She exerted a considerable effort of will and slowly composed herself. In a few moments she was able to regulate her breathing. The flush faded from her face. Her fists uncurled and her jaw relaxed.
She forced a smile. “Okay, Dream. I know that was your doing. I can feel it.” She moved a few slow, deliberate steps toward the seated women. “Why don’t you tell me how you did it?”
Dream chuckled. “Oh, you know. If you think about it hard enough, that is.”
Giselle moved another step closer. And another. Slow. Casual. As sublimely cool and confident as a stoned surfer riding the crest of an early morning wave. Her eyes were locked on Dream’s. The rest of the world faded. There was only the two of them now. There was a sweet tension in the air that was almost sexual. She was putting herself out in the open, making herself as vulnerable as she’d ever been, clearing the channels to allow only pure truth to flow between them. In those moments she learned all she needed to know about Dream, and Dream saw the extent of Giselle’s own formidable powers.
Yet another step closer.
“The Master. Of course.” Giselle’s smile was almost radiant now. He showed you some things, awakened a dormant power within you. A power that grew beyond your ability to control and direct.” She laughed. “You’re not really human. Not purely. Somewhere in the distant past one of his kind mated with one of your ancestors. This is why you have become so strong without schooling yourself in the dark arts.”
Dream’s smile became a smirk. “Interesting theory. Might even be the fuckin’ truth. Thing is, I don’t really give a fuck. Not anymore.”
Giselle was within six feet of them now. Close to striking distance. Certain muscles began to subtly coil. “Is that so?” She arched an eyebrow, a faintly mocking expression. “Or are you just too much of a drunken mess to wrap your stupid head around any idea more complex than a knock-knock joke?”
Dream’s face turned hard. “Stop right there.”
And Giselle felt that force rise up against her again. It was impressive, the sheer ease with which Dream wielded her ability. But Giselle had been expecting it this time. And she was not without ability of her own. She threw up a psychic shield that repelled Dream’s energy pulse and knocked the woman back in her own chair. Dream gaped at her. Shock radiated from her every pore.
NOW.
Giselle loosed a shriek of fury and dove across the surface of the table, her right hand extended, long, sharp nails seeking Dream’s sky-blue eyes. Dream’s friends tried to intercept her, but another blast of energy sent them tumbling to the floor. Giselle slid across the table at high speed, her body knocking aside the wine bottle and glasses. Then she was on Dream, her left hand closing on the woman’s slender throat as the fingers of her other hand shot toward those gaping, stupid eyes. And for a flashing instant, Giselle felt her own smug satisfaction, thinking,
Then Dream’s hand snapped up and seized Giselle’s outstretched wrist. Giselle’s momentum alone should have been enough to finish the job anyway, and the power flowing through her should have sealed the deal.
But Dream’s strength blunted her momentum. The woman’s hand moved backward perhaps half a centimeter. Then stopped. Giselle’s wrist was frozen in place, but the rest of her body kept moving. Dream leaped to her feet and moved with the direction of that energy. She shifted her grip on Giselle’s wrist and exerted some force of her own. Then Giselle was airborne and flying toward the wall with no way to stop the impending crash. The top of her head smacked the wall, and an instant later she hit the floor with a hard, undignified thud. The pain was immense. Before she could even begin to consider her next move, she was yanked to her feet and slammed against the wall.
Dream put a hand around her throat and slammed her against the wall again. “How’s that feel, bitch! How’s that fucking feel!” Dream’s eyes were wide and bulging, pulsing with insanity and unmitigated fury. “Does it fucking hurt! Does it fucking hurt!”
Giselle’s vision blurred and she realized with shame that she had tears in her eyes. She didn’t bother to answer the crazy woman’s question. Of course it hurt. But the pain wasn’t the worst of it. The thing that really got to her was how powerless she was to stop this abuse. And she almost felt like laughing, despite everything, because now she had the gift of clarity and could see how arrogant she had been. Had she really felt like a god? As if nothing or no one could ever hurt her again?
She bit her lip. Hard. Tasted her own blood.
And called out to the void.
No answer from the void.
