Age of Power 1: Legacy (31 page)

Smiling, she stood and walked behind me. Putting her hands on my
shoulders, she said, “You see, my young friend, Yama wasn’t the test that
brought forth the Avatar. It was the sign of the beginning. 
We
 are
the answer to human prayer. We are the return of their gods; what more can they
ask for?”

“No!” I yelled.

Desperation pushed me out of the chair. A worthless effort,
though. My legs collapsed underneath me even as I jumped up. With a cry of
helpless rage, I hit the floor.

Standing behind the chair and looking down at me, Kular laughed
and then sighed. “Oh, dear boy, relax. Once you wake up, you will understand.
In fact, you will come to agree with our dream as much as Brand has.”

I felt her foot brush my jacket. Then I jumped as her breath
brushed against my cheek. I could see her moving out of the corner of my eye.
She whispered, “He called for you—Brand did. You were his final hope. To him,
you were the one who would always be there when he needed someone. But you
weren’t.”

The pressure in my head made me cry out. But still, I pushed
forward, trying to find a way to escape that relentless ache. *
He
called out for you, he cried for you to rescue him. As it was with Kyle, you
weren’t there. And he was alone. Then I came to him. And now and forever, he
will never be alone! Come to me, Vaughn, and you will never be alone.*

Something—someone —was reaching for me, pulling gently at my
emotional needs. I pushed it away at first. 
Yasmine.
 It
had to be. *
Your parents aren’t there, Vaughn. They left you...remember?
Your father moved away…* 
I saw my dad getting into his car for the
last time, never to see him again… No! He came back…

“They came back to…together!”

*How long will that last? Yama is gone…life
will return to normal…can they even make it through the year, Vaughn? Think…can
you live with being alone again? 
Can you?
 With
us, there would be no loneliness!*

I struggled against the voice, but all I could do was turn my
head. My body barely moved now.
So weak, so…

*Alex left, Vaughn…he flew away. They all
leave in the end…but we won’t. Can you live alone, forever lost among even the
gods?*

“I…am not…alone!” I said, and in return, I felt a smile in my
head. Someone was feeling successful. I hoped it made her puke. I looked around,
looking for something—anything—to stop the relentless feeling of
loss. *
The void is where you will be, Vaughn. You’ll always be apart
from all that you love. Your parents will split up again, and your friends
will be forever gone. Join me…*

The white disk.

I was falling into her words. 
So
alone, so very alone…
 Something was under legs of the table.
Good, I needed a distraction
…

*Let me be your friend, Vaughn. 
No need for the void.
 Just come to me…*

In my mind’s eye, she appeared, a shadowy woman under a bright
golden light. As she held her hands out, I could hear her clearly. Her voice
was so much like my mom’s. *
We are the new race, Vaughn. Yes,
they will call us gods… You will be a god of music, the muse of the
new wave of artisans, of sound…*

Flashes of worlds painted, music written… I started pushing
myself toward the tea table…

*Vaughn, if you fight,
there is only the void, the loneliness…*

*Depth, endless depth, loss…forever lost…*

“Noooo!”

Angela flashed into the room.

*She’s not here, Vaughn… Why do you cry out
for a false love? She will walk away and never be there for you. Her brother
will keep her from you forever…*

I started to reach out, hoping she wasn’t trying to see through
my eyes. I thought about Angela…needing her. I had to find her...

*Angela won’t be there. Her brother Alan will
simply send you away…as he did with Brand. Sent him away…you were alone
again…so very alone. Dana will go away…all of them…you will be alone…*

I cried out, feeling that loss, Brand gone, always
lost. No, he was here…in my heart…

*I brought him back to you, Vaughn. Together,
we are forever here for you. 
No void, no hate, just
love, never abandoned…*

My hand moved an inch, another. To distract her, I imagined
Angela in my mind’s eye. The shadowy woman began to fade. It took everything to
keep her image there.

