Call Out (24 page)

“Take your time, Stretch,” Ashe said.

The barest hint of a smile touched the
corners of London’s mouth and was gone again. “The images were
vague, before. Like a dream. A nightmare. This time was
different.”

“More vivid?” Ashe guessed.

London raised and lowered his head in a
slow-motion nod. “Yeah. Not like a dream. More like....” He trailed
off, looking for words again.

“Like a movie?” Adrian asked.

“No. Not really,” London replied, his voice
hardly more than a whisper. “More like...it was happening while I
watched.” He raised his head to glance around the room. “But
Martine...she stopped it.”

“That’s why I brought her in,” Quinn said. He
looked down at Martine and said, “I didn’t know it would wipe you
out like this.”

Martine made a sound of derision deep in her
throat and struggled to sit up. “I am not wiped out,” she
protested, her Haitian accent stronger than usual. “But I admit I
was not prepared for the depth of this Julia’s....depravity.”

London took a deep breath and let it out. His
voice sounded almost normal again when he said, “I need to know
what you saw.”

It was Quinn who protested. “I don’t think
that’s a good idea. You’re already in shock....”

“I need to know,” London said, cutting him
off. “All of this – it’s about me. Julia wanted to send me a
message, and I need to know what that message said.”

“She wasn’t sending you a message,” Martine
said, leaning forward to look up into London’s eyes. “She was
trying to break you. Had you seen what I saw...I don’t want to know
what would have happened. Hearing it second hand will be bad
enough, but I agree that you should know.” She pointed at me and
then to Adrian. “You two don’t need to hear it.” I started to
protest, but she cut me off. “Just go,” she urged, her voice soft
and earnest.

“Please, Em,” London murmured in my ear.

Ashe nodded. “You two should go. We’ll tell
you what we can, but right now you need to clear out.”

As much as I hated being sent out of the room
so the Super Friends could have a pow-wow, I knew that arguing
would only delay the inevitable. I hugged London as best I could
while sitting next to him, turned his face toward me to press a
quick kiss to his lips, and then followed Adrian out of the living
room.

By some unspoken agreement, we wandered down
the hallway toward the bedrooms. Dylan stepped out into the hall as
we passed her door.

“We heard yelling,” she said.

I turned to face Dylan, and past her I could
see Brian tugging a t-shirt over his sweaty, tangled hair. No need
to ask why it had taken them so long to investigate the
shouting.

“It was Martine,” Adrian told her. “There was
another attack.”

“On Martine?”

“On London,” I said. “Martine kind of
intercepted it.”

“They said it was a vision,” Adrian added,
“like the one....”

“Like the one Julia threw at me,” Brian said,
cutting off the explanation. “Shit.”

He pushed past all of us, headed for the
living room. Adrian followed close on his heels. I could hear him
telling Brian that we’d been kicked out of the room, but Brian
wasn’t listening.

“Tell me what’s going on,” Dylan
demanded.

I sighed and gestured for her to follow me. I
led her to my room and crawled up onto the bed to sit with my back
against the headboard. Dylan perched sidesaddle on the edge of the
bed, facing me. Once we were settled, I told her what I knew about
the attack.

“That fucking crazy bitch,” Dylan
snarled.

“She’s a dead crazy bitch,” I said, startled
by the strength and conviction in my own voice. “She just doesn’t
know it yet. I hope I get the chance to do it myself.”

We were both quiet for a little while,
stewing.

“Do you really think you could do it?” Dylan
asked.

“Kill Julia?”

“Yeah.”

I thought about it for a minute. “If it were
kill-or-be-killed, or kill-or-watch-someone-I-love-get-killed, then
hell yeah. But just to put her out of our misery....” I sighed.
“No. I don’t think so.”

“Me, either. Even after everything,” Dylan
admitted. “So...how screwed up is it that I really hope she puts me
in one of those kill-or-be-killed situations so I can pop a cap in
her ass?”

I smirked and shook my head. “Pretty screwed
up, Dylan. But I feel the same damned way.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Dylan and I both realized at the same time
that Brian and Adrian hadn’t returned from the front room.

