The Fifth Clan (21 page)

"Instead you hid, and cowered. You denied your heritage. You could have been a new voice on the Council. A new leader amongst our kind."

I was beginning to get disgusted with him, which overrode my shock at seeing him again. "You don't care about our kind," I snapped. "You just want revenge against me. Don't pretend that you're doing this for the greater good of vampire kind. Did you send the vampires to attack Ghost and Grim? The ones that injured
Rachel and forced me to turn her?"

"Of course I did. It was relatively easy to plant the information I wanted them to have in their minds. They were positive they had received the orders from their individual clan heads."

"To what purpose?" I had to keep him talking. I had to use the same technique I had employed when I prevented the Vasith from discovering my Fifth Power in the first place. They can't pick the information from your brain if you’re not thinking about it.

"To take something else away from you. You swore you would never create a Child. I forced you to break your word, to prove that your promises, even to yourself, meant nothing. Words from the great Gabriel are nothing more than hot air."

"You wanted to hurt me?"

"Obviously."

"Well I don't want to hurt you." I launched myself forward. I hadn't considered doing it until the split second that I did, giving the least possible time for him to respond.

It was more than enough. A blast of force caught me in the chest and sent me flying back into the stone wall behind me. Rachel shrieked in surprise and I felt bones crumble as the stone behind me refused to yield against the force of my body. A moment
later Ghost grunted and crashed against the wall next to me.

That one hurt. In movies and anime a person gets thrown into a brick or a stone wall and they punch through it. Then they usually pick themselves up, sometimes painfully, but they most often still rise. In the real world when a soft flesh and bone body hits stone, the stone doesn't break. You do.

I dimly heard the door slam shut and Rachel nearly hyperventilating as she crawled over to me. I tasted blood in my mouth and through the pain I felt extreme warmth in my back as my body tried desperately to repair itself.

The pain alone caused me to black out with
Rachels' blurred face filling my vision as my last sight before blackness.

27

March ????, 2005: Scotland

When I came to again I was reasonably certain only a few minutes had passed. I was paralyzed from the neck down since my back hadn't healed itself yet and Rachel was still sobbing hysterically next to me.

"Good chocolate Christ on a cracker," I muttered, staring blankly at the ceiling again. Next to me I heard Ghost chuckle.

"You can say that again."

"Holy shit. Gabriel. I wasn't sure if you were going to come back from that one." Rachel patted my chest, her hands fluttering nervously around my torso and face. I could only feel when her hands reached my cheeks, but otherwise there was no
sensation below my neck.

"Well I'm not back yet. I'm paralyzed but give me an hour and it'll heal."

She nodded, eyes still brimming with tears and lower lip trembling.

"I'll be fine Child," I told her. "Injuries will heal. We have far more pressing concerns at the moment though."

"Like this Tatsuhito character?"

"You caught that huh?"

"I may not know Japanese but I can pick out a name when it's mentioned with the honorifics."

"Is there much you can't do? Hacking. Guns. Motorcycles. Seems there's no limit to the number of things you know how to do."

She suddenly looked rather nervous. "Um... I actually can't do some of that."

I blinked as another piece threatened to click into place. "Say what now?"

"I'm not much of a hacker. Guns and motorcycles I do know but computer technology on that kind of scale is a bit beyond my abilities. Tatsuhito was making me say that." She straightened up and glared at me suddenly. "And I thought you said that Vampires couldn't do the whole mind control thing."

"
H
e
can't," Ghost laughed. "He's part Vasith but not much for the telepathic skills."

"Most vampires can't," I said, ignoring Ghost with consummate skill and poise. "The Vasiths are the only ones capable of it and it's really difficult. You need an extremely powerful Vasith to manage it for any real length of time or over any distance so most don't even bother trying. I'm certainly not capable of it and that's what you were asking."

"So Tatsu is an über Vasith then, huh?"

"That seems to be the extent of it." I focused on my own abilities as a Vasith and tried to reach out beyond the walls of my cell to see if Grim was still present within the Hall. Two feet beyond the walls of the cell I hit a psychological wall. Vasith were stationed outside to shield the cell from Psychic signals. There would be no requesting help from the outside.