But that horrible voice.
 
*She’s
not there, boy…lost forever. She ran from her own brother, Vaughn… She wouldn’t
be there for you…*

“Lady, get—” Pain! Each word brought pain. But I
wasn’t going to let her win. Reaching out farther, I tensed my body with every
little thing I had. Behind me, Kular grunted.

Leaning down, she looked at me and said, “What are you doing,
boy? Stop fighting it! It’s so much easier to let it happen. Join us, it is
truly bliss!”

“Get—” I was almost there, my hand, so close…

*Kular!
 He
sees something! Stop him!* 
I heard it, and Kular
gasped. I pushed forward one last time.

“Get—”

My hand touched the phad transceiver, and my mind cleared.

“Get…OUT!”

The word blasted away from me in a wave of raw power. I felt and
heard screams at the same time. I still felt mentally stifled. So I pushed the
power in my voice even harder. Pain ripped through my head, and yet, I knew it
wasn’t mine. My mind suddenly cleared, and I opened my eyes. Rolling over, I
found that my head still hurt, but the pain was fading fast. I sat up and took
in what I’d just done. I sighed. I had to wonder if I would ever get used to
doing this kind of thing regularly.

I had blown out the one window in the room. All that
was left
was a hole from which cold wind blew in. Slowly,
fighting the last of the headache, I got to my feet. I moved and flinched from
the feeling of something cold and wet. I looked down and found that I was
soaked from the spilled tea. Ignoring it, I looked around the room. The walls
were cracked, and the fluorescent light above me was hanging by one wire,
swinging in the slight breeze.

I had blasted the door and the frame from the wall. It took me a
minute to find Kular. My scream had blown her out into the hallway. Surrounding
her was what was left of the door that she
’d been blown
through. I made my way past the destroyed desk and into the hallway. I stopped
at the edge of the doorway when I found that I’d done a lot more than just rip
apart Kular’s office. The destruction continued well into the hallway.

I hesitated, looking down at the transceiver in my hand.
Somewhere out there was Yasmine. If I damaged the transceiver, I wasn’t going to
make it past Yasmine. She had cracked my mind wide open with her last attack.
If she recovered and hit me again, I’d be dead this time. Hoping against hope,
I tightened my hand around the disk.

Walking past Kular’s unconscious body, I made my way toward
them. At first, I only saw the nurse who been at the desk. A fine powder sifted
from the ceiling. And when I stepped carefully over the cracked floor, I could
hear ominous sounds of metal grinding on metal with every step I took. I
realized that I had probably just caused the hospital to end up closing for
major renovations and structural repairs.

From the floors below, I could hear people moving around,
yelling to evacuate the hospital. So far, no one was talking about checking out
this floor. I checked on the nurse and felt her pulse. I hoped that she would
recover easily enough. Then, I saw 
her
. My heart jumped into my
throat. Unconscious, her limp body lying on the floor, Angela looked dead in
the dim light of the hall. Despite the heartbeat I could clearly hear, she
looked as if she wasn’t breathing. Rushing over to her, I reached down to brush
hair from her face. The moment I touched her, she grabbed my wrist, hard. I
gasped from the pain.

Then Angela opened her eyes, snarling at me. She yelled, “Let me
go, you bitch!”

“Angela…” I managed to gasp.

Her eyes widened as she said, “Vaughn?”

Angela’s eyes widened in surprise, and she quickly let go. As I
rubbed my wrist, she grimaced and said, “Sorry, I forget my own strength
sometimes.”

I sighed and attempted a joke. “So that’s how it is, huh? It’s
going to be that kind of relationship?”

Getting to her feet, she ignored the joke and looked at Alan and
Yasmine. I softly asked, “What went on up here?
Ambush?”

Looking over at the body of a woman, I saw that she was laying
half on top of Alan. In the dim lighting, I saw that she was wearing the same
black and gray striped outfit that Demon had been wearing. She had raven black
hair and dark olive skin, having seen her picture; I knew that this was the
crazy telepath, Yasmine.

