Trance. Part 33

"Marco-"

He turned, dropping his underwear. His body shrank. Skin darkened and black hair grew into a shining coat. He groaned, and the pained cry turned into a feral hiss. He hunched over, his back legs changing shape and adding roped muscle. I watched the transformation, as awed by it as the first time. The grown panther turned to face me, favoring his left front paw. He blinked greenish eyes, and then got to work sniffing things.

I peered out the window, hoping for a glimpse of Gage somewhere on the grounds, and got a view of the city. Not helpful. Panther-Marco growled. I turned. He loped out of the room, intent on whatever he smelled. I followed at a distance, letting him do his thing. His three-legged limping ended in the waiting room down the hall. He stopped in the doorway and growled.

My stomach heaved. Julie Dent, the on-call nurse who always seemed to be around, lay in the middle of the room, surrounded by overturned games and coloring books and broken crayons. Her neck was twisted at a strange angle, wide-open eyes dull and lifeless.

"My G.o.d." I didn't have to touch Julie to know she was dead. I did anyway. Her skin was warm; she hadn't died long ago.

Marco growled, sniffed her hair. He sneezed, growled again, and began another fast three-legged limp down the corridor. I trotted after him.

Back to the stairs and down. On each landing he paused. I opened the floor exits. He sniffed. We continued. He left the stairwell on the second floor, speeding up from a gentle lope to a full-on run. Faster than I was, even on a broken paw, he turned a corner before I was halfway there. I found him scratching and snarling at a utility closet door.

I twisted the k.n.o.b with my left hand. Locked. A dimesize orb into the keyhole shattered the lock. The door swung in. I found a switch and turned on the light.

Two rows of industrial shelving held dozens of boxes of supplies. Cleaning solution, bleach, mop heads, sponges, a couple of brooms and dust pans. Marco went inside. He nosed a box on a bottom shelf, Scouring Pads handwritten on the side. I pulled it off the shelf and placed it gently on the floor. The tape was cut, flaps folded in.

I looked into his feline eyes and swore I saw fear. He wanted me to see what he smelled. I pulled out the flaps. My entire body went cold, and I had the very real urge to p.i.s.s myself. I saw the colorful wires, the connections and screws and chips. The thing that scorched itself into my brain was the timer, and the little red numbers ticking down from :32 ... 31 ... 30 ...

"Move!"

Back down the hall, I ran faster than I'd ever run in my life. I smashed through the stairwell door, Marco on my heels, whining with each step on his broken paw. Once through the door, he bolted down the stairs. I took them two at a time, skipping as many as three in my haste, and somehow never fell.

I hadn't thought to count, to try to measure the remaining time. Blind panic took over. My heart thundered. As long as Marco remained ahead of me, I simply ran. We hit the bottom of the stairwell and burst through the exit, raced across the lobby and pristine floors that had seen the steps of hundreds of Rangers, through the sliding gla.s.s doors my ancestors had pa.s.sed between, the building I'd been born in.

"Keep going!" I shouted at Marco, and he did, galloping toward the Base.

I yanked open the driver's door of the van, ignoring Ethan's questions. I cranked the engine, reached across the wheel to shift with my left hand, and slammed my foot against the gas pedal. The van surged forward. In that instant, the Medical Center exploded. A maelstrom of sound, fire, and flying debris shot toward the van.

Before I could drive ten feet, the first shock wave struck. We spun out of control, and the counterclockwise rotation slammed my left shoulder into the door. My head cracked off the window. Colorful lights danced in my vision and the constant spinning nauseated me. I tried to gain control of the wheel and turn into the spin. Through the windshield and hail of debris, I saw a familiar blue-clad shape. Looked right into his silver-flecked eyes.

"Gage!" I screamed.

The fender of the van clipped him, knocking him sideways and out of sight.

Ethan shouted. All motion stopped abruptly as the van hit something else. Metal crunched. I lurched into the pa.s.senger seat, landing on my cast-covered hand. Pain blurred my eyesight and threatened to steal consciousness away. Something hissed. Probably the engine. I couldn't move, could barely breathe.

My head and hand throbbed. My stomach lurched, and I vomited onto the floor. Bile seared my throat and tongue. I retched hard, turning myself inside out.

"Teresa?" Ethan's voice, tentative.

I grunted-the only reply I could muster.

"Did we hit him?"

I spat, swallowed. My eyes watered. "Yeah."

"Can you move?"

"Think so." I tested my legs, ankles, hips, found them able. "You?"

