like a battering ram. She screamed at the sympathetic pain, the force of it throbbing in her temples. It worked! She slipped past the broken barrier and quickly scavenged the small, dense area, then both panicked and rejoiced at what she saw. Kyros booted her out none too gently.
Retreating from the prisoner’s mind, she rocked and buckled under the shockwave of Kyros’s explosion. Good—he’d steered clear of the crystal shrapnel trigger. Her vision seemed to bloom, then shrunk to a pinpoint. A foghorn blared in her head. Thankfully the overload of sensation was blanketed by a heavy velvet curtain covering her mind.
When she came to, she had an inexplicable desire to laugh. She couldn’t help it. She tossed her head back and wailed, flexing her mind, feeling it as tangibly as rolling and bunching her muscles. She felt so powerful! A shot of pure adrenaline to the heart. Her blood thrummed with the desire to do something reckless, like dive headlong off a skyscraper.
Kyros was cradling—suffocating!—her in his arms, warning people away with rather rude epithets. She writhed and elbowed him in the gut until he let go of her. “Kyros, let me up! I’m all right.” He butted his way into her mind and scanned her yet again, looking for damage and whisking away the nervy pain at the base of her skull. She rose to her feet without incident. She could jog laps around the equator.
She saw Russell shouting alternately over a phone and into his headset. Two assistants scrambled through the door to hand him more telephones squealing with disembodied voices, declaring so-and-so was on the line. There was commotion in the doorway; Kyros shouted that no one else was allowed in and ordered the door shut. The officer subordinate to Russell yanked a map from a desk drawer and pointed, calling out coordinates.
The vision of what she’d pried from the core of the prisoner’s mind came back to her in a rush. “Kyros, quick—get me paper and a pen. There’s no time to lose, I saw—”
He took her hand and forced her to sit, his lips pursed. She’d seen that stiff, slightly peaked look from him before. Twice before, each following a strange episode of her playing Mystical Power Grab-Bag. What had she done now?
Then she stopped to realize why the officers in the room were agitated and buzzing with activity.
7 Shenkin Street, 0400 hours! Secure all sewers in a five-block radius. Arrest the clerk called Noah at the Third Eye clothing shop.
Another argued with an embassy official, I don’t care who his parents are, yank him out of class and take him into custody! And don’t allow him any contact with a woman named Dorey.
Next Thursday the 18th at 1600 hours, shut down the area between Hashalom station and the Azrieli Center.
Oh, no. “I broadcasted the intelligence to the others?”
“Shouted it, dumped it into the brains of everyone within a twenty-foot radius. Conveniently translated into English, to boot.” He smiled, looking like he’d rather scream. “Turns out you’re not only a mindbreaker, but also what I call a satellite.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Roughly half of all extra-sentients can exchange or project thoughts. That is unremarkable. During the twenty-two seconds you were scanning the terrorist’s brain, you networked the five other minds in range. They saw everything you did and shared their own knowledge to clarify and organize the info, like a conference call. You turned this place into a war room.”
She nodded dumbly. “I didn’t mean to. I had no idea…”
“It was instinctive.”
Everyone in the room was on fire, yelling and shouting and arguing, their thoughts ecstatic. The prisoner had been well-connected with the terrorist cells in Tel Aviv, and by the sound of it, the officers here were saving lives.
I didn’t show them the last part, did I? She flashed an image to Kyros of what she’d pried loose at the end: Merodach’s plan for hunting extra-sentients in the U.S. and merging them with his terrorist operatives hiding in cities all over the country.
Kyros smiled, and this time it was full-blown. No, love, I shielded that last part. We’ll handle it, in time. There was also grim resolve in his expression, and it left her feeling cold. She’d recognized the bitter emotion last night when he spoke of changing his strategy but was rather vague about it.
“We have to go, now,” he whispered. Kyros caught Russell’s eye and the two exchanged nods. Lyssa gasped as she finally saw how Kyros performed a memory wipe. Everyone but Russell would leave the room believing the cache of Israeli intelligence had come from a confiscated cell phone belonging to the dead man still wearing a hood, which Lyssa tried not to sneak a look at. At least she wasn’t covered in gore this time; the hood had done its job, but a puddle of blood spread on the floor, still dripping.
Kyros’s influence mesmerized the men, imposing the conviction that they hadn’t seen either him or Lyssa, and that the prisoner had been killed when his phone exploded, apparently wired as a bomb.
Kyros led her out the door and toward the parking lot. He rerouted the thoughts of anyone who passed them. He answered her silent questions. “First, technically speaking we just violated all kinds of policy back there. When I interfere with military intelligence or Interpol affairs, I’m careful to stay invisible. And, no, you are not turning evil for enjoying your power and feeling no remorse. Lastly, we must again take a detour to be sure Merodach isn’t tracking us. Did I answer everything?”
