* * *
B
RIGID
DREW
HERSELF
CLOSER
to the roof’s edge as the dancers sank to the ground, watching in horror as their expressions told a story of pain. Most of the people in the street had dropped, all except for the three strangely garbed individuals and Kane pacing across the junction toward them. And then she saw the dark-haired woman, dressed in a lavish ball gown of sky-blue silk, turn her gaze directly toward her, brows furrowed in irritation.
The next thing that Brigid knew, something was ripping into her skull like a chain saw, and she felt her reasoning disappear as the burning agony took hold.
And then Brigid was falling, tumbling from the rooftop as all conscious thought disappeared. The bitch was inside her head.
Chapter 19
One second:
Kane saw Brigid trip over the rooftop three stories above, saw the way she was flopping like so much deadweight, her wild hair trailing behind her like a streak of fire. The shadow suit might provide some protection, he guessed, but never enough—not with the way she was dropping like a stone.
Kane was moving before he had even made the conscious decision, sending the Sin Eater back to its concealed holster to leave him with both hands free, legs kicking out to eat up the space between himself and Baptiste, his breath coming faster as the adrenaline pumped through his veins.
Two seconds:
Leaping over the fallen bodies of two dancers, legs thrusting out like pistons, eyes locked on the prize of Baptiste’s plummeting form, arms reaching out to take her weight.
Three seconds:
Kane was beneath her, boots scraping on tiny flecks of gravel that had come loose from the roadway, his arms in position as Brigid’s black-clad form dropped before the white wall, his legs braced for the impact.
Four seconds:
Kane felt his knees take the weight as Baptiste’s flopping form landed in his arms, grunted aloud as he stumbled a half pace backward. She sagged toward the wall, but Kane yanked her back, rolling her in his arms. He let out the breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding, wanting to say something to her.
When he looked at her, he saw that her eyes were unfocused, her face expressionless. She looked as though she was awake but dreaming, like those sad glist addicts in the dream factory they had shut down less than a week before.
Time sped up again, the rush of the everyday striking Kane with the suddenness of a gust of wind.
Kane turned then, suddenly conscious of a noise behind him and inwardly cursing the earplugs. It was laughter mixed with applause. The three immaculately attired Dorians were watching him with admiration, applauding his feat of agility.
“This one bears watching,” Hugh said, though the words came muffled through Kane’s earplugs. “Bravo, Antonia—bravo!”
“I wish I could take credit,” the dark-tressed Antonia replied, her eyelids still flickering, “but my attention was caught in the ginger girl’s mind.”
Angry, Kane brought Brigid down gently to the ground, his eyes still fixed on the trio of strangers.
“Oh, look, young lovers dancing!” Cecily trilled as Kane turned with Brigid’s body.
“Shove it,” Kane snarled, and his right arm whipped up, the Sin Eater already back in his palm.
Cecily looked at the weapon for a moment, one perfectly plucked eyebrow raised in either astonishment or amusement, it was hard to tell which.
This close, Kane saw that the three supersoldiers were beautiful. Each of them had flawless skin and the ideal features of a statue from ancient Greece. Both the women were delicate yet strong, while the man’s face had an androgynous quality that made him strangely alluring. The brunette in the sky-blue dress had her eyes closed—no, not closed, but almost so, her long lashes fluttering like the wings of a honeybee. Kane wondered if she was having an episode, perhaps an epileptic fit. He could worry about that later, once he was sure he had them covered.
Bringing his left hand up to join his right, Kane thrust the Sin Eater ahead of him in a two-handed grip, his lips set in a grim line. “Now,” Kane began, “I want all of you to back against that wall, with your arms spread where I can see them.”
Cecily laughed nervously, her eyes still fixed on the barrel of Kane’s blaster. Beside her, Antonia’s eyelids fluttered as she shoved the knife blade of her mind deeper into Brigid’s, drawing the red-haired woman to her feet. With the heightened awareness of combat, Kane spied Brigid’s movements behind him.
“You okay, Baptiste?” Kane asked without turning.
Brigid lunged at Kane, swiping at his back with the TP-9 still clutched in her grip. Caught by surprise, Kane sidestepped just quick enough to avoid the full impact of the blow, instead taking a sideswipe to his right shoulder.