"I'd rather not."

With a deep breath and an acute amount of pain, I got my left arm beneath my body and pushed myself back into the driver's seat. The cast had not cracked, but my entire right arm ached like a son of a b.i.t.c.h, and my exposed fingers were swollen. Blood tickled the left side of my face. One more head wound and I'd have no brain cells left.

The van had smashed into an parked car, a good fifty yards from the smoldering, burning ruins of the Medical Center. Didn't know whose car, didn't much care. Ethan was wedged on the floor of the backseat, his head resting against the pa.s.senger side door. His lip was split and bleeding, and he was paler than white.

"Are you stuck?"

"No," he said, panting the words. "Think I ripped some st.i.tches, though." Sure enough, scarlet was seeping through his T-shirt in several places. He wasn't that white from blood loss-shock was setting in hard and fast. It was my fault-me and my brilliant decision to take him out of the safety of a friend's house and drag him back home.

My door opened. I shrieked, panic ripping through me. Marco stood there, completely naked, his mouth twisted in a grimace. Nicks and burns covered his bare torso, and he cradled his swollen left hand close to his chest.

"Dios, are you two all right?" he asked.

"We'll live," I said. Relief at seeing Marco on both feet did little to curb my rising fear. "Where's Gage? Did you see him? I think we hit him."

Marco shook his head and darted away.

"Stay here," I said to Ethan.

He grunted. "No problem."

I slid out of the van, amazed I still possessed the coordination to do so. My legs wobbled, but didn't buckle. We'd stopped at the front of the parking lot. Only four cars were there, and we'd hit the nearest. Waves of heat rolled away from the blazing fire. My lungs seized, and I coughed until my chest ached. Should have built up a freaking tolerance to smoke by now.

"Catalepsia, here!"

I ran toward the sound of Marco's voice-behind the van, back toward a hedge that separated the lot from the street. We'd flattened part of it. I saw the top of Marco's head on the other side of the hedge, skirted it, and dropped to my knees next to them.

Gage was curled on his side, face twisted in pain, eyes squeezed shut. His chest rose and fell steadily and that, more than anything else, settled my nerves. A little. I brushed the tips of my fingers over his forehead, through his hair.

"Gage, it's me," I said. "I am so sorry."

He grunted. "s.h.i.t, that hurts."

"What hurts?"

"Ribs."

Frustrated tears stung my eyes, their presence made worse by the billowing smoke all around us. Sirens wailed in the distance. The fire trucks didn't have the gate code.

"Marco, get to the gate. Make sure emergency rescue can get inside to put out the fire."

"No," Gage said. Something in his voice sent a chill down my spine.

I gaped at him. "What? Why not?"

Gage sat up faster than I expected. I fell backward onto my a.s.s, too surprised to react when he punched Marco square in the jaw. Marco flew sideways, cracked his head off the curb, and lay still.

I stared, momentarily forgetting to breathe. Gage twisted around, still sitting. My stomach lurched. If I'd had anything left to vomit, I would have.

Specter's yellow-orange aura glowed from Gage's eyes. A wicked smile twisted his mouth. "What's the matter, Trance?" The voice no longer belonged to Gage, but to someone-something-else. "Don't you want to be alone with me for a while?"

Thirty-four.

Specter 2 We stared at each other for what felt like hours. It was likely just seconds. I saw no familiarity in the face that I knew so well and cared for so much. Just the icy glare of someone foreign and evil. A murderer controlling Gage's body. It was my fault, and I found no comfort in the fact that he had no weapons, or that Gage's powers couldn't hurt me.

"Speechless?" he asked.

I swallowed. "Who are you?"

"Who I've always been."

"You're not Specter."

"In a way, I am. Specter was the name given to a man who once wielded the powers I possess."

"Why?"

He clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "Why don't we take a walk? I will better explain things to you."

"No."

His eyes narrowed. He pointed at Marco. "Shall I kill your friend there to prove my point? Or shall we just take a walk?"

"Where?"

He reached for Marco.

"Okay," I said quickly.

He stopped, stood, and then offered me a hand. I ignored him and stood on my own. Dizziness nearly toppled me. I sucked in a deep breath, trying hard to focus.

"Watch your step, Trance. Don't think I can't hurt this boy. I can manipulate his senses until the stress puts him into a coma. Or perhaps open up his sight and look into the sun and blind him."