She laughed and bumped his shoulder.
Chapter Nineteen
Life is only a long and bitter suicide, and faith alone can transform this suicide into a sacrifice.
— Franz Liszt, 1811–1886
Kyros had nearly put Lyssa to sleep. She lay across his lap, as comfortable as possible in airplane seats but still miserable. Now he understood why she subconsciously marked time in weeks. And he’d finally known her for “a full cycle of the moon,” as she put it.
Lyssa’s reproductive cycle was in synchronization with the tides of the moon. She got outright cranky when he commented on the fascinating physiology of the hyper-evolved female extra-sentient, so he decided to tread lightly, meaning he shut the hell up.
She’d tried to convince him to leave her alone. Rather colorfully, actually, but he’d finally coaxed her to relax. Acquiring a heating pad from a flight attendant went a long way. He gathered it was like this for her every month; one and a half days of near-paralyzing cramping. She lay doubled over, knees drawn up in the fetal position, moaning with each peak of the rolling compressions. Human women would say it was the equivalent of back labor. He shuddered as a sympathetic shiver raked the nerves over his tailbone. How did women even joke about it? Skatá. He’d drawn a lucky number in the gender lottery.
He tried blocking the pain receptors in her brain but hesitated to interfere with the source of the pain, and therefore couldn’t do much for her. The helpful reminder that as a hyper-evolved extra-sentient, she could control every biological function at the cellular level, earned him an invitation to jump out of the plane without a parachute.
I can show you how to fix it, he’d pressed.
Stay out of my uterus, was her answer, and he could see the issue was about Lyssa being embarrassed more than anything. Maybe next time she wouldn’t mind.
Uneasy, guilty, knowing his presence aggravated her condition. Her body reacted to the scent of his own hormones and pheromones, which gave her an instinctual reaction not unlike being in heat for other mammals; he didn’t explain it like that, of course. The scent coming off her skin was heady and arousing—now he understood why Jack took monthly leave from Cassie’s security detail.
Lyssa hadn’t been herself at all lately. He traced it back to shortly after their trip to Beale AFB. Sullen and withdrawn, and she wouldn’t talk about it. He’d never felt so helpless. Unlikely that she’d picked up on his plan, had somehow hacked into his brain… He dismissed the idea yet again, confident he was still able to keep essential parts of his mind shielded from her.
Then what was it? Second thoughts? Perhaps, but just earlier today he’d caught her staring at her engagement ring, turning and posing her hand in the light. The secretive, tender smile she wore convinced him that whatever bothered her, it wasn’t matrimonial regrets. Her students and professors noticed the change even though she feigned enthusiasm. She just wasn’t on fire like she usually was. It had been a small battle to get her on the plane. Twice he’d caught her dialing the phone to cancel the Paris recital before he stopped her. He’d feared she would run away.
To tell the truth, he wasn’t a barrel of monkeys, either. It seemed ironic that he would wait 320 years for the perfect woman, only to take his final bow on the stage of life weeks later. Tennyson was out of his mind with that idiotic line about it being “Better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.” Kyros was calling that bluff.
Gamísou. He didn’t want to do this.
He had no choice.
Once again he calmed himself before his anxiety affected Lyssa. He recalled the sight of her concentrating on her music yesterday, brows furrowed, back arched, and her fingers flying in tandem with her bow in a graceful chaos she called “Bach.” His mind wandered to Anne, the only woman before Lyssa who had ever given him peace; with Anne it was from her quiet support that felt like having a surrogate mother and her decadent food; with Lyssa, it was everything.
Jack would miss him. Earlier that morning he’d picked a fight just for kicks. He’d pummeled Kyros with his meaty fists before he was knocked flat by one blow from Kyros. He still hadn’t learned to contain his energy so Kyros couldn’t reflect it back on him.
Regrettable that the berserker was hopelessly in love with Kyros’s prickly, intense granddaughter. Kyros could count on Jack to protect Cassie in his absence. No one could do it more faithfully yet keep his hands to himself. They would be safe.
There. He was calm again. Still, the waiting made him anxious, kept a raw feeling in the bottom of his gut. It would be soon now, and he would not fail this time. Merodach had cured him of any decency he might have observed in warfare, and it would be to both their undoing. Kyros had left precisely the trail he intended, and Merodach was nothing if not predictable. And by the time his enemy recognized the trap, he would already be licking hellfire. Lyssa would know what to do once Kyros had him down—she’d said so herself: cut him into bite-sized chunks and dance on the ashes. Do a turn for me, love.
She would be just fine. She’d come a long way, and he couldn’t be more proud. He was more than a little gratified to know she would miss him. Whether that made it hurt more or less, he couldn’t say.
But to finally exterminate Merodach, to rid the world of his evil—Oh yes, this is worth it, may the gods forgive me.
