Blood Moons (34 page)

But she couldn't, and he knew it.

308

Blood Moons

by Alianne Donnelly

There was nothing around him to betray his location. If she killed him now, the girl would die of starvation.

"Play a game with me,"
he invited.
"Tit for tat."

"Never!"

"Then she dies."

He was moving inside her mind now, copying her movements, learning from them. He brought back her school memories, looking for anyone he could use against her. There were no faces in her past for him to latch on to.
There'd been
no one to meet her at the shuttle station.
Dara hadn't expected anyone, but had hoped someone might care that she was free and back on her home planet. Even if it was just the media. The killer tried to exploit that emotional weakness, turn it against her.

Dara retreated quickly, slamming back to her own mind. If there hadn't been a clear connection before, there was one now. She shuddered at the feel of it, like a cold, slimy noose around her. Her skin crawled to have anything to do with him.

But he was
there
now, a tangible presence. And she could block him. Smiling darkly, in body and mind, she put up all her shields, locking him out. Incensed, he battered them again and again, but there was no way he could get through.

Dara may have opened a path, but it was
her
path, and she could close it any time. The killer wasn't a mind reader. That was the one thing the rest of them could be thankful for.

"That was a stupid, reckless, idiotic thing to do!"

MacMurphy was driving her home.

"You should calm down before you have a heart attack."

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"I should kick your ass out of the transport and make you walk back. What the hell got into you?"

"A serial killer," she answered.

A muscle ticked in his jaw and his knuckles turned white.

"I thought you'd be happy. I got him out. All on my own."

"What you did," he said, gritting his teeth, "is expose yourself and put him on guard. He knows we're after him and can figure out where he is. What if he moves up his plans and kills the girl tonight?"

Dara wasn't worried about that. But she frowned, looking out the window. "Where are we going? I thought you were driving me home." Not that she was looking forward to another cold night in her empty apartment that had started to resemble a tomb of late.

"You're not going home," he told her. "The psycho who killed and cut up three people was in your mind, probably knows where you live. I'm taking you to HQ and you'll stay there until this is taken care of."

"Your recruitment tactics are strange and unusual."

Hugging herself, she pretended that the arms around her were Tristan's and it was his chest at her back rather than the transport seat. It was little things like that, minute actions, brief fantasies, that got her through the day.

"Fuck recruitment!"

Okay, yeah, he is pissed.

"I don't give a damn what you do with your head, where you do it, or how. But you're on
my
watch now. And I sure as shit don't need more telepath blood on my hands."

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Dara shut her mouth. This was the man who had been with the Special Unit since its inception.
He bears their deaths in
his eyes.
Now she understood. Like a child reaching out recklessly to an open flame, she'd done something really dangerous without realizing it, and had scared him more than she had herself. Dara wanted to feel great about what she'd achieved, but the truth was she'd messed up.

She was the only link the police had to the killer. Dara hadn't yet told MacMurphy the worst part. Now, even more than before, they couldn't afford for her to take such risks.

MacMurphy pulled into the private parking lot and waited until the door closed behind them before he unlocked the transport to let her out. He didn't wait for her, but stomped off inside, expecting her to follow.

Some of the recruits were waiting in the training room.

This sort of thing had never happened to anyone in the unit, and they were morbidly curious about the outcome. Calen wasn't among them. MacMurphy had told Dara this morning that the agent had accepted another assignment off world and wouldn't be back for at least a week.

The TV was on, three stations at the same time, but the audio only broadcast from one. She hadn't intended to watch, but the words
New Alaska
caught her attention and she looked for the source of the voice. In the middle of the TV

screen, a news reporter stood in the glare of two of the planet's four suns, his eyes shielded by dark glasses.

As he talked, the camera cut away to show a photo inside the prison, looking down into the abyss, with levels of cells all around. A stock photo most likely. "...
reports are still coming
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in of violent outbreaks inside the correctional facility,
" he was saying, "
and the casualty count is still unknown.
"

Had there been an attempted prison break?

"
The officials are keeping a tight rein on the information
they give the media, but we have learned from an anonymous
source that various illegal experiments may have been the
cause for this sudden event. The data we have received is
sketchy so far, but we do know that extensive studies have
been performed on the prisoners at this facility.
" The picture cut to something else, a video of a lab technician administering some kind of vaccine. It was clearly not from New Alaska, but they showed it for dramatic effect.

Dara felt something akin to vindication in Tristan's place.

The news story would shame New Alaska, maybe even shut it down. It was a small revenge, not nearly enough for what they'd done to him, but it was a start.

The man's next words made Dara cold to her very core.

"
We are receiving news so disturbing it's difficult to believe.

According to our source, the newest study on the prison's
agenda, and the most probable cause of this violence, is what
they referred to as a—quote, unquote—reproduction study.

We are still looking into exactly what this means
"—that was a lie, they already knew, she could tell by the sickened tone in his voice—"
but as of three p.m. local time, all experiments
have been suspended pending an extensive inquiry...
" Dara stopped listening.

She was chilled to the bone, remembering the physical exam Amelia had so frantically forged. Tristan's relief that she'd
found a loophole
. He wouldn't tell her what it had all 312

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been about. She had a feeling he wouldn't have to now. Her memory of the night they'd left was hazy, mostly just flashes of dead bodies and sounds of fighting. But she remembered earlier, when Amelia and a group of guards had escorted her and Tristan to their cell. Security had already been expecting trouble.

