Chapter Twenty-Three

The snatch took place in a crowded hallway between third and fourth periods. I couldn’t feel any dewing vibration around, so it was a complete surprise when a needle punctured the skin on my upper arm. I had enough time to turn around and look for the human that had given me the shot, but there were too many people around to tell which it had been. Fear tightened my chest as the world around me shrank to a tiny pinpoint of light.

I woke up facedown on a mattress with no idea where I was. It took me a few seconds to remember what had happened. Rolling onto my back, I felt a heaviness in my body from whatever drug they’d given me. I rubbed my eyes, trying to clear the haze from my mind.

Sitting up, I realized I was wearing a white dress with lace at the hem. It didn’t fit well. The arms were too short, and the middle was baggy on me.

Concentrating, I felt for dewing vibrations. I could pinpoint three. One came from the next room. I knew exactly whom it was coming from. The other two were farther away and unfamiliar to me. I was in no hurry to see the dewing in the next room, so I walked to the window and parted the curtains.

In the soft dusk, the Las Vegas Strip was already lit up like Christmas on steroids. I’d assumed Sebastian would fly me out of Vegas as soon as he could. For the first time ever, I thanked destiny for proving me wrong. Being in Vegas, at least for a little while longer, would make it easier for Ian and Brandy to find me.

I checked around for my backpack and found it resting against the dresser. My jeans and T-shirt were nowhere to be found. I would have changed back into them if I could.

A tray had been left on the dresser. An assortment of small sandwiches and cakes as well as a crystal pitcher of ice water had been artistically arranged on it. There was also a soft-looking shawl folded over the end of the bed and a pair of white slippers with shiny beads in the shape of flowers over the toes. The ugly slippers upped the creep factor significantly.

I’d read accounts of ancient human sacrifices in which the sacrifice was fed and dressed in the finest before being strapped to an altar to have his or her heart ripped out. Icy pins prickled down my spine. To keep myself from losing it, I repeated Katherine saw Sebastian Truss dead over and over in my mind.

I couldn’t bring myself to sit on the bed again, so I went to the double doors at the far end of the room and flung them open. The outer room was just as lush as the bedroom, but one thing in it didn’t fit the setting. Luke Stentorian was sitting hunched in chair in the middle of the room. His mousy brown hair was standing on end, and he had his face in his hands. When he looked up, he was his usual sickly self, only with two days’ beard and wrinkled clothes.

“Hello, Luke,” I said with contempt.

His eyes were watery when he replied, “Hello, Alison.”

“That’s all you’ve got to say?” I mocked. Sitting in a chair opposite him with my back ramrod straight and my fists clenched, I continued, “I thought you’d try for something more dramatic, like, ‘Prepare to be crushed by my pal Sebastian.’”

Luke looked down at the floor again.

“I’d ask why you’re here,” I said, “but it’s fairly obvious. Sebastian left you to guard me, didn’t he? By the way, how does it feel to work for a monster like him? Is it everything you imagined it would be?”

“I don’t work for Sebastian,” he muttered.

“Spare me the act. I’m not that stupid. You’ve been sending him information about the clan chiefs. You’re the freaking coward who ran to tell Sebastian who I was. You’re the reason I’m here, you sickly creep.”

“I’m not,” Luke said quietly. “I would never work for Sebastian. My parents hated him and what he did to your clan. I would never betray their memory…or you. Sebastian’s people drugged me and dumped me here without telling me why. I was only half conscious when they brought you in.”

“Play it that way, Luke,” I said with a sneer.

“I’m not working for Sebastian,” he repeated.

I glared at the skinny, sweating man in front of me and wanted to believe he was lying.

But somehow I knew he wasn’t.

I wanted to be mad at someone, I wanted to hate someone, and I wanted to hit someone. But it wouldn’t be Luke.

“Why are we here, Alison?” he asked in a pathetic voice.

“I’m here because Sebastian wants to control my joining.”

“No one has come since they dropped you in the bedroom. There are two guards at the door. They switch off with other Truss every hour.”

“How many dewing do you think Sebastian has here?”

He concentrated and then said, “Around thirty. I can’t understand how Sebastian got so many of his clan into the city without Spencer knowing.”

