The Possessed

 

The people were leaning over her. The first thing Kait noticed was that they looked like pencil drawings - monochrome, all the color sucked out. The second thing was that they were evil.

She didn't know how she knew that, but it was clear. Clearer than the faces of the people. It wasn't that they didn't have features, but the features seemed blurred, as if they were moving back and forth thousands of times a second, or as if something about them had affected Kait's sight.

Aliens, she thought wildly. Little gray people from flying saucers. And then: Lewis's white shape.

Kaitlyn's heart began pounding with deep sick thuds that seemed to choke off her breath.

She wanted to scream, but that was impossible. She didn't even know if she were awake or asleep, but she was paralyzed.

If I could move - if I could just move I could tell. I could make them go away...

What she wanted to do was to kick upward with her legs and lash out with her arms to see if the visions were solid. But she couldn't even lift her knee. The things were leaning over her from all sides. There was a strange property about them - when Kaitlyn looked at any one of them, it seemed to be rushing toward her, but the group stayed in the same place. They were looking at her. Staring with a fixed blank gaze that was worse than any malevolence. And they seemed to be bending farther down, coming closer...

With a violent jerk Kaitlyn managed to lift her arm. At least, it felt like a violent jerk to her, but what she saw was her arm rising feebly and almost dreamily toward the figures. It brushed through one monochrome leaning face, and she felt a shock of coldness on the skin.

Refrigerated air...

The figures were gone.

Kait lay on her back, blinking. Her eyes were open now, and she thought they'd been open the whole while - but how could she tell? She was staring into darkness as black as the blackness behind closed lids. The only thing she could see was the faint shape of her arm waving in the cold air.

Cold - the air was definitely cold. And there had been a sudden drop in temperature just before Lewis saw his vision.

I don't believe it was a dream, Kaitlyn thought. Or not an ordinary dream.

But then, what? A premonition? She didn't have premonitions that way, and Lewis didn't have them at all. Lewis had psychokinesis, PK, the power to move objects with his mind.

Whatever it had been, it had left her with a terrible sick feeling. There was a - a running in her middle, a hot restless feeling that made it agony to lie still. She felt cramped and her eyes ached and her whole body was vibrating with adrenaline.

Rob was lying peacefully beside her, his breathing even. Deeply asleep. Kaitlyn hated to wake him; he needed the rest. Lewis and Anna were sleeping soundly, too - she could feel that through the web.

And Gabriel outside? Kait sent her mind searching, doing something she couldn't have described to an outsider. It was like wondering how your foot was feeling, concentrating your attention on a particular part of yourself in a particular location. Somehow she could wonder how Gabriel was doing, and then feel that he wasn't there, she realized with a shock. Not outside the van where he had been before. She could sense him dimly - somewhere else - but she couldn't locate him exactly, and she couldn't tell what he was doing.

Fine. Good. With sudden determination Kaitlyn inched her legs up, pulling the blanket off her by degrees. Just as slowly, she sat up and then stood, crouching, edging sideways to the door in the middle of the van.

She passed Anna, curled neatly on her short bench, black hair swathing her face. Lewis's bucket seat was reclined so far she had to reach under it to get the door open. But finally, with a clank, the door slid back.

Kaitlyn could feel everyone stir, then settle again. She dropped lightly out of the van and shut the door as quietly as she could.

Now. She was going to find Gabriel. Her nervous energy would be put to good use - she was going to talk to him, confront him about the strangeness she'd felt inside him, about what he'd been doing when he'd left them all last night. It was the perfect opportunity; with the others asleep, they'd have complete privacy. And if Gabriel didn't like it - tough. Kaitlyn was wound up and ready for a fight herself.

She turned from the van and looked around the rest stop. Aside from the lighted bulk of the rest rooms, everything was dark. There were only three cars to be seen - a battered Volkswagen Bug, a lowslung Chevy, and a white Cadillac.

And no Gabriel. Kaitlyn couldn't get a location on him. She peered into the darkness behind and in front of her, then shrugged and started walking.

He was here somewhere. Just walled off so she couldn't feel him. As if he lived in a private fortress.

Well, she'd explain differently to him; he was part of them, and he couldn't keep denying it.

And he shouldn't be wandering around alone like this in the dark. Kait passed the Bug and the Chevy, noting absently that Oregon license plates had pictures of mountains on them. She passed the Cadillac, which was parked under the last streetlight, and hesitated on the brink of the darkness beyond.