Then he tried to sleep, his mind hoarding every sweet detail about Lyssa for him to savor in his last moments.
Chapter Twenty
Music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music.
— Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1756–1791
The green room had been void of conversation a long while. The dress rehearsal went fine. Less than two hours until show time. No, more like one. She was losing track of time; it ticked oddly in her skull, a surreal threat. Lyssa’s conscience pricked her, and she thought she might leap out of her seat and shriek like a lunatic if she didn’t—
“Kyros,” she whispered, staring at her violin resting in her lap. “Marry me. Now.”
His head jerked to attention. He was too ashen to appear bewildered. The heat of his stare hit her in the gut, took her breath away. Did he know she could see the despair in his eyes in the split second it took him to disguise it?
“Please,” she begged, unwilling to list reasons that would ring false if she tried. Truthfully, she sensed that he was waiting, on full alert. Here, at her recital, in a concert hall. She’d caught pieces of his so-called plan, and his resolve devastated her. Now she had the feeling that if she didn’t act now, she would be sorry.
She shot him a look that meant business. “Kyros, can we just do it? Call someone, and have him come down to the green room.” He ran an agitated hand through his hair. “I have never been more serious in my life.”
He brushed his lips across her temple, then left the room with the phone to his ear. Lyssa twisted his lovely ring on her finger and realized she was going to be married in her concert black. How appropriate—bride to widow in one blow. And I’m already dressed for it.
How had they gone from being Batman and Robin to martyr and survivor? He thought she didn’t know, but she was a fabulous mindbreaker after all, and she’d found out all kinds of things while he slept…except why. What scared her witless was that if Kyros thought there was no hope, then he ought to know, right?
She would never understand how he managed to find a Greek Orthodox minister and torchbearers in downtown Paris with only forty-eight minutes’ notice. He handed her a simple ribbon-tied bouquet of white lilies, and minutes later, she was Mrs. Vassalos. The stage manager knocked on her dressing room door for her five-minute call, and the minister was wise enough to take his torchbearers and go away.
Lyssa couldn’t think of a single thing to say. She would’ve given anything to have been able to put a wedding band on his finger. It looked wrong, bare. He took her flowers and set them down, then lifted her hands, sliding his fingers in between hers. They’d been distant the past two weeks, and the immunity she’d built against the devastating effect he had on her was gone. The simple contact of his warm, strong palms against hers scorched her blood, made her stomach twist in knots. He nudged her sideways a few steps to avoid her violin resting on the counter then slowly stepped in closer, pressing them together from shoulder to knee.
She’d avoided looking directly in his eyes for fear of what she would see, but did so now. The black fire he leveled at her spoke everything neither of them had the heart to say. She choked back a sob, unwilling to waste a single moment being emotional.
He ducked to rest his forehead on hers. A rush of dark, wild energy lit every nerve ending from head to toe. He brushed his cheek against hers, and she comprehended that he’d just unleashed the damper he kept on his desire. It struck her in great, rolling waves that settled into a consuming, electrical thrumming. He pressed a row of slow, deep kisses down her neck as he pushed her back on the counter and raised her hands over her head, resting them against the mirror.
Finally he tilted his head to kiss her, then hesitated an inch away, the deprivation causing a wrenching in her chest, a tingling on her lips. She sighed when he finally covered her lips with his. Languid, deep strokes made the fine hairs on the back of her neck and arms stand on end. Sweet, conversational, as though there weren’t only four minutes, nineteen seconds until she walked out the door. If she could reach it, she would smash that tyrannical round plastic clock hanging on the opposite wall.
She tugged on her hands until he let go and used the freedom to grasp his face and pull him closer. He was being reserved, even grave, but she felt on fire. A bite down on his bottom lip, and she took advantage of his wince to commandeer control of the kiss.
Never had she felt so blissfully alive. He had made her powerful. She’d cheated death. Even with despair lurking beneath the surface, she had no doubt she was absolutely, positively in love. Kyros, I want you to know that I do love you. I want you to hear the words—I love you, okay?
Finally! Something broke in him, and she realized what was missing, what had been agitating her. His emotions joined hers like the rush of water burst from a dam. She broke away from his kiss to catch her breath.
He said it a hundred ways, with images, impressions, his senses: I love you too.
She was a mess, weeping and kissing and trying to devour him in the three minutes, fifty seconds they had left. Couldn’t get close enough, couldn’t touch him the way she was hungry for. He let her make a mess of his tuxedo.
Frustrating, her skirt in the way despite how clever he was with his hands. What she wouldn’t give for a king size bed, nothing but skin between them, and unlimited time. He sensed her restlessness and sent her the silent cue to hold on. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and bit the tendon flexing in his neck. He growled to let her know he liked it, and hitched her knee over his hip. Then she waited…