Dara didn't want to dwell on it, or even guess at what might have happened after they'd left. It was too much. She never wanted to think about that place again.

"Turn it off," she heard MacMurphy order. It was a cue for the recruits to leave, but they didn't.

Dara pushed the whole disgusting business of prisons from her mind and tried to remember what was most important now: a girl's life hung in the balance. "I have to talk to you,"

she told MacMurphy's back as he headed for the plate of cookies. He hadn't looked at her since the meeting had broken up at the police station.

She could see his shoulder muscles bunching when he stopped in his tracks, and she expected him to start breaking things. When he pivoted to look at her, his gaze said,
Explain
yourself.

Dara swallowed nervously, looking around at the recruits.

"Alone?"

She could read their disappointment, but one and all, they picked themselves up and filed out of the room. MacMurphy assumed a military-like stance with his arms crossed over his chest.

"Umm, you may want to sit down for this."

His shoulders slumped. "I'm not going to like this, am I?"

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"No."

"Just tell me."

"I wasn't looking at his thoughts, but I picked up on some of them anyway. Katie is his last
message
to the city. In his twisted mind, all this was him trying to intimidate us into becoming better people. But we didn't listen. We didn't change. So once Katie's message is delivered he'll be done with intimidation and rituals. He'll start taking people at random, every week, maybe every day. He won't stop unless we make him."

"
And you waited until now to tell me!
"

Dara flinched. Even those eavesdropping outside the door started humming with gossip. "I couldn't tell you in front of the police," she said in her defense. "You were there; you know what they're already planning. If we let the police get involved, they'll just make it easier for him to take people.

He's
eager
for them to implement standard procedure."

MacMurphy punched the wall. "Fuck," he said emphatically.

"It'll be like herding sheep to the slaughterhouse." He sat, looking much too old for Dara's peace of mind. "What do you suggest?"

"I think the Special Unit needs to be in charge of this one.

I can show you what he looks like. Call in every agent and every favor you have. The more of us there are, walking the streets and looking for a face, the faster we'll get the bastard."

The recruits burst back inside. "Yes," the one at the front said. "We'll do it."

"Show us what he looks like," another added.

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"We'll find him!"

"Give us a chance."

They were working themselves up into a fever pitch, shouting over each other. Then, as if they'd rehearsed strategy, half flocked around MacMurphy to persuade him they were ready for this assignment, and the other half surrounded Dara, asking her to show them what "the bogeyman" looked like. It was sheer chaos for a few minutes.

Stunned, Dara didn't know what to say, or even where to look.

She was hearing voices on top of voices, on top of thoughts, all of it a mishmash of raw emotion, determination, curiosity, fear, and eagerness. They had some idea of what they were trying to get themselves into, but no sense to turn and walk the other way.

Finally MacMurphy raised his hand and instantly put a stop to it. The recruits converged back into one mass and sat on the floor facing him, waiting for instructions. They were young, teenagers and twenty-somethings with their entire lives ahead of them. Lives they were willing to put on the line to catch this guy. It was unfair, but this was their army. And even though Dara cringed at sending them out, they had no other choice.

"Dara," MacMurphy said tiredly, returning to what they'd been saying before the recruit invasion. "You won't be walking anywhere."

Outside the door, more recruits and full agents started appearing, coming in from all over the building to listen. It gave her hope, however fleeting, that maybe ... maybe they 315

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were enough. Maybe, if they all banded together for once, the net they created would be sufficient to catch this guy. All they had to do was rethink their methods and completely reengineer the way the Special Unit operated.

"I know," she said. "You need me to look for him my way."

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316

Blood Moons

by Alianne Donnelly

Dara had been practicing slowly opening and closing her connection with the killer for hours now and it was giving her a migraine. MacMurphy had assigned one of the agents to help her—a woman in her thirties, with a husband and three children. Her name was Eleanor, but MacMurphy called her Nell.

It was a pain in the ass because she couldn't practice on
that
link directly, unless she wanted
him
to get back into her mind. She'd had to create another connection with Nell and work with that. Dara didn't like her teaching style. Nell kept saying things like, "Good job. You're doing great," and, "Try again. You'll get it next time."

Very nice and sweet, and motherly. And completely useless to Dara. What she needed was clear directions; someone to tell her what she was doing wrong and how to do it right. Someone who wasn't afraid to be a little mean.

God, she missed Tristan.

If he was here, he'd be pushing her to get it right, not giving her the night off because of a headache.
"You'll have
an even bigger one by the time we're done,"
he'd say. He'd give her an order, she'd try it, and ultimately find her own way of doing things. He'd be angry, but would praise her gruffly for getting things done. Dara needed him here so badly, she ached.

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What was he doing now? Was he terrorizing the doctors?

Did they have to sedate him again? He wouldn't like that.

Dara wished she could talk to him. Had he heard about New Alaska? Did he even care? By now he probably knew she'd left and wasn't coming back.

Strangely lonely here among so many people who were like her, she turned the key to unlock the world they'd made.

She didn't enter, just listened at the door a moment. Dara had no idea how this worked. She knew the world was an exact copy in both of their minds, built on their connection, but she guessed that with so many light years between them, they'd probably never encounter each other, even if they stood in the exact same spot.

Dara opened the door and stepped into the sunlight.