That way... she had an urge to go that way. An instinct. If there was one thing Kait had learned recently, it was to trust her instincts - but it was lonely-looking out there, lit only by a half-full moon just beginning to rise.

Bracing herself, she began to move cautiously forward, stepping off the sidewalk onto grass. The ground curved down, leading toward a lonely clump of trees - Kait could see their upper branches against the lighter black of the night sky.

It was very quiet, and Kaitlyn's skin was prickling, tiny hairs lifting. Well, that wasn't surprising: Oregon was cooler than California. It was just the night air.

But where was Gabriel? Kaitlyn was moving blindly toward the trees, but it wasn't like Gabriel to go sit under a tree. Maybe instinct had been wrong this time.

All right, she'd go just down to that first tree - she could see it fairly well now that her eyes were adjusting to the darkness - and then she'd turn back. She was far enough from the van that she could only feel Rob and Lewis and Anna very dimly, and she knew that communication would be impossible.

I'm truly alone, she thought. The only way any of us can be alone now, by getting out of range of the others. Maybe that's why Gabriel's been wandering off at night; I could understand that. Simply to get some distance.

She almost had herself convinced by the time she got to the tree.

What she found there she discovered with all her senses at once. Her ears picked up some slight sound of movement and the hiss of a ragged breath. Her eyes made out a shape half concealed behind the tree.

And her psychic senses felt a disturbance in the web - a shimmering, as if she'd stepped near a charged field.

All the same, she could hardly make herself believe what she was witnessing. Heart beating madly, she stepped closer, moving around the tree. The shape - in the moonlight it looked like a romantic painting of Romeo and Juliet, a kneeling boy holding a limp girl in his arms. But the sound, the quick panting breath - that was more like an animal.

What she felt through the web was animalistic, too. It was hunger.

Please, no, Kaitlyn thought. She'd begun to shake, an uncontrollable trembling that started in her legs and went everywhere. Please, God, I don't want to see this...

But then the kneeling boy raised his head, and there was no way to deny it anymore.

Gabriel. It was Gabriel and he was holding a girl who looked unconscious or dead, and when he looked up, it was straight into Kaitlyn's eyes.

She could see the shock on his face - and in the web she felt a shattering. A crashing-down of walls as the barriers he'd been holding around himself collapsed. She'd taken him off guard, and suddenly she could feel - everything.

Everything he was going through. Everything he was experiencing at that moment.

"Gabriel - " she gasped aloud.

Hunger, she got back. She could feel it pounding at her. Hunger and desperation. An intolerable, agonizing pain - and the promise of relief in the girl he was holding. A girl who wasn't dead, Kaitlyn realized, but comatose and bursting with life energy. What Lewis called chi.

"Gabriel," Kaitlyn said again. Her legs were wobbling; they weren't going to support her much longer.

She was overwhelmed by the need she felt -  his need.

"Get away," Gabriel said hoarsely.

She was surprised he could talk. There wasn't much rationality in his presence in the web. What Kait felt there seemed less like Gabriel than some shark or starving wolf. A desperate, merciless hunter ready to make his kill.

Run, something inside Kaitlyn said. He's about to kill, and it could be you as easily as that girl. Be smart and run...

"Gabriel, listen to me. I won't hurt you." Kaitlyn got the words out raggedly, on separate breaths, but she managed to hold her hands out toward him almost steadily. "Gabriel, I understand - I can feel what you need. But there has to be another way."

"Get out of here," Gabriel snarled.

Ignoring the terrified sickness in her stomach, Kaitlyn took a step toward him. Think, she was telling herself frantically. Think, be rational - because he certainly isn't.

Gabriel's lips peeled back from his teeth, and he jerked the girl to him. As if protecting his prey from an intruder. "Don't come any closer," he hissed.

"It's energy, isn't it?" Kaitlyn didn't dare take another step, so she dropped to her knees instead. She was at Gabriel's level now, and she could see that his eyes were like two windows opening on darkness.

"It's life energy you need. I can feel that. I can feel how much it hurts - "

"You can't feel anything! Get out before you really do get hurt!" It was a tortured cry, but almost instantly afterward Gabriel stilled. A deathly calm spread over his face, and his eyes went like black ice.

Kaitlyn could feel his purposefulness in the web.

Without looking at her, ignoring her completely, he turned his attention to the girl in his arms. The girl had soft curly hair - dark blond or light brown, Kaitlyn thought. She looked almost peaceful. Gabriel had undoubtedly stunned her with his mind somehow.