“Baptiste?” Kane growled as he spun to face her. “What the hell are you doing?”
When he looked at Brigid, Kane saw the way her eyelids fluttered in time with the dark-haired woman’s. There was a connection between the two of them, he realized; something the brunette was doing had changed Brigid, caused her to step from that rooftop moments ago—
and to take a swing at him now.
Before Kane could vocalize his conclusions, Brigid lunged at him again, bringing her right leg up and forward to place it between Kane’s legs. In an instant, Brigid’s leg had hooked Kane behind the knee, forcing him to stumble forward before the bone snapped. He found himself tripping into Brigid’s arms, which she raised to grab him, bringing her free hand around his back and drawing him close.
And then they were dancing, blasters still clutched in their hands, Brigid leading the unwilling Kane in an aggressive tango across the bleeding bodies that decorated the junction.
* * *
B
RIGID
’
S
THOUGHTS
had misted over while she was on the rooftop, a thin red veil oozing across them like a whisper of gauze. She could still see what was happening, but it was distant, as if she were viewing it remotely, her actions seen down the end of a long, long tunnel.
They’re in my head, Brigid told herself. Her thoughts are in
my
brain.
Kane moved before her in a blur, the street swimming about her in a blotchy stream of intermingled colors like smeared paint.
Her head ached. She could not seem to affect her own movements, was only partially aware of what they were. Her body was being played like a puppet, each arch of her back, each stretch of her limbs dictated not by her but by the woman who had stepped inside her mind.
Donald Bry’s research had revealed that the Dorians had superior intellect, but there had been no mention of extrasensory powers. Perhaps they had not been designed to have them, Brigid wondered, perhaps it was the unexpected result of leaving vastly intellectual immortals caged for three hundred years, left to develop their own idiosyncrasies, to find new applications for the abilities that Professor Howard had gifted them.
The pressure was like a vise on her brain. She could feel her own thoughts being squeezed out as the woman crushed the last of her will. No, Brigid screamed, this cannot happen.
It had happened before, back when Ullikummis had overpowered the Cerberus installation and imprisoned Brigid. He had used a brainwashing technique to make her see the world through Annunaki eyes, to comprehend in a new and alien way. On that occasion, she had become someone else to cope with the psychic assault, transformed from Brigid Baptiste to Brigid Haight, her own dark aspect come to furious life. But it had been a trick, a carnival huckster’s “swerve.” She had used meditation to hide her mind, sealing it inside a protective bubble well away from the damage that Ullikummis was generating, keeping her true self safe.
When the time had come, Brigid Baptiste had reemerged from the shadow personality called Haight, resuming control of her actions. Kane, her
anam-chara,
her soul friend through eternity, had struggled to comprehend what had happened to her, and it had taken time for her to fully regain his trust.
Right now, as her mind struggled under the crushing weight of the other’s psychic attack, Brigid remembered what had happened before, remembered her other self, the one called Haight.
* * *
“T
HEY
DANCE
LIKE
FOOLS
,” Danner mocked as Brigid dragged Kane around the square.
“Like fools in love,” Cecily corrected, her white teeth showing in a broad smile.
Hugh turned to her with an expression of disdain. “Must you always see romance in every gesture, Cecily, dear? This is poor art. Look around you—the participants in Antonia’s little installation are being used up too quickly. It cannot possibly sustain itself.”
“Aha, but isn’t all art ephemeral, my dearest Hubert?” Cecily replied, the smile never faltering on her lips.
The Dorian called Hugh Danner thought about this for a moment, and a smile spread across his face. “You’re right, of course,” he realized. “Antonia has reminded us how our art must stand in this world. Like the momentary fluttering of a passing butterfly’s wings.” He swished the crimson tails of his frock coat behind him and gestured with outspread arms to the place he now thought of as the stage. “Talent borrows—but genius consumes!” he announced with a roar, his words echoing back from the walls of the buildings.
“Oh, that’s simply inspired,” Cecily said as Antonia continued to manipulate Brigid and her would-be swain in the dance of death.
* * *
K
ANE
FELT
THE
PRESSURE
build in his own skull as Antonia split her consciousness across the two players in her performance. It was as if his skull had been trapped between two great concrete blocks, a pile driver slamming against each one, crushing his skull in the middle. He
saw
and he
felt
but he could not
control.