I wasn't even sure if Grim believed me to be guilty or innocent. I had no idea what was going on outside and it was kind of driving me crazy. I could exit the cell easily enough. Rachel’s' and my own Fifth Power would make removing the door or simply creating a hole in the wall a matter of simplicity in itself. The problem was we were both weaker than we could be right now and there were certainly a large number of powerful vamps and wolves outside waiting to stop any escape attempt.

"So. You didn't voluntarily come with me that day at your school did you? Or the night before at the club.
You weren't even supposed to be there in the first place. Were you?"

She looked down at her hands which were twisted together in her lap and sniffled quietly. "Not exactly. I was going out to meet some friends but it wasn't until I ran into you in the club that I felt his touch on my mind."

I sighed I should have known it had been too easy to convince her to come with me. The idea had been to protect her but I could have easily thrown Vera off her scent any number of ways. There hadn't really been any reason to bring Rachel with me now that I really sat back and considered it logically.

"So you slept with me against your will. Came along on this insane venture against your will. You even volunteered to be my child against your will didn't you? And then when I was stubborn about it he made sure that you would end up so injured that I wouldn't have any choice in the matter."

"Not entirely."

It was a quiet whisper but it caught my attention. I turned my head to look at her, already beginning to get some of the feeling back in my shoulders and chest as my body healed.

She fidgeted uncomfortably but suddenly squared her shoulders and looked down at me. "I might have just been a passenger in my own body for the last few weeks but I wasn't entirely against everything. Tatsu was just pushing things along by making me agree when it might have taken you a little longer to convince me otherwise." She frowned at my confused expression. "Oh come on Gabe. I'm a twenty first century child. We've got a far more morbid fascination with vampires and werewolves and zombies and such than older generations did. Most people my age might be at least willing to consider an offer to be a vampire. I might have had more questions to ask had it been entirely up to me but this is still fascinating."

I considered her quietly for a few minutes and realized that her feelings echoed the words she was saying. Her surface thoughts were clouded now but her emotions were still right on display when they were as strong as the ones she was currently experiencing. And emotions were harder to hide than thoughts so it was unlikely that Tatsuhito was messing with her head right at that moment. Not that he really had any reason to anymore. The damage had been done.

I slowly pushed myself up to a sitting position with my arms and dragged my still unresponsive legs with me until I was sitting with my back against one wall.

"Alright. Hold your questions until after we get out of
here and kick all the asses that we need to kick." I smiled at her and she smiled back, wiping the tears off her cheeks.

"Good to know you're not just going to roll over and give up."

"I've spent this long surviving, I'm not about to quit now." There was a brief pause as we looked at each other.               "Any ideas how we could get out of here?" Ghost asked.

* * * * * *

"Again."

......

"Again."

"How's this?"

"Not bad. Again."

I picked up a small chunk of stone and tossed it lightly a Rachel. She held out one hand and before the stone reached her she grabbed it with her mind and redirected it to the side. That was incredible progress in the last hour and could be crucial to our escaping long enough to find Grim. We needed to get to them and get them on our side as quickly as possible.

If we were even successful in getting out of our cell in the first place. At the moment we didn't have much of a plan in place. We were simply waiting until I had enough time to establish the feasibility of the wild half-baked idea that I had come up with.

In the meantime I had Rachel practicing with her gifts. She did have the same Fifth Power as I, making our escape plan a good opportunity for her to practice. I held up one finger as she smiled at me after stopping the rock from hitting her and cocked my head to the side.

The vampires on the other side of the wall were moving. The schedule was finally fixed in my mind. They kept a constantly shifting schedule, only stationary for five minutes at a time then the Vasith rotated ten feet around the square prison they had created.

They spread their minds out creating the psychic barrier I had felt that prevented me from sending out any signals. They rotated five of their number out every half hour so that I wouldn't get too used to the minds around me. Given enough time I might have found a way to penetrate the shield but with the constant introduction of new minds it made the effort more than it would have been worth.

On the other hand their physical location through the wall was far more interesting to me. I nodded once to Rachel and she ran around me, placing her hands on the wall behind where I stood. I waited a moment and then the signs of her power became evident. The stone rippled like waves on a pond and Ghost and I plunged our arms through the suddenly immaterial surface. On the other side I grabbed a Vasith around the neck and dragged him through the wall and into our cell. Before he had a chance to make any other sound I twisted hard and broke his neck while Ghost supported the suddenly slack body. Without removing his head there was a chance he might recover so we dropped his body and followed Rachel six feet to my left where she was already adjusting a new section of wall.