Now he turned her head to one side, pushing the disordered curls off the back of her neck. Kaitlyn watched in horror, frozen by the cool deliberation of his movements.

"Right here," Gabriel whispered, and he touched the nape of the girl's neck, a point at the upper part of the spine, just between vertebrae. "This is the transfer point. The best place to take energy. You can stay and watch if you want."

His voice was like an Arctic wind, and his presence in the web like ice. He was looking at the girl's neck with cold hunger, eyes narrowed, lips skinned back a little.

And then, as Kaitlyn watched, he bent to put his lips to the girl's skin.

"No!"

Kait didn't know what she was going to do until she did it. But suddenly she was moving, she was throwing herself across the little distance to Gabriel. She was putting her hands between the girl and him - one hand on the girl's neck, the other on Gabriel's face. She felt his lips, and then the brush of teeth.

Keep out of this! Gabriel's mental shout was so powerful it sent Shockwaves through Kaitlyn. But she hung on.

Give her to me! he shouted. Kaitlyn's vision was red; she could see nothing, feel nothing, but the all-encompassing fury of Gabriel's hunger. He was a snarling, clawing animal now - and she was fighting him.

And losing. She was weaker, both physically and psychically, and he was utterly ruthless. He was tearing the girl away from her, his mind a black hole ready to consume...

No, Gabriel, Kaitlyn thought - and she kissed him.

That was the result, anyway, of her sudden darting movement. She'd meant for a different contact - forehead to forehead, the way Rob had touched her to channel healing energy once. But at the touch of his lips against hers she felt a shock of a different sort and it was an instant before she could pull back to get the position right.

She'd shocked Gabriel, too - shocked him into stillness. He seemed too astonished to fight her or jerk away. He simply sat, paralyzed, as Kaitlyn shut her eyes, and, gripping his shoulders, thrust her forehead against his.

Oh.

That simple contact, skin to skin, third eye to third eye, brought the biggest shock of all. A jolt that went through Kait like lightning - as if two ends of electric wiring had touched, sending a violent current coursing through.

Oh, she thought. Oh...

It was frightening - terrifying in its power. And for the first instant it hurt. She felt a tearing in her body, in her bloodstream - as if something was being pulled out of her. A vital pain at the roots of her being.

Dimly, with some part of her mind that could still think, she remembered what Gabriel had said once.

That people were afraid he would steal their souls. That was what this felt like.

And yet, at the same time, it was compelling. It swept her along with it, helpless to resist. It demanded that she surrender...

You wanted to help him, the part of Kait that could still think said. So help him. Give. Give what he needs.

Kaitlyn felt a wrenching - and then a bursting. It was as if some barrier in her had been broken, ripping under pressure. She trembled violently - and felt herself give.

It still hurt, but in a new way. A strange way that was almost pleasure. Like the release of something painful, blocked... backed-up.

Kait had received psychic energy before, taking Rob's healing power when she'd been drained and exhausted. But she'd never given it, not on this scale. Now she felt a torrent of energy flowing from her into Gabriel, like a flood of golden sparks. And she could feel him responding, drinking in the energy greedily, gratefully. The darkness inside him, the black hole, being lit up by the gold.

Life, Kaitlyn thought dizzily. It's life I'm giving him really. He needs this or he'll die.

And then: Is this how healers feel? Oh, no wonder Rob likes doing it. There's nothing like it, nothing especially if you want to help.

For the most part, though, she couldn't think at all. She simply experienced, feeling Gabriel's hunger gradually being sated, the burning need in him slowly cooling as it was met. And feeling his amazement, his wonder.

He was less of an animal now, and more Gabriel.

The Gabriel who had tried to protect her from the pain of Mr. Zetes's great crystal, the Gabriel who'd had tears in his eyes when he spoke of his past. Kaitlyn realized suddenly that she'd gotten behind his walls again. She was seeing, touching, the Gabriel that was kept hidden from the world.

It's different -  like this. The thought was almost a whisper, but it shook Kaitlyn with its strength.

Its - intensity. She could feel the astonished gratitude behind it, and something like awe. Different...

when I took energy before -  when I took it last night -  it wasn't like this.

And because Gabriel's mind was open to her, Kait knew what he meant. She could see the girl from last night, the one with the straggly hair and the unicorn tattoo. And she could taste the girl's fear, her anguish and aversion.