My insides liquefied. My worst nightmare was standing in front of me. The only no-win situation I feared encountering. Our only proven methods of forcing Specter out of a body were unconsciousness or death. I couldn't entertain those thoughts yet. Killing wasn't an option. Knocking him out might be possible, but I needed to stay with him. At least until I figured out where his corporeal body was and how to trap him.

"I won't fight you," I said.

"Good girl. Now walk toward the Base."

I did as he asked, not looking at the van as we pa.s.sed side by side. If Ethan was listening, I prayed he kept silent and out of sight. The only way to end this was to play it out. Something about this wolf-in-Specter-clothing seemed familiar ... the way he talked, the words he chose.

"I knew you'd be the most difficult," he said casually. He could have been discussing a recipe. "I knew the first night, in the motel. Your powers are incredible, Trance, and quite fascinating. I had to know why you, too, had been gifted powers not your own."

I almost stopped walking, but didn't want to give him another excuse to threaten someone. He didn't know why he had his powers, either. Or she? I had to get more information before he just hauled off and killed me.

"You think my powers were a deliberate gift?" I said, refusing to look at him.

"In a way, yes. Your powers were likely, as hypothesized, the last attempt of a dying woman to manipulate powers she'd been h.o.a.rding for fifteen years. Similar energy powers run in families, so the match to your grandmother's power made sense. She tried to even the odds by giving you something she thought you could handle."

A tremor ripped down my spine. Only eight people knew about Agent McNally's theory on my powers. Oh G.o.d, who was he? Was it McNally herself? The notion he actually was Gage was there and gone instantly. Impossible.

Wasn't it? McNally had warned me that the only person I could truly trust was myself.

No, I knew Gage, dammit. It wasn't him. And it didn't explain how this doppelganger came into possession of the Specter powers. Unless-h.e.l.l. Unless Marcus Spence had family we didn't know about.

We entered the Base. He pointed toward the elevator. It opened when I pressed the call b.u.t.ton, and inside we went. This was too planned, too perfect. My brain roared on information overload. This couldn't be happening.

We rode up silently and stopped on the third floor. He nudged me out and to the left. The gymnasium was this way and, sure enough, he pointed me toward those double doors. I inhaled sharply and pushed. Stale air greeted me, as did the sharp odor of blood. Three steps in, I stopped, unable to see in the dim light. Gage moved behind me and flipped a switch. Fluorescent light flooded the room.

I backed up, right into his chest, my lips parting.

The room was the size of half a basketball court, with high ceilings and mats rolled across half the hardwood floor. The wall opposite the door was a bank of windows, the wall to our left all mirrors and dance barres. Unused equipment-a trampoline, uneven bars, a vault-were still shoved in the left corner. My attention was drawn to the objects directly ahead and slightly to the right.

No, not objects. People.

In the near-center of the room was a balance beam. Renee was tied to it with colorful jump ropes, her arms and legs stretched and twisted into pretzel-like shapes, knotted around each other in ways even her flexible body was not meant to turn. Her eyes were open and fixed on the ceiling. Sweat dripped down her face and had pooled on the floor beneath the beam. She seemed past pain, past agony, square in the center of shock.

Dahlia lay on the floor below the beam, bound in a practice mat like a jelly roll, with only her head sticking out. Unconscious? Dead? She was too far away for me to tell. Dr. Seward and Agent McNally were likewise tied up with jump ropes-and drugged or concussed-on the floor near a second balance beam. Psystorm was swathed in karate uniforms, the colorful belts cinched around his legs, arms and torso creating a motley straitjacket. He was blindfolded by a black belt, his body carelessly dumped in the far right corner of the room. Only Caleb and the rest of the medical staff were missing from the waking nightmare. No, someone else was missing.

f.u.c.k. Me.

Anger replaced horror, and the anger quickly melted into rage. These were my friends, tied up and tormented by a deranged federal agent who was blackmailing me with Gage's body. As absurd as it sounded, I'd walked willingly into a no-win situation and needed a miracle to get back out again.

It took every ounce of self-control to not charge across the room and release my friends, consequences be d.a.m.ned. Instead, I pivoted and faced the doppelganger.

"So what are you going to tie me up with, Alex?" I asked. "Fuzzy handcuffs?"

Not-Gage blinked. His slow grin gave me the chills. "You think I'm Agent Grayson?"

"Aren't you?"

"Telling you would ruin the surprise. How do you know I haven't been Cipher this whole time?"

"Because I know him."

"Yes, you do, and quite intimately."

I glared, but kept my mouth shut.