Knock, knock... (39 page)

***

Shay bolted upright, her mind screaming awake. A film of fear slid over her skin. She brushed hair back off her face even as she studied Roman's bedroom, looking to find what was wrong.

And found nothing. She took a deep breath and tried to reassess. At her side, Roman rolled over, snuggling closer. Her heart still pounded with fright, but the sight of the sleeping giant beside her made her smile. He slept like an infant with such peace on his face, his body open and relaxed with sexual surfeit. Just the way he should be.

So what was wrong?

The nudge came again. She sent out a questioning response.

And something exploded in her mind.

Oh God.

The hospital.
Stefan was calling her to the hospital.

She jumped free to race through the ethers, her body collapsing, limp on the bed.

***

Stefan took a direct hit. He'd have groaned if he had a voice. Instead, he was so focused on his astral form and keeping a protective bubble over the kids on the ward, a trick that Dr. Maddy had been helping him work out, that that attack blindsided him. Again.

He was getting damn tired of this. In his world, there was always evil. Working with the police as he did, he'd seen so much, but no one could keep his guard up all the time. And tonight he'd been so far past tired, he'd let it drop.

And he just hadn't been aware of the attack early enough.

And he'd been alone. Weakened. Unprotected.

At his panicked cry, so many friends had come to help – none prepared for what they found.

Energy blasts.

Stefan, go stop the attacks. I'll protect the children.
Dr. Maddy's voice filtered through his awareness.
Send Tabitha my way. She's advanced enough with energy to help.

I'm here.
Tabitha's strained voice arrived ahead of her teal energy.
Stefan, if you can, get this bastard.

Even Lissa's energy moved frantically at his side, trying to send Stefan away.

Maddy was already protecting the children. Her powerful healing energy was a bulletproof casing around the little ones in the room. It's not as if the attacker could get through that. But they'd seen so many people capable of so many horrible things, Stefan no longer believed in certainties.

Others were there to receive the black energy, sucking it out of the ward. The person they sought appeared to have connected to the universal energy – it wasn't possible to run out of that. And right now, that was majorly bad news.

Stefan could sense the chaos on the earthly reality too, as people panicked, searching for answers to what they could only sense, but not clarify. They tried to contact him, looking for help. But he couldn't help anyone.

Stefan could only hope they were doing what they could.

Because whoever this asshole was, he had serious skills.

And serious mental issues.

This wasn't a cold, calculated act. This was murderous rage.

With the flavor of revenge.

And there was no end to this attack in sight.

Stefan needed Shay. Where the hell was she?

***

Panicked, Shay arrived at Dr Maddy’s hospital in astral form to see...energy... God, she didn't know what was going on...but thick turbulence filled the space. More than one person, more than one fight. At the center of it all – Stefan in a battle of wills. Only she couldn't tell with whom...or what.

The large, open communal space was dark and silent – as in the aftermath of a grenade going off. There should be noise, voices, conversation. Instead there was a complete absence of sound.

Shay spun in a slow circle, trying to sort through the impressions bombarding her. Silence. Shock. Pain and destruction. Her view was filtered through a smoky, charcoal-smelling haze. Tables were overturned, chairs tossed, toys strewn on the floor and paper floated through the air to land gently on the ground like leaves falling in the wind.

Her arrival
had
come in the aftermath of a massive blast.

An energy grenade.

She'd heard of them. Had never seen one.

And she was grateful to have missed this one too.

The energy listed and shook as the particles came together. The blast had disturbed time – making everything move in slow motion. She searched through the oddities, her instincts more useful than her eyes. She had to see through the wrongness to what was really happening.

Deep, dark colors bombarded her as wave upon wave of energy slammed into her.
Waves from the energy bomb?
Surely not?

A psychic attack?
At this magnitude?

She couldn't make sense of anything. She was also too busy protecting herself. The more walls she put up, the more the waves increased. She was forced to throw walls higher and higher in an effort to keep safe. Someone incredibly powerful was blasting her. And with their continuous waves, she couldn't gain the upper hand; she couldn't find her footing in this horrific reality.

She was losing the battle.

Another wave slammed into her, lifting her off the floor. She would have dropped to the ground, but she floated in a world with no gravity – no ground.

No longer in the physical plane, the rules were different here. No physical senses, no physical touch, no Newton's laws. Nothing she could use to re-center herself.

In her mind's eye she could see the destroyed center of the room. But she could see a deep, dark black off to the left, and opposing it off to the right, a deep midnight blue. She'd landed in the middle of some kind of war.

And she had to pick a side and fast.

But who was where?

Shay, duck!

She ducked. But too slowly. The blast lifted and tossed her on her virtual butt.

Again.

There would have been a trickle of laughter, but it arrived on Stefan's panicked cry,
Another one’s coming your way.

She gasped as the blast hit at the tail end of Stefan's warning. This wave was weaker. Barely skimming over her body. Better.

Thanks for the warning, and what the hell is going on?

The ward is under attack.

She snorted.
I got that much. But who’s doing this? And why?