“Spencer has been gone for two days,” I informed him. “If there are thirty Truss in the casino, they outnumber Spencer’s friends at least three to one.”

“What are we going to do?” Luke muttered.

“Are you any good at essence fighting?”

“Not really.”

“That’s one thing we have in common. I’m not, either. But we have to be ready to fight. This thing is going to come down to a good old-fashioned knuckle-busting essence crushing. That’s all I can tell you.”

I felt an energy shift outside the door. I heard grunts of pain and thumps as bodies hit the floor and walls. There was fighting going on in the hallway. I ran to the door, feeling for confirmation. When door pushed inward, so did a rush of heat. Brandy smiled up at me. Behind her I saw Ian’s blond head drive into the stomach of one of the door guards. The guard grunted and tried to sideswipe Ian’s feet. Ian dodged and twisted the man’s arm behind his back before driving him to the floor. I heard the air gush out of the guard’s lungs and knew Ian had finished him. The other guard was already dead a few feet down the hallway.

Ian got up, breathing hard. Brandy tried to stop me, but I rushed out to him. Ian didn’t even look at me. He pushed me out of the way and stomped toward Luke. The poor man tried to back away, but Ian punched him in neck before he got two steps. Luke fell on his back.

“Stop,” I yelled.

When Luke turned blue and collapsed onto the floor, Ian grabbed his feet, pulling him out flat. Then he rammed his foot into Luke’s abdomen.

“Stop,” I yelled again, grabbing Ian’s arm. “He’s not working for Sebastian.”

The look Ian turned on me was full of hostility. I took a step back. It was like he didn’t recognize me. Steadying myself, I grabbed him by the upper arms and felt them tense under the pressure of my grip.

“It’s me,” I said, trying to shake him. “It’s me.”

His eyes cleared, and I knew he was finally listening. Luke shifted a fraction. Ian watched like he wanted to deliver another kick.

“Listen to me, Ian. He had nothing to do with any of this,” I said as calmly as I could. “Sebastian’s people brought him here the same way they brought me…against his will and drugged.”

Ian took a deep breath and nodded.

“Luke says there are at least thirty of Sebastian’s people here,” I said. “How did you get past all of them?”

“We used a couple humans to sneak us in,” Brandy replied. “I think Sebastian expected a full-frontal attack, not just the two of us. Stealth was on our side for a few minutes, but he knows we’re here now.”

“We’re like fish in a barrel,” Luke muttered. “We’ve got nowhere to run.”

“Running isn’t part of the plan,” I said.

With her head tipped to the side like she was listening, Brandy said, “Two Truss are coming this way.”

I ran to get my backpack from the other room. “I guess we’re on the right track, then,” I responded.

“I couldn’t feel Sebastian’s vibration when we snuck in,” Brandy continued, “but he’s definitely here now. There’s no mistaking the malevolent vibe I’m getting. The four of us are finally in the same place at the same time.”

I looked down at my dress and slippers. “I think I’ve been dressed up for a special meeting with him.”

Brandy pulled a face. “You look awful in that.”

“I agree,” I said.

“We’ve got about thirty seconds,” Brandy said, tipping her head to the side again.

Ian had gotten it back together. “Whatever happens,” he whispered, “don’t let them separate the three of us. Use your thoughtmaking to keep us together.”

I nodded and stepped away from him. Then something occurred to me.

I knelt next to Luke on the floor. He was slightly blue tinged and bleeding from his nose. “Luke, pretend you’re passed out when Sebastian’s people get here. If they leave you alone, even for a second, get out of the casino. Find Lillian and tell her where we are. Do you understand?”

His eyes were glazed, and he didn’t respond.

“Say you’ll do it, Luke. Get out and find Lillian.”

His eyes focused but he didn’t say anything.

“If you don’t say something, Luke, I swear I’ll hit you again,” Ian hissed.

“I’ll do it,” he muttered. “I’ll do it.”

“They’ll be here in five seconds,” Brandy said.

Ian glanced over at me. “Put up enough of a fight to make it seem real, but we’ll go with them.”

“Okay,” I said and then four Truss rushed into the room.

