Authors: Dean Murray
Mr. Ford and
the others opened up the vault and then used a combination of keys
and their fingerprints to unlock a heavy steel drawer that functioned
as a kind of mini-vault inside of the main vault.
Once all three
of the bank employees had done their part, the drawer slid out and
they started pulling out bearer bonds that each had a face value of
fifty million euros. I kept a silent count as they pulled out fifteen
separate certificates and then counted again as they moved on to
bearer bonds in smaller denominations.
By the time the
vault had been emptied, they had pulled out nearly a billion euros'
worth of bonds, and the assistant manager's hands had started shaking
slightly. It was an almost unimaginable amount of wealth, but they
were going to have to have many times that amount on hand tomorrow in
order to fully close out my account.
I didn't
actually expect any of the bank employees to try anything funny with
the certificates, but I kept an eye on them regardless as Mr. Ford
and the branch manager walked the bonds out of the vault. The
assistant manager was left to close the drawer that had been holding
the certificates. Under normal circumstances the other two probably
wouldn't have left him to lock up by himself, but there wasn't
anything of value in the drawer now.
One of the
security guards buzzed the door to my room open, which was more of a
relief than I let on. The room had been furnished with a comfortable
chair and a small table, but my beast could recognize a cage and he
hadn't liked being trapped inside such a small space. We probably
could have transformed into our hulking hybrid form and shattered the
locking mechanism on the door if push had come to shove, but neither
of us had been completely sure of that.
Mr. Ford and
the branch manager met me just past the final security checkpoint and
then Mr. Ford and I walked down the hall side by side so that I could
continue to keep an eye on the bonds he was carrying. It took only a
few minutes to go back through the security check points in reverse
order, but we stopped before exiting the last one and Mr. Ford led me
into a small room that had just enough room to seat all four of us
around a table that was empty but for a couple of sheets of paper and
a dumb terminal on the far end.
I did my best
not to fidget, but my beast was still riled up, and being confined
once again inside of a small room with three other people wasn't
doing anything to calm him down. The others were probably just
assuming I was nervous at having so much of my wealth concentrated in
a few frail pieces of paper, but I still couldn't afford to seem too
uneasy. I abandoned my attempts at placating my beast and instead
just shoved him back into the tiny corner of my mind where he spent
most of his time.
My beast roared
in protest and threw himself at the metaphysical bars of his cage,
but I was a dominant, I ruled my beast, he didn't rule me. Saying you
were dominant was a bold, uncompromising statement, but things
weren't always as cut and dried as that, sometimes it was closer than
I liked to admit.
I took a couple
of deep, calming breaths, and then turned my attention back to Mr.
Ford who was waiting on me to begin a final count of the
certificates. Someone had delivered the liability release to the room
while we'd been down in the vault, so once Mr. Ford was done counting
the bonds, I signed the release and accepted the stack of paper that
had been my whole purpose in traveling to the Cayman Islands.
"And now
if you'll sign here, accepting receipt of the bonds, I'll
counter-sign and then we'll update the balance in your account."
A few seconds
later the paperwork was all done and we were all standing to leave.
"Your
backpack and briefcase should be right where you left them, Mr.
Peterson. If you'll come right this way, please."
I nodded and
followed Mr. Ford across the hall. It was almost amusing how much
more relaxed he was now that the bonds were safely in my custody.
He'd done his part, he'd earned his commission, and now he could
safely focus on the next step, that of buying up enough additional
bearer bonds to finish our transaction tomorrow.
Mr. Ford showed
me into the small, windowless room where I'd left my backpack and the
heavy steel briefcase that I'd brought into the bank, and then closed
the door. I spared a moment to wonder if he'd wait outside for me,
and then opened up the briefcase and fished out the handcuffs and key
that were a vital part of my plan.
The debt
certificates went into a rigid plastic case, which I stuffed into the
backpack. I locked the briefcase, handcuffed it to my left wrist, and
then slung the backpack over my right shoulder.
As I stood back
up to leave, I felt the same sense of pressure that I'd felt on the
way in. It was even stronger this time, strong enough that I dropped
back into the chair as my legs collapsed underneath me. I'd been told
that no two people experienced a mental invasion in quite the same
way, but for me it felt like someone was pulling my mind out through
a keyhole in my skull.
I loosened the
chains I'd been using to restrain my beast, and smiled as he charged
out to do battle with the alien presence that was trying to find out
who I was and where I was taking the money. The flare of power from
my beast was only a shade less than would have been required to shift
my body into one of my alternate forms, but this time the energy was
directed elsewhere.
The vampire—it
had to be a vampire—pushed harder and suddenly the keyhole was
replaced with two burning knives that were slowly cutting their way
through my mind. My beast attacked one of the daggers, shattering it
into millions of pieces while I focused on pushing the other one out
of my mind.
It was like
trying to lift an SUV using nothing but my fingertips, but I refused
to let the vampire beat me. For a second it seemed as though my beast
was going to be able to come help me, but then he was distracted by
another attack.
My physical
muscles clenched tight as my body responded to the enormous mental
effort I was exerting, but I wasn't making any headway. I needed to
shift the battle to something that favored me rather than something
that favored my enemy.
I could feel
the vampire, could almost see the black ribbon of light that
connected us as it bored through the wall to my right. It was a small
thing, but everything I'd ever heard about vampires indicated that
they had a harder time working as the distance between them and their
target increased. The room was too small to allow me to put much
distance between us, but I let myself slide out of the chair and
started crawling towards the door.