“So the little women have to sit in a corner
and be quiet?” Dylan asked, her eyes flashing. “I don’t fucking
think so.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “So not happening.”

We made our way down the hall together, both
of us spoiling for a fight. I walked into the living room a second
or two ahead of Dylan, ready to tear into the first person who
questioned my being there.

Two steps into the room, I froze in my
tracks. Dylan and I weren’t the only ones spoiling for a fight. The
air crackled with tension in a very literal sense. The hair on the
back of my neck stood on end.

“Why would you even suggest that?” London
demanded, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. He glared at
Quinn, his breath coming in short, ragged bursts.

“Because it could be useful,” Quinn
replied.

“Useful? How the fuck could it be
useful?”

“How could what be useful?” Dylan asked.

London whirled to face us, his eyes blazing.
I couldn’t see magical auras like Adrian, but I swear I could feel
the power radiating off of him. For the first time, he kind of
scared me.

Brian laid a hand on London’s arm. “Quinn
wants to know if London can do this sending thing now.”

I saw my own disbelief mirrored in Dylan’s
face as she turned toward Quinn. “You want to know if he can make
people see nightmares? What the fuck? How is that going to be
helpful? Are you trying to give the crazy bitch another reason to
want him on her side? Cause that’s what’s going to happen if he
starts throwing visions at her.”

“I never suggested he try a sending on
Julia,” Quinn said. “But we don’t have anyone here who can gauge
London’s power without seeing what he can do and how fast he can
pick it up. I just think it would be good to know these things
since it could make a big difference in a fight.”

Ashe tried to talk, but London interrupted,
his voice low and hard. It was scary and sexy all at the same time.
“If you don’t want me to try the sending on Julia, then which one
of my friends did you want me to torture?”

Quinn just stood there looking like a landed
fish, at a total loss. I guess he hadn’t thought things
through.

My mouth opened of its own volition, and I
promptly shoved my foot in it. “Who says it has to be torture?” I
heard myself ask. “Why couldn’t you send happy thoughts? Rainbows
and kittens or something?”

London turned a little more, so he was facing
me full-on. He didn’t even seem to notice when Brian’s hand
tightened on his arm in a gesture of warning. “Whose side are you
on?”

“Don’t you snap at me, London Dahlbeck,” I
snapped right back. “All I did was ask a question.”

London shook off Brian’s hand – I guess he
had noticed it after all – and lowered his head, every muscle in
his body still tense with rage. I thought he was trying to get
himself under control. Boy was I wrong.

As temper tantrums go, London’s was a unique
one. It didn’t involve yelling, or hitting anyone, or breaking
things. He struck out with his magic instead, and I never even saw
the strike coming.

Between one breath and the next, I found
myself sprawled, naked, on satin sheets. London, also naked, stood
at the foot of the bed staring down at me with a predatory gleam in
his eyes. He stalked forward like a jungle cat on the prowl to
crawl onto the bed between my legs, his hands gliding over my bare
skin as he moved forward. He paused with his hands on my spread
thighs to look me in the eye. His tongue darted out to moisten his
lips and my breath caught in my throat. His eyes never leaving
mine, he slowly lowered his head....

And then I was back in the living room of the
safe house, head spinning and breath coming in short gasps. I think
I would have been on the floor if Adrian and Brian weren’t holding
me up. I leaned harder against Brian, and he wrapped his arm around
me. I looked up at him and was startled by what I saw there: he was
looking at London – his longtime friend and almost brother– like he
wanted to punch him in the throat.

“I’m okay, Brian,” I managed to say. I hugged
him a little tighter and forced myself to face London.

The rage had faded from London’s face,
replaced by a strange combination of hunger and guilt. I pushed
away from Brian and held a hand out toward London.

“Truce?”

London swallowed hard, nodded, and then
stepped forward, ignoring my proffered hand in favor of wrapping me
in his arms. I hugged him back, and I felt some of his tension
ease.

“You’re a total bastard, you know that,
right?”

London ran a hand over my hair. “I’m sorry,”
he murmured.

“Did you seriously have to stop right when
things were getting interesting?”