The temperature went up as we fought, but it was over fast. A heavyset woman with her hand squeezing the back of my neck said, “You’ll be seeing Sebastian now.”

I found her thought strand and wrapped Take the other two around it. The room spun from the rebound. “We might as well bring them all,” the big woman said.

Brandy caught my eye and winked.

They took us to the elevator and up another floor. When the door opened it revealed a grand apartment. Everything around us glistened and gleamed like it had been polished with money. Even the air smelled like cash.

Two of the Truss guards stayed by the elevator while the remaining two herded us down a wide hallway to a set of gilded doors. When they opened, a great tsunami of vibrating evil washed over me.

He sat behind a desk placed in front of a large window that looked over Sin City. Heavy red curtains at the sides of the window created a stagelike effect with Sebastian as the star.

He was a remarkably normal-looking man, medium build with graying hair. He was probably about Lillian’s age. “You can leave now,” he said to the Truss flanking us. “If I need you, I’ll call for you.”

They bent their heads like they would to a king, backed out of the room, and closed the door. Sebastian’s face broke into a smile. It was the smile of a wolf about to devour its prey.

Thinking defensively, I formed the thought You don’t want to hurt them and tried to access Sebastian’s mind. He seemed to be waiting for me, and with one shove, he pushed me out. Why can he feel me in his mind when no other dewing can? I wondered.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said. “Well, waiting for the Laurel, anyway. This is a momentous occasion, something I’ve waited almost three hundred years for. It’s a thrill to have the Thane clan represented while I make my proposal.”

I wasn’t in the mood for games or stalling. I wanted whatever he was planning to come out in the open. “What do you want from me, Sebastian?” I asked.

His eyes bored into mine with something akin to hunger. That look did more to damage my resolve than anything else. I glanced to Brandy for reassurance and saw she was already fighting his essence. She stood too far away for her heat to reach me, but her face was a mixture of concentration…and pain.

In contrast, Sebastian appeared perfectly composed, and he was carrying on a separate conversation with me. I formed the thought Leave her alone and was going to slip it into his mind, but Brandy stopped me. “Stay out, Alison,” she insisted. “You’re getting in my way.”

“You look like your mother,” Sebastian said, staring at me. “She was a good friend of mine.”

“I doubt that,” I replied. “I’ve been told she hated you.”

He shrugged. “Love…hate…two of the strongest emotions any species can feel. “They’re so alike in their intensity, so exciting in their own ways.”

“The difference is she wanted to kill you.”

“She did give it her best,” he acknowledged. “Such a strong energy. Much stronger than Jack’s likeness here,” he added with a quick look at Brandy. “Though I did expect her to be dead by now.”

“Not yet,” Brandy said through clenched teeth.

Ian looked from Brandy to Sebastian and then back to Brandy again. I could tell he wanted to join the fight but didn’t want to mess up whatever Brandy was doing.

I couldn’t stand by watching her suffer, so I started to form another thought.

“Stay out of this, Alison,” Ian whispered.

“He’s right, thoughtmaker,” Sebastian said. “There will be plenty of time for us to get to know each other better when I’m done with the Thanes.”

Out the corner of my eye, I saw Brandy start to shake. She had broken out in a sweat, too. “It’s not right,” she said loudly. “He’s not like us.”

Ian had been waiting to hear something from her, something that would give him an idea where to hit Sebastian. “What does that mean?” he asked.

Brandy abruptly dropped to the floor. Ian ran toward Sebastian. He made it halfway across the room and then fell to his knees. Sebastian seemed surprised. “You’re strong for someone so young,” he said. “But not strong enough.”

I didn’t know exactly what was happening, but Ian was in trouble. I wasn’t above hitting old men when I had to. I started toward Sebastian, too.

His energy hit me like a hammer to the knees. I heard my own breath wheeze out. Stunned by his strength, I stumbled backward. I tried to access his mind again. He was waiting for me but too preoccupied with Ian and Brandy to shove me out immediately. I had enough time to feel something familiar about it before he shoved me out.

Brandy moaned and rolled onto her back. Her bright eyes met Ian’s and then mine. She smiled her lovely smile and then her vibrations ground to a halt.

