The Takeover (21 page)

Her mental block was no longer in place, as if she’d relaxed here as she’d never dared to at Ropte’s. Or maybe it was the different drugs we gave her. I placed one hand on her head and my other in Keene’s warm one. He was still paler than normal, but his lean face was determined. Pushing out my awareness, I found the frozen lake that represented her unconscious mind. Everything was crystal clear, bright, and more real with Keene’s help. But though I could sense even the thoughts of the family in the nearest house over a mile away, no amount of experimentation would allow me to cross the ice to access her memories.

Cort watched us with interest. “It may be different when she’s awake.”

I wasn’t so sure.

After more than an hour, I gave up. “Okay, do the honors. Wake her up.” My energy was flagging, and all the absorption in the world wouldn’t replace it fast enough. “We’re not getting anywhere here.”

Cort brought her around, and the first thing she did was lunge at him. “I’ll kill you!” she shrieked. We grabbed for her arms, holding her tight. She cursed Cort, his mother, and all his ancestors and descendants. Then she started in on Keene.

“That’s enough!” I said.

“It’s not enough! You put me out. Never again! Just kill me! If you do it again, I swear I’ll seduce every man you ever loved, including your mortal brother, and then I’ll skin them alive and eat their flesh.” She bucked against us.

She’d raised her barrier, but I was still inside her head, with Keene’s power at my disposal. Her sand stream was readily available, the flowing thoughts presented in a language I didn’t comprehend. That didn’t make sense because thoughts didn’t need a language. I’d been able to “listen” in on those who spoke other languages before without any trouble understanding. Drawing on Keene’s energy, I sent a tiny burst of light into her mind.

She didn’t grasp her head and scream in pain or faint as others did, but she stopped talking and the convulsing of her body eased. “What did you do? I felt . . . something.” Her breath, once shallow and quick, was evening out.

Well, that was something at least. Maybe this experiment wouldn’t be an entire waste after all. I wished I knew what she’d felt because it certainly hadn’t caused her pain.

“Okay,” I said softly, releasing her hands and rising from the bed, “let’s try this again. If you don’t want to be drugged in the future, I’m sure we can work something else out.”

That promise, I think, calmed her more than anything. But the fact that my flash did affect her was no small thing.

Jeane nodded and came to a seated position on the bed, her legs drawn up Indian style under her.

Time to get down to business.

But no matter how much energy I used—and I took as much from Keene as I dared, until my body thrummed with it—I couldn’t understand Jeane’s thoughts. When I attempted to release one of my own thoughts into the sand stream, it crumbled and vanished before being swallowed by the flow. Jeane showed no reaction.

There was only one thing left to try. Normally, to channel someone, I simply reached for the glow of his or her ability, the certain something I sensed inside each mind. So far, it had been easy to find, saturating the entire area, part of the person’s essence. Jeane’s simply wasn’t there, or if it was, I didn’t recognize it or know how to reach it. With Keene’s help, the language of her sand stream had become slightly clearer, and maybe in time I could learn it, but for now it felt like wearing a blindfold and dunking my head into water while trying to understand someone speaking a long-forgotten African dialect.

I linked with Cort and let him observe the patterns in her mind. He shook his head and thought,
If you’re considering uncoding the jumble, it might be better to record it using Patrick’s ability. From what I can see, she’s just not compatible with us. Maybe that’s why she’s also barren. I think she’s a screwup, an Emporium experiment gone wrong
.

I wondered what Jeane would say about his theory of her being an Emporium mistake.
Thanks,
I said, releasing him and the others. So much for my vision of confronting Stefan and nulling his ability.

Jeane smirked at my frustration. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but Delia Vesey already tried everything with me, and she didn’t succeed. She couldn’t control or read me. She couldn’t act through me. And she couldn’t stop me from plotting against her. That’s why she locked me away for decades—to protect herself.”

“We let you out,” I reminded her.

To show her gratitude, she hit me with it then, her nulling ability, but I was ready and pushed back, extending my shield to protect Cort and Keene. “Sorry, Jeane, remember that doesn’t work on me anymore.” I was relieved to know that was still true.

The pressure eased as she sat back and folded her arms. “What do you want from me? Are you going to kill me? Nah, because that’s not who you Renegades are. You’re weak, and that’s why the Emporium will win this war.”

