Strange Candy (Vampire Hunter 0.5)

“It’ll be to you as soon as we hang up.”

“One more thing. How do you know it’s the child?”

“I told you we don’t have any other students that could do it.”

Jasmine smiled, a bitter twist of lips. “What about a teacher, a trained dreamer that’s gone off the deep end?”

“We screen our workers, Jasmine.”

“I remember.”

“Dr. Roberts was a fluke. It couldn’t happen again. We see to that.”

“If you’ve got everything under such bloody good control, then what do you need me for?”

“Jasmine…”

“No, I don’t want to hear any more. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” She hung up the phone. Sweat was beading on her forehead despite the air-conditioned quiet of the room.

Dr. Roberts had taken a butcher knife to two students, and Jasmine would always carry the scar where she had thrown up an arm to keep the doctor from slashing her face. A guard had shot Roberts then, and she had fallen forward on her knees, still whispering, “Evil, you are all evil.”

Jasmine could control her dreams, but Roberts still accused her, questioned her at night before she could stop it. “You’re evil, aren’t you, Jasmine? You know you are.”

“Yes, Dr. Roberts, I know I am.” But Jasmine knew that everyone was evil, down deep when you scrape the skin away. Inside their heads everyone hunted, everyone killed, everyone was a monster.

The thought that Dr. Roberts couldn’t deal with was not the children’s evil, but her own. That morning when she woke she saw a monster looking back at her from the mirror. She had set out to kill the monster and gotten killed for it.

Jasmine knew the truth. You couldn’t kill The Monster. It was always there just behind your eyes. You could kill a monster, though. Jasmine was a great believer in the death penalty. It was the ultimate therapy. It cured everything. The first stirrings of fear crawled in her belly, low and real. It would get worse. Jasmine knew that it would get worse.

Dr. Cooper cradled her face on her arms, cheek pressed into the coolness of her desktop, and cried. The school, that was all it was ever called, it had no other name. A lot of secret government projects had no names.

Thirty years ago, almost Jasmine’s lifetime, psychic phenomena became a proven scientific fact. In fact, there were so many psychics that scientists started making jokes about pod people. It didn’t stay funny for long. Most of the new breed were children. They had powers that were dependable and as testable as such phenomena ever would be. There were lots of theories as to why, suddenly, we had empaths and telepaths and dreamers coming out of the woodwork. The evolutionists said it was proof of their ideas; mankind was evolving. Others thought it was junk food, chemicals and preservatives in the American diet. The majority of talent did occur in industrialized nations. Maybe it was the pollution. Inoculations. The beginning of the Apocalypse. No one knew. Jasmine doubted anyone ever would.

But a few of the children had been dangerous, their powers so far beyond the dreams of normality that their families couldn’t cope. In most cases the families were afraid of their children. Glad to give them up to someplace that would care for them.

Jasmine’s family gave her up when she was five. Her mother cried and kissed her. Her older sister and brother hugged her dutifully. Her father said, “Be a good girl, Jas.”

The smell of pipe tobacco could still bring back the memory of her tall, dark-haired father. A twinge of memory like a badly healed scar.

What she remembered most of her mother was the cool sense of fear. That red lipsticked mouth kissing her, laughing, and wiping the lipstick smear off Jasmine’s cheek with a Kleenex. Laughing, golden hair, and the sick smell of fear. No perfume in the world could hide the stench from an empath.

But then maybe Mommy didn’t know, maybe she didn’t understand, maybe she had done her best. Maybe.

LISBETH Pearson was small for ten, with coppery red hair, almost dark enough to be auburn, but not quite. The hair fell in thick waves to her shoulders. Her face was that peaches-and-cream skin that some redheads have; no freckles, just creamy skin. Her eyes were a pale brown, almost amber. She wore a dress that seemed too young for her, with lace-topped white socks and patent leather shoes.

She looked like she was dressed for Halloween, or like someone else had dressed her. She was playing alone with a dollhouse on the other side of a one-way mirror. Jasmine found that very funny. She remembered being on the other side of the glass. She had always known who was watching and what they were feeling. Always.

Lisbeth looked up and stared directly at the mirror, and smiled. Jasmine smiled and nodded back.

“Can she see us?” Dr. Bromley asked.

“No.”

“You acknowledged each other, I saw it.”

“Did we?”

“Don’t bullshit me, Jasmine.”

She turned to stare at the infamous Dr. Bromley, protector and tormentor of her childhood. He was five foot eight, but the weight he had gained made him seem smaller. His curly brown hair was fading back from a gleaming expanse of scalp. His hands, which had once looked strong, now resembled uncooked sausages. His face was blotched with red. Was he sick? She stared into his small eyes and thought, yes, maybe.

Beth could have told Bromley if he was dying. She had had a feel for death. Beth was dead, had been for twenty years. Tall, laughing, gray-eyed Beth. She had been able to think people to death, a wasting illness. She hadn’t meant to kill people, just didn’t know how to stop it. Neither did anyone else. So they killed her.

“Jasmine…Jasmine.”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Bromley, I was thinking about something.”

“Are you all right?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“Why?” he asked.

“You don’t look well.”

He fidgeted, glanced away, and knew that it wasn’t his eyes she could read. He laughed, abrupt and harsh. “No, I’m not well. It’s none of your damn business what’s wrong, Dr. Cooper. Let’s get back to Lisbeth. You’re here to save her, not me.”

“Could I save you?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Bromley.” And Jasmine realized she really was sorry. She didn’t want to be sorry for him, to feel anything but hatred and contempt, and fear. Not sorrow, not for Dr. Bromley.

“Tell me what you think about Lisbeth Pearson.”

“I don’t think anything yet. I want to talk to her alone.” Jasmine smiled. “As alone as this place allows.”

“We have to monitor the children. It’s part of the project.”

“I remember the arguments, Dr. Bromley.”

LISBETH was placing tiny gilt-edged chairs around a miniature dining room table when Jasmine entered. The child ignored her and continued to rearrange the furniture. She seemed completely absorbed in the task, but Jasmine felt the child’s interest, her power, glide over her skin like a cold breeze.

“My name is Jasmine.”

Lisbeth looked up at that, one small hand cradling a flower arrangement. “I’ve never met anyone named Jasmine before.”

“And I’ve never met anyone named Lisbeth before.”

The child grinned, perfect lips, eyes sparkling. “No, you’ve never met anyone like me.”

Jasmine looked into those brown-amber eyes, shining with humor, and felt the threat. The words were subtle; the power that emanated from the child was not.

The power climbed over Jasmine’s skin, raising the hair on her body, like insects crawling, or a faint buzz of electric current. You could breathe in Lisbeth’s power, choke on it.

The child smiled, even white teeth flashing, but her eyes didn’t sparkle anymore. Games were over; Lisbeth didn’t have to pretend to be “normal,” so she didn’t try. Jasmine stared into her eyes and found—nothing. Inside her head was a great roaring silence.

Jasmine had never met a sociopath at such a tender age. She knew that they were born broken, but to feel it, to feel that emptiness stretching inside this lovely little girl, to feel the void…was the most frightening thing she had ever felt.

The child laughed, sweet and joyful. “You’re afraid of me, just like all the others.”

Fear meant control. It meant Jasmine was controllable, so Lisbeth lowered her defenses; she allowed Jasmine to glimpse what was there. Or what wasn’t.