“Brandy,” I cried.

“That was child’s play,” Sebastian growled. “She was as good as dead the minute she walked through the door. I won’t even have to finish her.” He leered at me. “I’ve waited a long time for you, young Laurel. Your mother’s final gift to me was acknowledgment that you existed.”

I barely heard him. I was choking back tears. My dear, beautiful friend was gone forever.

“Aren’t you curious why a dewing of my age has not likenessed?” he asked me.

I pulled myself together. Brandy would want me to fight even if the only weapon I had was a sharp tongue. I wiped my eyes. “I assume it’s because you give off disgusting energy,” I said.

He barked a laugh at my insult, but he was perspiring now, too. “You and I are unlike other dewing,” he said in a superior voice. “One of our greatest advantages is that we can choose our own likeness. I’ve been waiting for a thoughtmaker. One strong enough to deserve likeness with me. Together the two of us will unite the dewing, deal with humankind, and provide leadership that will ensure survival of our species.”

“Any luck finding that unfortunate woman?”

“She just walked through my door,” he responded with a sickening smile.

“No,” I heard Ian growl.

Sebastian turned to him. “This has nothing to do with you, boy.”

As I understood what the ugly dress I was wearing meant, bile rose in my throat. “There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of me likenessing with you!” I yelled at the evil old man.

“Come now,” Sebastian said. “This is the city of chapels and weddings. And there’s so much I can offer you in return.”

In front of my eyes, he morphed into the shape of my human mother. “I won’t make you choose between the humans you love and the dewing,” my mother’s voice said. She changed into someone who looked freakishly like my dad. “Come home, Alison,” my father’s voice said. And then my dad became Alex, with his face contorted in pain. “Help me,” he wailed.

“It’s not real,” Ian said from somewhere that seemed far away.

I came back to myself and forced Sebastian out of my mind.

“That’s right, thoughtmaker. I know about your humans. In fact, I know where each one of them is at this very moment. My Truss are poised, ready to bring them to me the second I give word. Make this easy on your humans and on yourself. Likeness with me and insure their safety.”

Desperate, I reached into his mind one more time. I felt that something familiar again before he could push me out. He was weakening. He could barely close the door this time. Unfortunately, Ian was weakening faster. The line near his eye was deeply furrowed, and his breathing was shallow. I wondered how much longer he could fight.

I started toward Sebastian once more. His energy hit me in the stomach. I crumpled to the ground and saw a cruel joy on his face, so similar to that on the tiger’s face behind the Shadow Box that night. For some reason, that gave it all away. I finally understood why his thoughts felt familiar to me.

He hid it well, but underneath the ordered dewing-like thought pattern was a jumbled human one, which cleared up what Brandy had meant when she said, “He’s not like us.” It also explained why the wound my mother had given him hadn’t healed right, and why he could feel my presence in his mind when no other dewing could.

“You are a sickness, Sebastian,” I said. “You’ve brought human greed into a species that has a natural aversion to it. You’re like a virus, spreading your perverted half-human thoughts through their shared consciousness.”

Sebastian’s eyes burned. “You guess correctly, thoughtmaker. My mother was human and my father was dewing. You and I have much in common, though, growing up as children of two worlds.” His eyes focused in on me. “You don’t see it, do you?” he asked. “You don’t have to be human or dewing. Being both makes you a race unto yourself. A superior race, with human ambition and dewing power.”

I heard Ian fall to ground. I went to him and grabbed his hand.

“All that is missing in my life,” Sebastian continued, “is a partner. Together we can build Atlantis again and rule the world.”

“Isn’t world domination kind of tired?” I asked with disgust.

“It’s world leadership,” Sebastian corrected. “Imagine how idyllic this planet would be if Tenebrosus had succeeded eleven thousand years ago. Think of the human wars that would never have occurred, of the human suffering that could have been avoided if we’d shared our technology with them. The dewing would never have been reduced to such paltry numbers. Both species would have lived long and productive lives with such vision in place.”

And humankind wouldn’t have been able to think or act independent of their dewing captors, I thought.

Pretending to consider what Sebastian was saying, I asked, “What about the Thane?”