Not any longer.
A hairbreadth from him, Brigid felt something change inside her own head as the Dorian’s grip loosened just slightly. Antonia was concentrating on holding Kane in her thrall and in so doing she had slipped infinitesimally in her hold on Brigid Baptiste. Brigid locked on that tiny fracture in the near-absolute control, began to work at it with the last of her free will. To see as a human sees would do no good here, she knew. These people could conquer the human mind as easily as a man masters a docile pet.
Shift consciousness, shift outlook, break the hold. “Now,” Brigid muttered, the word purring out between strained lips.
* * *
A
NTONIA
GASPED
.
“My...goodness,” she stuttered, not quite believing what she had felt.
Cecily, who had lifted a dying man from the ground and was now dancing with him amid the human debris, turned to Antonia with concern. “What is it?”
“One of them,” Antonia began, “the woman, I think, is not quite what she seems. There’s something inside her. It’s picking at me.”
Hugh frowned. “How so?” he asked, watching the dancing puppets of Kane and Baptiste.
“She’s actually fighting back,” Antonia said, as surprised as he was. “I can feel her...in
my
mind. It’s almost...inhuman, the way she sees things.”
“Disengage,” Hugh instructed, suddenly all business.
“Hugh, I can hold this simple mortal,” Antonia scoffed, her eyelids still fluttering like papers caught in a hurricane.
“Disengage, I say,” Hugh insisted. “Antonia, your art has come up wanting. Should you be hurt by one of your exhibits...”
Antonia screeched and fell to her knees, curtailing Hugh’s instructions before he could finish.
“Antonia?” Cecily and Hugh called in unison.
* * *
H
IDING
IN
THE
RESTAURANT
DOORWAY
, Grant saw the woman in the blue dress sink to her knees. He had recognized the three strangers as soon as he had seen them—they were the same individuals who had ambushed him out in the Panamint mountains and put Shizuka into a coma. Holding his rage in check, Grant had bided his time, waited for the moment to strike. Raising the Sin Eater in his right hand, he targeted the other woman, the blonde called Cecily, and squeezed the trigger.
* * *
C
ECILY
DIDN
’
T
SEE
the shot coming and despite her speed, she could not react fast enough to step out of its path.
Crouching on his haunches beside Antonia, Hugh turned as Cecily dropped, the shoulder strap of her dress shredding with the impact of the first bullet. “Silly?” he asked, his head whipping around to find the shooter.
Grant blasted again, sending a second 9 mm bullet at his next target, the crouching figure of Hugh Danner. The bullet sang as it cut the air, whipping across the open space as it drove toward its target. But Hugh moved faster, a superman bolting out of the path of the 9 mm missile.
From the shadows, Grant cursed as the bullet zipped past his target and drilled into the wall beyond. Danner had spotted him, and his muscular figure raced across the distance between them, a cruel sneer on his face. Grant inhaled deeply and squeezed the Sin Eater’s trigger again, sending two more bullets at his foe. Danner weaved out of their path, brushing the second bullet aside with a fast-moving flick of his hand.
He was almost on Grant now, and the ex-mag ducked backward, turning back into the run-down eatery and making his retreat. The superior man followed, smashing the door back on its hinges with a loud bang, leaping over a table that cut across his path. Grant was at the far end of the dining hall already, legs pumping as he hurried into the cooking area. “Gonna need a bigger gun,” he muttered to himself as he raced through the kitchen doorway.
Designed to be in the peak of human condition, the immortal Hugh was catching up to Grant with every step, his movements a blur to the surprised customers. He was through the doorway and into the kitchen in a flash, blue eyes scanning the area for his target. There was a door ahead, wide-open and leading to the alleyways beyond. Hugh spied it and was hurtling through it, all in the space of a single thought. He found himself standing in a tight alleyway running crosswise behind the eatery, with no indication as to which way his quarry had gone. For a moment he stood there, a grim expression on his handsome face.
“Where did he disa—?” Hugh wondered.
Then something struck him across the back of the skull with a rich metallic clang, and the immortal man loped forward, striking the far wall headfirst.
“Behind you,” Grant replied, holding the heavy cooking pot aloft like a batter at the mound. The pot steamed with heat where he had snatched it from the stovetop.