We continued in this way for six of the Vasith, pleased with the success of our plan when Rachel finally messed up. I had almost been expecting it. Only hours old and extremely inexperienced with her powers I was certainly taxing her abilities with this plan. With the seventh of our guards her concentration slipped. Just for a moment. But in that instant the wall became solid, with the guard we were pulling only halfway through. 

The sudden stop of her lower body didn't register at first as I pulled and with my enhanced strength I tore the poor woman in half at the waist. As blood and entrails splattered across the ground and splashed across her, Rachel flinched back and outside our cell raised voices could be heard. The stench of blood filled the air and the three remaining guards burst through the door.

"NOW!" I roared. Despite her panic Rachel still responded quickly and pushed at one of the guards. I pulled on the other two at the same time and their bodies collided in
midair with the loud snapping of bones and they began to scream.

I grabbed Rachel, slapped one hand against the wall and then plunged through it with her held in my arm and Ghost just head of me. Outside I set her down and took her face in my hands, concern welling inside me. "You ok?" I asked her.

She looked more than a little green but she nodded and swallowed hard. "We need to move, right?"

I smiled at her. Thrilled and impressed with her now that I knew that this was her first real exposure to this. Having Tatsuhito controlling her before certainly couldn't have been fun but she had been spared most of the
bloodshed. "Let's go."

The halls around us weren't marked in any way, and there was no real way to tell which way we were going at first. That's why we decided not to follow the halls.

"It's times like this that I wish Grim was around," I muttered as I adjusted the wall directly opposite our cell and stepped through it.

"Looking for someone stronger, huh?" Rachel didn't sound
too upset by the thought she had just voiced, but she definitely wasn't thrilled. I had expected some disappointment or even depression as soon as the words left my mouth but instead she was pissed. And I think it was at me.

"Not entirely. Grim could tell the wolves to back off and they have to obey. He's the Alpha." I didn't voice that we might need him against Tatsu. I had no idea how to fight a telepath with his level of power. I wasn't even sure it was possible. Unless I managed to overwhelm him somehow...

I looked both ways as we stepped through the wall into the next hall way and stared sprinting to my left as soon as we were through.

Grim, get your ass to
the Hall as quickly as possible
,
I sent out as loudly as I could. I had no idea if it would reach him but I knew it would reach a lot of other wolves and vampires between there and us.

I'd been accused of not having a plan a few too many times in the last month. And this time I did. I just hoped it would work without Tatsu interfering.

"Gabe, I really hope you've got some idea what you're doing," Ghost growled as he and Rachel pounded along beside me down the hall. We weren't being subtle and that was part of the plan that I wasn't thinking about.

Not thinking about something was a skill. One I had perfected early on due to my unusual nature. With multiple vampiric gifts floating around in my genetic makeup I had had to learn to compartmentalize my thinking. I used a different head space, as I called it, depending on which gift I was using and using multiple gifts at once required more focus. I tended to stick to one power at a time but I had kept the fifth power strictly controlled, hidden behind a mental wall.

It sounded all very technical when I put it that way but basically it amounted to I simply didn't think about it and if I wasn't actively thinking about it a Vasith couldn't pull it out of my head.

Sounds simple but try it. Don't think about a pink elephant right now. The majority of you reading these words just thought about a pink elephant. I however am not thinking about it even as I write it.

See how that works?

Moving on.

"I do, and I don't, Ghost. There is a method to my madness."

Rachel cried out, drawing my attention away from Ghost beside me and I saw her struggling against a hulking beast of a wolf. This one dwarfed Ghost's eight foot height by nearly
a foot and even in the high ceilinged hallways he had to hunch slightly to avoid scraping his head on the stones above us. I pushed myself harder to reach her when she cried out again and the air around her distorted as a wave of telekinetic energy burst out of her.

Much as happened in the smoke shop in Oregon the wolf was caught in the blast and sent flying headlong down the hallway.
He howled in outrage, which turned quickly to pain as he collided with three vampires as they rounded a corner. The four of them went down in a heap and I scooped Rachel into my arms as I ran past her, Ghost and I leaping over the tangled pile.