“So you’re helping them?”

The side of her mouth twitched. “What I’m doing is none of your business.”

I bent over, putting my face close to hers. “Of course it’s my business, and I’ll tell you right now, you aren’t going anywhere but to Mexico. We aren’t letting you go, and your Emporium boyfriend isn’t here to help you now.”

Jeane flinched, and for an instant her blue eyes lost their belligerence. “This has nothing to do with Lew.”

“I think it does.” I drew away, glancing at the others for ideas.

Lew Roberts, the sensing Unbounded who had been Delia’s assistant, was powerful enough to shield others with his thoughts and to control them. The slight, nasal-voiced man with the crunched, youthful features of an Unbounded whose Change had been forced was not my idea of a hot romance, but he’d been the one person Jeane seemed to feel any loyalty toward. Maybe she liked her men boyish.

“What happened after you were rescued by the Emporium in Morocco?” Keene asked.

“After you tried to capture us,” I added.

Jeane tossed her head, and her silky hair swung over her shoulder. “I just didn’t want to go back to them empty-handed. My plan, if you must know, was to take Delia’s place in the Triad. Lew was going to help me. But that didn’t work out, so I left.”

Something in my mind clicked. “To try to take her place you’d have to be a direct descendant.”

Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “That’s right. Oh, don’t go all family on me. Delia was a monster, and we were so far removed that her blood barely ran through my veins. But her successor hadn’t been named.”

“Or so you thought.”

My remark made her bristle. “So what?”

“How close was she?”

“She was my fifth great-grandmother.”

Cort cleared his voice. “Ropte’s also her fifth great-grandson. Did you go to Ropte’s to kill him?”

To seduce him and stab a knife into his heart while he slept was more like it.

“Kill him?” Jeane’s laugh was genuinely amused. “Why would I do that? We have our differences, but he’s still my brother.”

“Brother?” This was something I hadn’t anticipated.

“Yes.” She waved a hand. “He’s much older, but when you have an Unbounded mother, that happens.”

Cort and Keene exchanged a glance. They knew only too well since there were five hundred years separating them. For Jeane and Ropte, the difference would be double that. She’d only Changed three hundred years ago.

“Siblings aren’t necessarily loyal to one another,” Keene said with a drawl. “Especially in the Emporium.” Cort nodded tightly. I couldn’t read the sorrow in his expression, but I knew it was there. Though the brothers were on the same side now, Cort had pretended for years to feed Keene and the Emporium information about the Renegades in exchange for any information he could plunder in exchange.

Jeane clenched her fists, jumping up from the bed. “Oh, put it away,” she said when I went for my gun. “There’s three of you, and it’s not like I have any chance of getting out of here. If you must know, I went to David for help. Since he’s in the Triad now, I hoped he’d be able to do me a favor.”

“Why don’t you sit back down and tell us everything?” I indicated the bed. “Or if you want, I can yank Ritter from his powwow with Ava and Dimitri to see if he can convince you to sit.”

She tossed her head and pushed her breasts out in my direction. “The only thing tall, dark, and dangerous would get from me is foreplay.”

“Sit down,” I gritted.

“Fine. But you guys sit down too. I’m sick of you all looming over me.”

“Okay.” I drew up one of the chairs from the small table by the window. My body met the chair with a distinct relief, and I had to bite down on the sigh that threatened to steal past my lips. Cort grabbed the second chair, while Keene settled on an edge of the bed as far away from Jeane as he could get. His expression didn’t change, but that he’d sat at all told me how much his wound still drained him.

“When I found out David was Delia’s chosen successor, I was angry,” Jeane said, pulling her legs up to her chest. “After all, I’m the one who went through all the work to help you kill her.”

“I want the trailer,” I said, “not the movie.”

She sighed in exasperation, but even that sounded sexy. There was a reason she had been America’s sex symbol for a decade. “Okay, long story short, they held us prisoner after they rescued us,” she said. “But I escaped.”

“Not Lew?”

A vertical furrow appeared between her eyebrows. “No, not Lew. We had a plan, but something went wrong. I escaped alone.”