I don't know! I can't spare the energy to find out. I need your help. I need everyone's help. This is bad, Shay. I'm trying to protect the kids at the same time. There are too many of them for me to guard. Maddy's also protecting them now as I'm spread too thin. Help. I can't spread out any more, that's your specialty, not mine. We never got to you teaching me that trick, remember.

Damn it. What trick? What do you want me to do?

Disperse completely. Become one with the universe!

Shit. Ask for something easy why don't you?

Taking a deep nonexistent breath, Shay thinned her energy down to a misty vapor. It helped her disappear into the ether as she dealt with the waves of energy still pouring her way.
And now she was harder to target.

Following the success of her first attempt, she thinned her energy further, and was no longer solid enough to be hit by the energy attacks. Instead, she filled the room with her very essence. She spread out to the far corners, including the ceiling. She could see other energies in the battle, and the children's energies. They were silent, still, but she could see their energies pulsing in strong healthy waves as they slept.

Nice.
Dr. Maddy was full of cool tricks apparently if she could keep their consciousnesses and their bodies protected while the war raged.

Leaving the others – and God only knew who all was here – to protect the children, Shay thinned her energy even further. Within seconds she'd become little more than mist in the room, a fragrance, a mere sensation.

Surrounding her attacker. Above, behind, on her attacker – the vibrating dark purple-black ball at the side of the room.

Shay closed in on the person so bent on destruction that they didn’t care who was destroyed. Anger, frustration and a horrible madness poured from this person's energy – this person, bent on maximum destruction. Emotions, thoughts, words fired from this person in an endless vent. Shay couldn't help but hear the refrain that poured through the night.

She struggled to make the words clear.

Then she heard the disembodied voice.

Hurt them all.

Make them suffer.

Make them pay.

***

Ronin grabbed his phone and dialed Stefan.

No answer.
Damn it.
He tried again, then again. Switching tactics, he tried to call Shay. And it rang and rang.
Shit.
Someone needed to answer, damn it.

"Hello." A deep, dangerous voice growled into the phone.

Ronin reared back. "Roman? Is that you?"

"Yes. What the fuck is going on?"

With stomach churning, Ronin asked, "Why? What's the matter?"

"Shay has collapsed in bed like a coma victim, and there's a weird buzz going on in the air. I've tried calling everyone I know, and no one answers. Hell, Stefan's not answering telepathically either."

Telepathically?
"Roman, can you talk that way too?" Jesus, if only. It would make life so much easier for him. The concept blew him away.

"No, but Stefan can talk to me that way. In theory that means I can learn, too. But these people have skills I'd never imagined. I want to know what the hell is going on," Roman roared.

"I'm trying to get a hold of Stefan and Shay. Wait, did you say she was in a coma?" Ronin tried, but couldn't stop his voice from rising at the end. He closed his eyes and took a calming breath. Damn this case was weird and getting weirder.

"A psychic coma or some damn thing. I can't touch her. Can only sit here and watch over her. Helpless. I fucking hate that." Roman’s voice calmed somewhat. "Why are you calling?"

"Darren had another sibling. Younger by several years. Apparently she adored her brothers and they adored her." Ronin stared at the screen in front of him. "I have a photo. It's fuzzy but I thought maybe they'd recognize her. I don't know her."

"Send me the picture. Maybe I will be able to."

"Sending..." Ronin zapped the image to his brother's cell phone. "You should have it now." He waited. And waited.

"Roman? Are you there?"

"Hell. Yes," His brother snapped in fury. "And I know exactly who this is."

***

No.

Anger screamed through her mind, blackening her thoughts into molten rage.

How could these people do this? She'd come here for an outlet and found a fight. Well if they wanted a fight, they could have one.

There was a lot of anger to get rid of. A lot of payback to deliver. "And damn it, I refuse to be cheated. I need my vengeance. I deserve justice." The anger soared outward, blackening all thoughts into molten rage.

How could there be so many people here? And how could so many understand energy?

Until now, she'd believed her and her siblings were special. Above the others. Believed they'd been the only ones with such skills. That the world was their playground – to do with as they wished.

What a rush that had been.

She'd loved that sense of uniqueness. That sense of superiority over the rest of the world. That power to play God. And boy, had they played. Together and apart they'd done what they wanted with who they'd wanted, believing it was their right as superior beings. That no one would ever know.

How wrong could they have been?

They weren't the only ones who could do this. The only ones that played in both realities.

Disbelief fired the rage all over again and she blasted off more grenades. Barely satisfied she realized now how Shay had beaten her brothers. Not just one, but both of them.

Shay and her helper. Or many helpers. She'd known Shay couldn't have done this alone.

Then, Darren had Danny to help him. That Shay most likely had never even known about Danny's existence, hurt. Darren rarely told anyone about his twin. And he'd never tell a mark like Shay. It was private. Danny had been the other half of Darren. The two of them were identical in so many ways. But when Darren had hesitated to kill Shay, it had been Danny that had stepped in and made sure it happened.