Beside me, Angela nodded and said, “Yes, my disk is gone. The
second that disappeared, the bitch hit me with a full psi-burst. Not fun! Then
you showed up.”

I sighed. “She tried to take me down, too. Pure luck I found
this. Uh, were all of you out here this entire time?”

Angela nodded. I held up the transceiver, realizing that it
belonged to Alan. But Angela wasn’t paying attention. I caught my breath when
she reached behind her and pulled the sword out with a whispering sound of
metal on its leather sheath.

Staring at the deadly looking short sword, I said, “Hey, Angela,
what are you doing?”

Growling wordlessly, she raised the sword, and in a deadly quiet
voice, she said, “Ending this.”

My eyes widened. Reaching out, I grabbed her wrist, stopping the
sword in mid-strike.
“Whoa there, killer!
No using the
movie props to take the bad lady’s head!”

She yelled, “Damn it, Vaughn! She
’s taken
over people left and right! She’s ripping their minds apart and turning them
into slaves! She’s done it to Alan!”

With a violent wrench and an elbow to my stomach, Angela turned
on me. She snarled, but her rage
had been spent and held back
from attacking Yasmine again
. 

I took advantage of the moment and said, “Tell me what happened!
You jaunted and…?”

She looked down at Alan and Yasmine and explained, “When I got
here, Alan was already fighting her. That’s his transceiver in your hand!”

I looked at it for a moment and said, “Maybe we can use it to
block her. If you can get a hold of Paradoxis, could she do a remote shutdown?”

Shaking her head, Angela said, “I don’t know, we never got a
chance to figure out everything that Paradoxis could do. All I know is that as
long as we have the transceiver, Yasmine is blocked from our minds.”

I glanced down at Alan and Yasmine. She looked as though she’d
been right on top of him when I had screamed. “You said Alan is under her
control?”

She nodded and looked down at her brother. I could see a look of
pain on his face; he wasn’t completely out of it. His heartbeat came to me for
a few moments. It was racing, as if he were fighting something. Poor
guy, probably dealing with the mental hell Yasmine was putting him through.

Angela said softly, “When I teleported in, he tried to warn me.
The whole floor was empty except for the nurse, Yasmine, Kular, and Alan.
Yasmine had her hands on his head, as though she was…blessing him.”

Angela checked her brother. Looking him over, she said, “She
made him pull the transceiver from me. In a flash, it was gone, and she froze
me in place! I couldn’t even jaunt. I even saw you come up the stairwell a few
minutes later, and I couldn’t react. She just laughed when you went past. She
had all of us right there, and you didn’t notice.”

Oh my, yes, Yasmine had dug her psychic claws into all of us.
Alan was still in agony! I knew how he felt. Wait, Alan was still in
pain... 
Why?
 At the most, he should simply
be unconscious. At least, he should be if Yasmine was—

I yelled, “Angela! Get away from Yasmine!”

Angela’s eyes narrowed in rage. She whipped her sword up and
leapt at Yasmine. I opened my mouth to scream, but held back at the last
second. I would hit Yasmine, all right. But I also might kill Angela and Alan.
Suddenly, Angela grabbed her head as she cried out in pain and fell back into
my arms.

Yasmine opened her eyes. Glaring with raw hatred, she got to her
feet, ready to attack. Attack…no, she looked ready to kill. That was the only
warning I got before I felt a pressure burst through my head and then rebound
in some bizarre way. That told me that the transceiver was still working.
Glowering at Yasmine, I gently set Angela down on the floor. Then I held up the
transceiver to Yasmine like a cross against a vampire.

“Back away, psycho!”

In deeply accented—yet understandable—English, she said, “Bad
enough that I have the New Men blocking me at Ryan Tech, but those transceivers
are fast becoming a nuisance! And here I thought they’d be useless!”