“What of him? He’ll be dead soon.”

My mind worked fast. Ian was going to die if I didn’t do something fast. I needed to get Sebastian to direct his energy at something else, so Ian could recover a bit. I had one option. Sebastian had said, “You and I can choose our likeness.” That’s what I’d do.

The time was right to use what Angela’s notes had shown me. I searched the mind of a Truss guard outside the door, looking for the thread of shared consciousness. It was thin and buried deep, but I found it. I formed the thoughts The Laurel escaped. She’s out of the building. Wrapping it around the small rope was ten times as hard as regular thoughtmaking. The rebound made breathing difficult. I swallowed deeply. If the cloak worked, it might not make a difference anyway.

Then I let the memories replay in my mind. I saw the sweet joy on Brandy’s face as she talked about Jack. I saw Spencer kissing Katherine in the kitchen when he thought no one was looking. Then I saw Ian sitting next to me after the pages in my notebook were taken. Ian jumping on the back of the tiger to stop him from crushing my mind. Ian holding me after he’d taken my pain. Ian laughing as I played video games, and Ian promising that he’d keep me safe.

Leaning down, I brushed the soft gold hair back from his face and touched the worry line by his eye. Then I kissed him. The Laurel and the Thane have likenessed, I put into Sebastian’s mind. The recoil was violent, rocking me backward.

“No!” Sebastian yelled.

I took a deep breath and steadied myself for what was to come. Like a diesel truck, his essence slammed into mine. Now that he thought I belonged with someone else, I was worthless to him, and he hated me.

The full weight and power of his mind was something I’d never imagined. A few days of practice was nowhere near enough to prepare me for this type of attack. I shook as his energy closed around me, and I heard myself moan. Then there was a tingle in my mind as Ian joined my fight. With his guidance, I began to push back against Sebastian instead of withdrawing to the pain in my body. Sebastian advanced anyway, and my agony intensified. I fell to the floor. That’s when I felt the energy around my mind crack.

“No, Alison!” Ian yelled, and his mind joined mine more fully.

Sebastian smiled in a vile way. “That was a mistake, infant Thane,” he said. “You can’t save her if you’re dead.”

The energy in the room shifted. Sebastian had found an opening into Ian’s mind. An opening created when he’d overspent his energy to save me. Ian’s face reflected his suffering, and worst of all, his acceptance.

Sebastian’s cruel eyes glazed over. “You chose wrong, young thoughtmaker, just as your mother did. She chose a dewing without joining, and you chose a Thane. Neither of you is good enough to serve my purpose.”

I hardly cared anymore. I couldn’t change Sebastian’s mind about me. He wanted me dead, and I was losing Ian. If I was going to die, I was ready.

Then I heard the voice in my mind. “Don’t stop the fight, Jillian! You’re stronger than you think!”

My only coherent thought was to wonder why my dead mother kept talking to me all the time. But then the burning started. It began like a slow flame in my stomach that grew white hot and branched out into my arms and legs. This is it, I thought, this is death. But instead of feeling my energy die out, it expanded like natural gas igniting.

I felt so full of heat I wondered if my body had become engulfed in flames. As my vision cleared, I saw Sebastian’s eyes shifting all over the room. We weren’t alone. Neither of us could see them, but we were surrounded by a number of unseen dewing energies. They felt familiar to me. I recognized one of them as Brandy. I thought I recognized anther as Angela, Lillian’s sister. One of them was my mother, the White Laurel.

I got to my feet. All the pain of the last few minutes was replaced by white-hot energy. Gathering this power in my mind, I pushed it out at Sebastian. The drapes at the window ignited from the heat, and I saw fear in Sebastian’s eyes for the first time.

“You’re not a thoughtmaker,” he said in a strangled voice. “You’re a…conduit.”

“Just think of it as karma coming back around to kick you in the ass,” I said, pushing the energy out again and wrapping it around Sebastian’s neck. I imagined myself squeezing as tight as I could.

Sebastian transformed into a gasping invalid. He moaned and leaned forward in his chair, his aged body contorting in pain. I waited for the shield around his mind to break. It didn’t take as long as I thought it would. He was already spent from fighting Ian and Brandy. When the crack appeared, I reached forward with my essence and let the energy inside me crush him.

