Mind Games (2 page)

Evan let out a breath he hadn’t been aware of holding, struggling to come to grips with a second chance at life after he’d felt the sure knowledge of his own death.

When the victorious vampire hunter completed his messy task, leaving the decapitated corpse where it lay, he turned his gaze to Evan and called him by name.

“Do I know you?” Evan asked.

“No,” he said, “but you know my cousin, Cassie.”

“Jason.” Evan took an unconscious step backwards. Rumor had it that Jason had turned into a vampire. The other hunters were after him in force.

“That’s me.” Jason scanned the area, utilizing what Evan knew were heightened senses of sight and hearing. Evan just didn’t know if Jason’s superior senses came from the hunter in him, or the vampire.

“What are you doing here?” Evan asked, trying not to let suspicion taint his voice.
Show no fear
was a motto he’d lived by since middle school, and it was more vitally important now than ever before. The fact that Jason had killed a vampire hardly meant he hadn’t turned; vampires killed one another more often than hunters did.

“So far, saving your ass.” Jason flashed Evan a humorless smile that did not reach his eyes. Were they yellow? Evan couldn’t tell in the rapidly deepening twilight, not at this distance. The other vampire’s eyes had practically glowed yellow, but when they weren’t in the grips of bloodlust, a vampire’s eyes reverted to their natural color.

“How did you know to come here?” After a pause Evan added, “I didn’t call your order. Didn’t even know there would be vampires here.”

“My order doesn’t know I’m around, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t clue them in.”

“I think I owe you at least that much.” Evan rose to his feet, never taking his eyes off the other man.

“I don’t collect debts.” Jason kept scanning the area. “Why don’t you get your thing over with so we can get out of here? I’ll watch your back.”

Evan only hesitated a moment before getting to work. Vampire or no vampire, Jason obviously wasn’t intent on killing him right now. If he were, he’d have done it already, or let the first vampire do it to save himself the trouble. Evan didn’t feel safe, but he did believe he had found a temporary ally.

The hole he had made in the ward energy had largely resealed itself, but now that he had an ally of sorts he could devote more of himself to the task. He didn’t turn his back to Jason, but he did allow himself to relax enough to focus. This time, he was able to cut through the wards in less than a minute.

“We’re in.” Evan pushed open the door. Inside, a sea of illusions tried to convince him he had entered a sort of labyrinth. Wood-paneled corridors led to the left and the right in a way that suggested the shack was bigger on the inside – something Evan didn’t believe was possible. Between his disbelief and the camera-mounted glasses, he easily saw through the illusions that would have led him in a wide circle around their victim, who lay bound and gagged in a shallow hole in the middle of the room.

Rushing forward, Evan untied the young woman and helped her to her feet. She was so filthy that he couldn’t tell if her hair was a dirty blonde or if it was just dirty. She wore only a thin white gown that barely covered her torso, and she had been tattooed with the runes of the ceremony that would likely have been carried out the next night, at the height of the full moon. She had not yet been bled.

“Evan!” Jason called from just outside the door. “Company!”

Evan led the woman out of the shack and ordered her to stay in the shadows while he and Jason confronted the five men emerging from the trees. Two were vampires, their glowing yellow eyes giving away their identities and their intentions. The other three were probably human, but Evan felt a thrum of magic in the air telling him they were armed and dangerous.

He didn’t feel afraid at that moment so much as resolved. Maybe it was the directness of the attack – the fact that he could see what was coming. Or maybe he’d passed some threshold past which the fear couldn’t touch him. Either way, he knew what he had to do.

The two allies shielded themselves. Jason thrust something into Evan’s hands with a whispered order, “Use this to keep the vampires away, but let me handle them.”

Evan felt the familiar shape of the cross. After a startled moment of curiosity about how a suspected vampire could handle a holy relic, he nodded his understanding.

That was all the time they had for a strategy session. The vampires charged. The sorcerers let loose a volley of curses. The night filled with the flashing lights of magic hitting magic.

Evan had never experienced magical combat like this before. The vampires were fast, strong, and practically immune to magic. Jason’s strength and skill equaled theirs, one on one, but there were two of them.

Evan, too, was outnumbered. In his case, three to one. There was power in three.

The sorcerers linked and hurled a spell at Evan that his shield barely managed to absorb. The force of it sent him backwards several steps, and he once again felt the static-like shock. He didn’t let it rattle him, though.
Show no fear. Show no weakness. Not now.

He fired back with a sleep spell, but it had no impact on the linked trio. As long as they remained linked, a magical attack wouldn’t work against them. But what if he could arrange a physical attack?

Studying the line of white pine trees, Evan found his target. Felled just right, the giant evergreen would crush all three sorcerers if they didn’t get out of the way. And it wouldn’t even take an ounce of his weakening magical reserves. His gift of telekinesis required nothing but intent, which he used now to pull the massive tree down. It cracked ominously at the base of the trunk where the wood splintered. Then it crashed to the forest floor.

Two of the men leaped away in time.

Evan had never killed anyone before. He felt an odd pang of – not quite regret – but a sense that this moment would change him. He had little time to reflect on the feeling, though. Two sorcerers remained, and if anything they would be more intent upon killing him now.

The men started running in a move that could only be described as a charge. Carefully preparing his sleep spell, Evan aimed it at the nearer of the two men. He might have overcharged it. Without the enhanced power of three, the man fell asleep so abruptly that his forward momentum sent him into a sort of nose dive at the ground. He landed hard and probably not without injury, but Evan spared no sympathy for the fallen attacker. He rearmed himself and sought out his final enemy.

The last man standing seemed to know that Evan had him outclassed and outgunned. He skidded to a halt, then turned on his heels to retreat.