Just the sound of her head banging repeatedly off the wall as the world turned fuzzy. She wondered if she was about to die and felt a moment’s perplexion at how little she cared. As she neared unconsciousness, she thought of the essential ways in which the blood sacrifice of Eddie King had changed her. Maybe she’d really died back then, the real Giselle, and the thing she was now was just some magical construct, a joke played on her by a malicious god. Azaroth. The silent one. Her former coconspirator against the Master. Her restored hands. A body, whole again.
Giselle’s laughter approached madness. Now who was the crazy one? Dream continued to scream at her, the words losing any meaning now.
Then, just as she thought death might take her, she glanced over her shoulder and saw a new shape enter the room. She blinked hard. Dream wasn’t banging her against the wall anymore. Just screaming. Raging. Her hand squeezing. The shape came into focus as it moved closer.
Giselle’s heart lurched.
Still nude. So beautiful. So tall in those ridiculous platform heels. The jut of her mouth so insolent. In that moment Giselle felt a rush of love and desire. It was all still there, the purity of all she’d felt for the girl over these months. It hadn’t really faded at all. And seeing the fright and concern in her lover’s eyes only intensified the feeling.
Ursula locked eyes with her and Giselle saw the same depth of emotion within her.
It was a beautiful, aching, glorious moment.
And it passed in a nanosecond.
Ursula screamed and came running toward her, ridiculous big heels clomping on the marble floor.
And the young girl with the black-as-night hair-Marcy-rose up and strode purposefully forward, a real gun, a gleaming, nickel-plated 9mm pistol, in her hands now. She aimed the barrel point blank at Ursula’s face and fired once. The bullet hit her between the eyes. An explosion of red bloomed behind her head even as her body flew backward. Giselle squealed anguish and tried to flex her power one last time, reached down deep inside herself and tried to kickstart the core of that power. But it was unreachable. Something was in the way. Still she kept reaching, kept straining…
Dream grinned and said, “No.”
Giselle’s vision blurred again. “Kill me. Please. Finish it…”
Dream laughed. “No.” She increased the pressure around Giselle’s neck, reducing her air passage to perhaps the width of a straw. “You’re not getting off that easy.”
Of course not.
Giselle’s fading gaze went to the trembling soldiers. No smugness on their faces now. Just terror. Disbelief.
Helplessness. Trembling hands unable to wield their weapons. Giselle wasn’t sure they’d choose to use them if they could.
And there, just inside the archway, good old Schreck. As afraid as the rest of them, but with a hint of a smirk playing at the edges of his mouth. She had another insight then. Another bit of truth she’d been too stupid and arrogant to discern. He was the traitor. The Order of the Dragon plant alluded to by Gwendolyn in her last moments. And he must have seen the recognition in her fading vision, because now he was baring his teeth. Cackling, the jackal exposed at last.
Giselle sucked more blood from her torn lip into her mouth.
Called out one last time.
And this time she received a response.
Disembodied, mocking laughter that boomed in her head like thunder.
Thunder that rolled on and on as the world faded away at last.
PART III: NEW YEAR’S DAY
CHAPTER TWENTY
The caravan departed Camp Whiskey at the break of dawn, six vans and two Jeeps packed with weaponry and ammunition, carrying some two dozen passengers down a winding, snow-encrusted mountain path. They traveled all through the day and the whole of the night that followed, arriving somewhere in the approximate center of Wyoming at dawn of the next day.
Allyson blinked and emerged from the drowse she’d fallen into some fifteen minutes earlier. She sat up straight and stared through a window at the gray sky and the passing countryside. The Jeep’s engine rattled and chugged, its big tires bouncing in and out of potholes as it followed the snaking stretch of rural highway. There were no houses to be seen anywhere. Just trees and more trees, their branches denuded by the season, pale and angling toward the sky like the outstretched arms of worshippers.
The Jeep was at the rear of the modest column of vehicles. Allyson shifted in her seat and peered between the front seats for a glimpse of the road ahead. The other vehicles were staying close, none of them separated by more than a car length. The van directly in front of them was old and painted olive green.
But as far as she was concerned, the van’s color marked the end of any similarity between this insane glorified Boy Scout mission and any real military operation.