His body slipped off the chair and onto the floor. Then I saw the wound my mother had left him with all those years ago. His left leg was missing…entirely.

The rebound hit me all at once, and I dropped like a stage puppet. “You must finish it,” the voice in my head said.

I made myself crawl to Sebastian’s limp body. I picked up his head and started to turn it the way I’d seen Ian do to the tiger’s. Someone burst into the room yelling, “Fire!”

Startled, I dropped Sebastian’s body. Through smoke I could see the man looking into the room. He was dressed like one of the cleaning crew and was likely the human Katherine had seen the future through.

“Call 911!” I yelled at him.

The fire from the drapes cast a reddish glow in the room. “Finish it,” my mother’s voice repeated.

I turned to Sebastian, but a hissing sound caught my attention. The ceiling was on fire, too. The sprinkler system above us came on, but it didn’t slow the flames at all. I crawled to Ian. I wouldn’t let him die alone. When I found him, there was no sign of life in his body, but I put my cheek on his chest and waited. Gradually, I felt a low hum and then a faint vibration. Then I heard a heartbeat, and his chest rose. He coughed loud.

“You’re not dead!” I cried. “You’re not dead!”

He opened his eyes slowly, and I started to laugh. An absurd reaction, really, but I laughed and laughed.

“Did you finish Sebastian?” Ian asked weakly.

I felt for his vibration. There was nothing there. “I crushed his mind,” I replied, looking toward the body. “I think he’s dead enough.”

“You have to make sure,” Ian insisted.

So I crawled back into the middle of the steamy room and found Sebastian’s body just as a piece of the ceiling came falling down. Rolling aside in the nick of time, I watched what remained of him burn under the rubble.

“We have to get out of here now,” I yelled to Ian. “The entire ceiling is coming down!”

I went back to him and helped him sit up. His movements were feeble, but the light of life was returning to his eyes. “More dewing are here,” he said anxiously.

“I know. I tried something new. I think it’s time to see if it worked.”

Ian leaned heavily on me as I helped him to his feet. Suffering from the rebound myself, I’d never been so thankful for my six feet of lean muscle and size-ten feet. I managed to support him into the hallway but stopped when someone came running toward us.

“Lillian?” I asked. “What are you doing here?”

“Rescuing you,” she shouted. “The casino was crawling with Truss, but they all left in a hurry. It’s like they were chasing something invisible. We’ve got to get out before they come back.”

She rushed me and Ian toward the emergency exit. Looking down the long flights of stairs, I could have cried. “There’s no way we can get him down these,” I said.

Spencer burst through a door a couple of flights below and came running up to us.

“Thank goodness,” Lillian said, letting Ian’s weight fall on his father.

Like it was nothing, Spencer hefted his son over one shoulder and started down the stairs.

“What about Brandy?” I asked remembering her lying dead on the floor in the burning room.

“There’s nothing we can do for her now,” Lillian said, wrapping a skinny arm around my waist to help me. “I think she would want us to get out of here while we can.”

Katherine and the other Thane joined us at various intervals. Pushing through the door at ground level, we saw four fire trucks in front of the building. Casino customers were being escorted out. It was pandemonium. No one noticed our ragtag group crossing the street.

When we found a bench to sit on, Spencer set Ian down, and asked, “Can someone please explain what just happened? I was in the middle of smashing a Truss in the face when he turned and ran away. I know I look tough, but I expected him to put up a fight, at least.”

“Pretty much the same thing happened to me,” a man who’d joined us on the stairs said.

The others nodded their heads like they’d had similar experiences.

I watched Ian as they talked. He was soaked from the sprinklers. His hair was covered in ash, and his face was streaked with it, but he was alive. I was alive. When he looked up at me, I could almost read his mind. He was thinking, Told you we could do it—or something very much like that.

Spencer and Lillian were still trying to figure out why the Truss had run out of the casino like crazy people.

“I cloaked a thought,” I said to put the matter to rest. “I told them I’d escaped the casino and that Sebastian ordered them to go after me.”