I suspected she’d left him behind to save herself and later regretted it. Her attachment with Lew seemed real enough from what I’d seen between them, and in the past she’d gone to great lengths for a man. In fact, one of the reasons she’d hated Delia so much was because the older woman had murdered her former Renegade lover.

“I went to Ropte because I thought he might be able to negotiate Lew’s release,” Jeane continued. “I offered him the use of my ability if he’d help me.”

“Did he agree?” Keene sounded doubtful, almost mocking.

“He made me babysit that prissy wife of his.” Jeane rolled her eyes before saying as an afterthought, “At least she knows how to dress.”

I crossed one leg over the other, noting how the dim morning light was beginning to filter through the shuttered window and leave patterns on the black material covering my leg. “So he wouldn’t help you.”

“Oh, he’ll help me. He just needs me to do a few things.”

“I’m guessing that might take years.” Or more. With how few sensing Unbounded there were, it was unlikely they’d allow Lew to leave the Emporium. Even if they couldn’t force him to do everything they wished, they could use him for breeding, an irony that didn’t escape me since the man once tried to impregnate me with his own genetically altered sperm.

Jeane frowned. “Maybe not. They have another sensing Unbounded.
Catrina.
A horrible little thing.” She made the name sound like a curse. I was betting she was jealous.

“Ropte’s older than both Stefan and”—Keene hesitated a half second before using his father’s name—“Tihalt. You think he’ll make a play for control of the Triad?”

Jeane snorted delicately. “Delia was older and far more powerful than David. That didn’t help her. Tihalt has so much wealth and power that as long as he’s willing to let Stefan control the Emporium, Stefan is too powerful to be beat. No, I think my brother has different aspirations of the political kind.”

My mind churned. “He wants to be president?”

“David doesn’t tell me his plans,” Jeane said, “But I know for certain Stefan met with David and other politicians several times. David acts different when he’s with Stefan. Acts, being the key word. Millions of dollars have changed hands.”

Cort nodded sharply and cleared his throat. “Makes sense. The Triad tried taking over the presidency before with a technopath, and Ropte would be far more likely to succeed. If Ropte blocks the president’s genetic testing and term limits, and convinces the rest of the Triad to back him, he could conceivably win the next election and become the most powerful man in the US, and eventually the world. Stefan and my father might trust him to do what’s best for the Emporium, and maybe he will for a time. He’ll definitely need help in removing the current presidential term limits and controlling the voting. But after that”—he lifted his shoulders—“anything could happen.”

“Well, it’s far from over,” I said. David Ropte didn’t have the power he needed, not yet, and maybe we could make certain he didn’t succeed, regardless of the support from the Emporium. A lot would depend upon his ability and how vulnerable he was after we got rid of his henchmen.

I opened my mouth to ask Jeane about Ropte’s ability when Ritter nearly exploded through the door. “Come to the sitting room,” he said. “Something’s happened!”

For a brief second, we took in his tightly clenched jaw and the fury in his eyes, then all of us sprang to our feet and ran past him. Jeane was last, but Ritter made sure she wasn’t forgotten. He brought up the rear, and the way she hurried to catch up to me, putting space between herself and Ritter, gave me a deep satisfaction I’d never admit to.

In the sitting room, we found Noah, Mari, and Patrick staring with disbelief at the screen. A video showed flames engulfing a section of the Capitol. After several seconds, people began running from the building.
Too many,
I thought,
for this early in the morning.
Then all at once several of the people dropped to the ground without warning. There seemed to be no pattern. One woman was shot in the back and her hands flung wide in shock. Some of those who hadn’t fallen tried to carry the others, only to be shot themselves.

A young woman with long brown hair appeared on the screen as the video started over. “This is the footage caught by a tourist just a few minutes ago,” she said, her voice unnaturally animated. “We’re playing it for you without the sound because the screaming is simply too terrifying. From what we can tell, a bomb went off inside the Capitol. As lawmakers, already hard at work even at six in the morning, hurried desperately for the exits, snipers opened fire on them.” She paused and took a long breath. “We have no idea who is responsible or how many have been injured. It is also unknown if this terrorist attack comes from overseas or from fellow Americans. There are numerous snipers, apparently. Everything within a mile of the Capitol is in complete chaos. Miraculously, some people managed to help others to safety, even though they themselves were shot numerous times.”