That surprised a laugh out of him. “Blame
Martine. Or Ashe, actually, since it was his idea. They stopped
me.”

I turned in his arms to look at everyone
else. “You all suck,” I said.

Ashe’s face broke into a smile, and he shook
his head. “Trouble,” he said.

Everyone started asked questions then: asking
if I was okay (Brian and Adrian), asking for details of the sending
(Quinn), asking London what the hell he had been thinking (Brian,
again). I ignored them all, waving away the questions with an
impatient flap of my hand. Instead of answering them, I pulled
London over to the sofa to cuddle. It wasn’t what I wanted, but it
would do for now. At the moment, I had questions of my own.

“Okay, so....” I let everyone simmer down and
settle into their own seats. “Long story short: I’m fine, and
London proved he can handle that sending thing just fine – at least
from across the room. Farther than that and who knows? That good
enough for you Quinn?”

Quinn had the good grace to look ashamed of
the furor he’d caused. “More than.”

“Good. Now maybe you boys covered this while
I was exiled from the room, but there’s something that’s bugging
me. London picked this thing up on the fly because he’s a special
flavor of...what’s the word you guys use? Practictioner?” Quinn
nodded, and I continued. “What I want to know is how did Julia
learn to do it? Last night, Ashe said he didn’t think Julia had the
ability to launch a psychic attack, but we know she’s behind this –
or at least behind the attack on Brian.”

“That’s another thing,” Dylan added. “Why
attack Brian in person if she could do this sending thing from a
distance? Why take that kind of risk?”

Ashe and Quinn exchanged a look, and Quinn
said, “There are a couple of theories on that.”

“Hypotheses,” Martine corrected with a roll
of her eyes. I smiled at her, and she smiled back. “And you only
need one hypothesis if it’s the correct one. In this case, that
would be this: Julia wanted us to know that she has the ability to
project visions as well as physical sensations and she wanted us to
know that she was watching us very closely.”

“It’s also possible,” Quinn added, “that she
doesn’t have enough metaphysical juice for long-distance sendings.
She may have chosen a face-to-face attack to throw up a red herring
so we wouldn’t know who was behind the long-distance attacks.”

“Even then the ability to cast visions isn’t
something that should be in her repertoire,” Martine said. “And I
do not believe in your red herring ‘theory’. She is behind it. I’m
certain of it.”

“How can you....”

Martine cut off whatever Quinn had been in
the process of asking. “London, did it feel like Julia?”

“What....” London trailed off, turning
contemplative. After a minute or two he nodded. “Yeah. Yeah it did.
And the attacks from before felt the same.”

“There,” Martine said. “This Julia is
responsible for the attacks.”

“But how?” I asked.

“Now that is a good question,” Ashe said.
“And one we’ve been tossing around for a couple days now. One
possibility is that it was a latent ability. That happens
sometimes, a practitioner has a skill lying dormant that they don’t
realize is there until they’re a little older and wiser – or until
they end up between a rock and a hard place.”

“It isn’t likely, in this case,” Martine
added.

“No, it isn’t,” Quinn agreed. “It’s pretty
common for mainstream practitioners, but it’s extremely rare in
agents because we undergo extensive testing.”

“Could it be she’s like London?” Dylan asked.
“A mimic or whatever? And she somehow managed to hide it?”

“Again, not likely,” Quinn said. “If that’s
the case, then her mentor would have known. Once he – or she –
started training Julia, the mimic thing would have been
obvious.”

I turned to look at London. Our eyes met and
something just clicked inside my head. I saw in his eyes that he’d
been similarly struck, but I was still surprised when we both
responded with the same thought. I voiced that thought as a single
word while London opted for complete sentences, but we were on the
same track.

“What if Julia’s file is wrong?” he asked at
the same time I said, “Misinformation.”

Ashe’s brow furrowed. “Wrong as in someone
made a mistake and didn’t put down that she’s got the ability to
send visions?”

I shook my head. “Wrong as in someone is
covering up the extent of her abilities.”

“Not possible,” Quinn said.

Ashe snorted. “Sure it is. How many people
have clearance to edit files in that computer system?”