She was unwilling, Kaitlyn told Gabriel. You forced her; she didn't want to help you. I do.

Why?

One word, with the force of a blow behind it. Kaitlyn felt Gabriel's hands tighten on her shoulders as he projected the thought. She hadn't been aware of her physical body for some time, but now she realized that she and Gabriel were clinging to each other, still in contact at the transfer point. The curly-haired girl, the new victim, had fallen or been shoved aside.

Why? Gabriel repeated, almost brutally, demanding an answer.

Because I care about you! Kaitlyn shot back. The violence of the first channeling of energy was gone, but she could still feel it flowing from herself to him. And she could feel, in some distant way, an approaching dizziness, a weakness. She ignored it. Because I care what happens to you, because I -

Abruptly, with no warning at all, Gabriel pulled away. Whatever Kaitlyn had been about to say was lost.

The jolt of broken contact was almost as bad as the moment of initiation. Kaitlyn's eyes flew open. She could see the world again, but she felt blind. Blind and horribly alone. Even feeling Gabriel in the web was nothing to the intimacy of direct energy transfer.

Gabriel...

"It's enough," he said, speaking instead of returning her thought. She could feel him trying to gather his walls again. "I'm all right now. You did what you meant to do."

"Gabriel," Kaitlyn said. There was a terrible wistfulness inside her. Without thinking, she raised a hand to touch his face.

Gabriel flinched back.

Hurt and loss flooded over Kait. She clamped her lips together.

"Don't," Gabriel said. Then he looked away, shaking his head. "I'm not trying to hurt you, damn it!" he said sharply. "It's just - don't you realize how dangerous that was? I could have drained you. I could have killed you." He turned back and looked directly into her eyes again, with a sudden fierceness that frightened Kaitlyn. " I could have killed you," he repeated with vicious emphasis.

"You didn't. I feel fine." The dizziness had gone, or never come. She looked steadily at Gabriel. In the moonlight his eyes were as black as his hair, and his pale face was almost supernaturally beautiful. "I'm psychic, so I have more of the energy than normal people. Obviously I've got enough to spare."

"It was still a risk. And if you touch me, there's the risk I'll take more."

"But you're all right now. You said so, and I can feel it, too. You don't need more; you're all right."

There was a pause and Gabriel's eyes dropped. Then, slowly, almost grudgingly, he said, "Yes." Kaitlyn could feel him trying to think, could sense his confusion. "And - I'm grateful," he said at last. He said it awkwardly, as if he hadn't had much practice, but when he lifted his eyes again she saw that he meant it.

She could feel it, too, a childlike, marveling gratitude that was totally at odds with those chiseled features and grim mouth.

Kait's throat tightened. It was all she could do not to reach out to him again. Instead she said, as dispassionately as she could manage, "Gabriel, was it the crystal?"

"What?" He looked away from her again, as if realizing he'd revealed too much.

"You weren't like this before. You didn't need energy, not before Mr. Zetes hooked you up with that crystal. But now you've got a mark on your forehead, and you've changed - "

"Into a real psychic vampire." Gabriel laughed shortly. "That's what the people at the research center in Durham said - but they didn't know, did they? Nobody can know what the reality is like."

"That isn't what I was going to say. I was going to say that you'd changed, and I'd noticed it before tonight. I think you've become - more powerful. You can link up with minds outside the web, and before you couldn't."

Gabriel was rubbing his forehead absently but roughly. "I suppose it had to be the crystal," he said.

"Who knows, maybe that's what it's for. Maybe it's what Zetes wanted, all of us slaves to this - need."

The idea took Kaitlyn's breath away. She'd been thinking of it as some side effect, something that had happened accidentally because the crystal had burned too much of Gabriel's energy. But the idea that anyone would do this deliberately - would make someone like this on purpose . . .

"It's nauseating, isn't it?" Gabriel said conversationally. "What I've become is nauseating. And I'm afraid it's permanent, or at least I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be."

He'd seen her horror and was hurt by it. Kait tried to think of some way to make him feel better, and settled on brisk normalcy.

"Well, at least we have a way of dealing with it," she said. "For now, we'd better get this girl back to where she came from, don't you think? And then we should go and tell Rob. He'll want to help and he may even be able to think - "

She broke off with a gasp. She'd been getting to her feet, but now Gabriel hauled her back down again with one powerful yank.

Kaitlyn found herself looking into eyes that were black and glittering with menacing fury.