Not this time.
These men would pay for what they had done in the past and for what they had tried to do to the young woman still hiding in the shadow of the dilapidated shack. With a cry of bottled up rage, Evan threw the sleep spell at the man’s retreating back. It hit its target in his cowardly backside, sending him sprawling to the ground.

Any last vestiges of fear had gone the moment Evan felled the last human. He felt powerful now. Victorious.

With adrenaline still fueling him, Evan turned his attention to Jason, locked in mortal combat with both vampires. The three were nothing but a blur of motion. Evan wanted to help, but the deadly trio of combatants moved too quickly for Evan to tell them apart, let alone intercede.

One of the blurs suddenly flew away from the other two. Evan thought he recognized Jason, arms flailing wildly as he tried to right himself. Using his gift, Evan slowed Jason’s progress so that the hunter landed softly on his feet. Then, when the vampires charged toward Jason, Evan froze one of them in place. He could only hold the creature for a few seconds with his gift, but if Jason could get moving it might be enough.

Jason didn’t miss a beat. With a stunning display of strength and speed, he thrust a wooden stake into the captured vampire’s chest. Then, with barely a blink, they repeated the exercise with the other vampire. Evan held it for the space of a second or two while Jason thrust a wooden stake directly into its heart.

Everything went eerily silent. For a few minutes both men stood, panting, surveying the aftermath of the battle. Would they face further attack?

The rescued woman apparently didn’t think so. She ran out of the shadows and threw herself around Evan’s neck, trying her best to kiss him. He managed to sidestep her, but barely.

“What are you going to do with them?” Jason nodded to the sleeping sorcerers.

“Call the locals,” Evan said. They would arrange to pick up and hold the survivors until Evan could get in touch with Alexander DuPris, who had put him on the trail of these men in the first place. Evan tried not to think about the dead one. Dead at his hands. It still didn’t seem real.

“Alexander has been looking for these guys for a while,” Evan continued. “I wouldn’t have found them if it hadn’t been for the smallest drop of blood they left behind at their last ritual.”

Jason shuddered. “What do you know about that guy?”

“Alexander?” Evan asked.

Jason nodded.

“Not much,” Evan admitted. “He’s trying to unify the country and put a stop to people like these.”

“Hm,” Jason said. “Well, I’d appreciate it if you don’t mention my involvement tonight to him.”

“Am I supposed to tell anyone I saw you? People are going to wonder how I managed to handle all these sorcerers and vampires on my own. I’d think you’d want me to get the word out that you’re not actually a vampire.”

“What makes you think I’m not?”

Evan tossed the cross back at Jason, who caught it, deftly.

Jason stared at the cross, then he smiled. A real smile this time. “If you tell anyone about this, they’ll think there’s something wrong with you. Not that I’m okay. Trust me, you don’t want to be associated with me. You’re going to hear more rumors about me… some of them may even be true.”

Evan had no idea what to believe, so he said nothing. He would have to sort through all of this later to decide who to trust, and how far.

“So,” Jason said, running a hand casually through his hair, “I don’t suppose you’ve seen Cassie’s friend, Kaitlin, lately?”

Evan paused, trying to figure out how personal he wanted to get. But, he reasoned, Jason had broached the subject. “Yeah, I’ve seen her. I was the one who performed the binding after her baby’s wild magic nearly pulled a building down on top of her and everyone around her.”

Jason flinched. “I figured my aunt and uncle would take care of her.”

“Yeah, now.” Evan tried to feel charitable toward the man who had just saved his life, but the way Jason was abandoning Kaitlin, pregnant with Jason’s baby, made Evan feel unaccountably angry.

“She’s better off not knowing me right now,” Jason said. “Look, be careful who you trust.”

“Why?” Evan asked.

“Jason!” came an unfamiliar masculine voice from the trees.

“Who’s that?” Evan asked, the tension and battle-readiness returning to his body so fast it might never have gone at all.

“One of the reasons Kaitlin’s better off not knowing me.” With that, Jason sped away in a blur of motion too rapid for Evan to follow. For a long time, he just stared after the blur, barely aware of the young woman pressing herself against him in a blatantly seductive manner.

“I’m Evelyn,” the woman said.

“Evan,” he replied, trying his best to sound uninterested in her overt offer. He wasn’t dead, but he really wasn’t interested. Only one woman interested him right now. Cassie.

If there had ever been a chance between them, even in light of what he now knew, he had done a great job of messing it up last month. His only defense, which sounded weaker by the hour, was that she would have hated him if he had told her the whole truth.

She hated him anyway. And his attempts to make up for it by rescuing other women didn’t make him feel any better.

Tell her
, his grandmother had urged. She was a seer; if anyone would know, she would, but still he hesitated. Strange that he could rush headlong into battle without blinking an eye, but talking to Cassie made him so nervous. Probably because in the end, she could hurt him worse than any enemy combatant could.

Evan pushed Evelyn away, as gently as he could. “I’m not free.”

For a second he thought she would argue, but she simply nodded and hugged herself.

He fished his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed his local contact number. When he told them what he had done, they agreed to send half a dozen men to help him clean up the mess. Then he called Alexander DuPris’s headquarters in rural Pennsylvania.

“We’ve been trying to take down that group for a year,” the man on the other end of the line said in an excited, squeaky little voice. “How long can you stay? I’m sure Alexander himself would like to talk to you.”

Evan had already been gone for three weeks, and Alexander might keep him occupied for a few weeks more. He wanted to go straight home to talk to Cassie now that he had bolstered up a little nerve. But, he reasoned, if he still had important work to do here then it could wait. Besides, this was his chance to actually meet the renowned Alexander DuPris face to face.