The effort of
moving even just a few feet left me shaking and weak, but it was
enough to allow my beast to get the upper hand in its battle and come
help me in mine. We pushed the dagger up out of my mind,
our
mind, and I forced the outer layer of my psyche to harden,
transforming it into an opaque bubble that was less susceptible to
invasion.
I knew the
vampire didn't have long to finish ransacking my mind. Even a very
powerful, very old mentalist would have to be motionless, probably
with their eyes closed, in order to sustain such an effort across any
kind of distance. I just needed to hold out for another minute or
two.
"Mr.
Peterson, are you okay?"
Mr. Ford must
have heard the briefcase hit the floor from outside the door. I
didn't want him in here, didn't want him to see me when I was
vulnerable like this, but I didn't know if I had enough energy left
over to respond to him.
The vampire
launched another attack, and this one wasn't like the others. The
distance was probably still working in my favor, but even so the
attack had so much strength behind it that it shattered my outer
defenses. I tried to heal the fracture he'd made in my mind, but
before I could even begin another rod of fire stabbed into my mind.
This one was
different—it didn't move, didn't try to read my thoughts, it
just turned my own mind against me. Dozens, maybe even hundreds of
tiny creatures skittered away from the point of impact,
semi-intelligent constructs that had been created out of the very
stuff that made me who I was.
My beast
responded with the kind of blinding speed that we usually only had
after shifting into something without all of the weaknesses inherent
in normal human bodies. The constructs died singly and in pairs,
ripped apart by metaphysical claws, crushed by insubstantial fangs,
but it wasn't enough. None of the vampire's creations were even
remotely a match for my beast, but there were just too many of them.
Those my beast
destroyed melted away to be reabsorbed back into my being,
strengthening me, but it wasn't enough, not when faced with the
dozens that were being birthed each second. My strength was leaking
away, turned against me, and suddenly I was the one time was working
against.
I rolled myself
over, blocking the door with my body, and joined my beast shattering
the many-legged forms moving through my mind. Together we seemed to
be stemming the tide of new creatures, but we weren't making any
headway with regards to stopping the ones that had already been
created.
I saw two
returning from the furthest reaches of my mind, mandibles clasped
around a glowing packet of memory, and jumped towards them. I landed
on the first one, crushing it under my weight, and then tore the
second one in half, but I could see others returning. There wasn't
any way that I was going to be able to stop all of them; at least
some of them were going to make it back to the vampire with the
information they'd gleaned.
Instead of
trying to fight them one at a time, I left my beast to continue that
battle and moved to the outermost edge of my mind. The molten spike
that had breached the shell around my mind was thickest at the point
of impact, but that was where I needed to attack.
It took the
barest fraction of a second to gather my strength and then I reached
out towards the vampire's presence in my mind. It burned in ways I
didn't know I could be hurt. Just getting a single mental finger on
the spike caused enough pain to nearly make me back down, but I
refused to be stopped.
I was still
fighting the battle on the vampire's terms. It was the same thing I
always did; it was the reason that Kaleb and Brandon had dominated my
life for seventeen years. There was too much at stake this time
though—a vampire who was this powerful would have contacts with
other vampires, vampires who couldn't be allowed to know that my
species existed.
I stopped
resisting the pain and instead drank it down. My enemy was trying to
use heat and fire against me, but there was one thing that fire
couldn't harm.
I
became fire—not all of me, I couldn't
do that even inside the refuge of my own mind without losing my
identity—but everything from the shoulders down of my psychic
body transformed into a living blaze.
I reached out
mental hands that burned with the intense white of a blast furnace,
and grabbed hold of the glowing metal nail before me. The vampire
tried to change the terms of the fight once again, tried to cool the
spike and turn it into something that would quench my blaze, but he
wasn't just working against me now, he was working against the energy
and effort he'd already expended.
In the split
second between when I grabbed the spike and when the vampire reacted,
I sent the temperature of the spike up thousands of degrees. A wave
of chill, the icy cold of a perfect void, traveled down the vampire's
probe towards me, but it was too late.
We were too
closely matched for him to stop me and I'd already destroyed the
structural integrity of the spike. The spot I was holding onto
stretched and pulled like taffy, and my beast began to win his fight
with the army of invaders.
The probe went
both ways. It allowed the vampire to access my mind, but it also
allowed me glimpses into his. The vampire panicked. He was old,
centuries at least, maybe even more. It had doubtlessly been hundreds
of years since he'd been up against someone strong enough to stand
him off, even at a distance like this, but that was nothing compared
to the sheer terror of knowing that someone was touching his mind.
The cold
doubled and then doubled again. Frost started to form on my legs and
torso as the heat was sucked out of the spike. I'd only thought we
were well-matched. He had reserves of power and energy that I could
only dream of, but something inside me still stubbornly refused to
quit. I wrapped my arms even tighter around the spike, and as the
fire they were made of started to flicker, I wrenched against the
spike with every ounce of strength I had left.
Hot metal was
flexible. I'd heated it up to the point where it had stretched,
becoming narrow. Cold metal was brittle and I hit with enough force
that the thin, attenuated section couldn't hold. The vampire's probe
shattered and, aided by my beast, I began to absorb the creatures and
the probe both.
I gasped, and
realized that somewhere along the line I'd stopped breathing. I half
expected another attack, but the sound of Mr. Ford trying the
doorknob reminded me that I had other, equally pressing concerns.
"I'm fine,
Mr. Ford, I just need a minute. I'm still a little jet-lagged and
tripped as I was trying to pack everything back up."
"Very
well, Mr. Peterson. I'm just outside of the door if you need
anything."
I pulled myself
back to my feet, zipped the backpack up, and turned back to the door.
Jasmin Bianchi
Deutsche Bank, Cayman Office
George Town, The Cayman Islands