Driven (16 page)

"Can
it be reversed?"

I
didn't have to try to put a hint of steel into my voice. All I needed
to do was stop trying quite so hard to be civil to the bloodsucker
sitting across from me. My voice going cold and distant was just the
natural result of how I really felt about him.

Geoffrey
looked back at me and something behind his eyes told me he wasn't the
kind of person I should be pushing right now. "I don't know.
I've never seen it done, at least not that I remember, but there have
been whispers, legends really, of people managing it."

"Fine,
then fix him. Once you're done Rachel will tell you where this Melody
chick is and we can all go our separate ways."

Geoffrey
shook his head. "No, we do this my way or we don't do it at all.
We go get Melody and then I'll go inside of Ben's mind and reverse
the damage that was done to him."

A
white-hot torrent of anger broke free from my beast and it was all I
could do to stop myself from transforming.

"No,
I don't trust you."

"You
don't have a choice."

His
response only fanned the fires inside of me even higher. I could tell
that my eyes had changed already and I'd picked up the fine tremble
that indicated that I was starting to lose my battle to retain this
shape.

"You'll
never see Melody again."

"Maybe,
but I don't think so. It's possible that Melody is really still alive
and that my inaction will result in her dying, but it's also possible
that this is all just some kind of farce designed to convince me to
dive into Ben's mind. I'm willing to bet on the fact that you care
more about Ben, about the prospect of having to watch him die than I
care about the slight possibility that you and Rachel
aren't
lying to me."

"I'll
kill you myself!"

Geoffrey
stepped back away from the table and I suddenly noticed the hilt of
his sword. It had been mostly hidden by the trench coat he was
wearing, or I would have seen it sooner. My beast wanted me to kill
him now before he could stick that sword into us one night while we
were sleeping. She wasn't convinced that he could help Ben, but even
if he could, she believed in self-preservation above all else.

Rachel's
voice sliced through the rising tension like it was nothing more than
a mirage. "Both of you sit back down. Killing each other won't
accomplish anything for any of us."

I
looked down and realized she was right, somewhere along the way I'd
stood, knocking my chair over.

Truth
be told, I was actually relieved that Rachel was stepping in to
defuse the situation. I was pretty sure I could take Geoffrey under
normal circumstances, but I was still weak and wobbly from my
injuries. As things currently stood, he would probably cut me down
without even working up a sweat.

"I'm
listening, Rach. What's your compromise?"

There
was another long pause before Rachel responded. "You're going to
have to take this on faith, Jasmin. I've seen enough to know that
Geoffrey isn't going to betray you. You're no less honorable than he
is, but my vouching for you doesn't carry any weight with him."

My
tremble hadn't disappeared and it redoubled as I listened to Rachel.
After everything else we'd been through, after all of the times I'd
nearly died, I couldn't believe that she was telling me Ben was going
to continue to decay before my eyes while the solution to everything
that had been done to him slept less than a dozen yards away from us.

I
wanted to protest but Rachel didn't give me a chance. "I
promise, Jas, this is the only way. He'll walk before he'll take us
on faith and if he walks there isn't any other way to save Ben. There
are others who could do it, but they'd kill you both or turn him
against you instead of helping."

"You
swear, Rachel? Because if you're lying to me I will find you and when
I kill you it won't be a clean death. You've already put me through
hell twice over."

Part
of me knew that I was pushing too hard. This wasn't some bloodsucking
vampire I was talking to, it wasn't one of the Coun'hij, it wasn't my
archenemy, it was Rachel. In some ways she deserved how I was
treating her, but mostly she didn't. I couldn't seem to help myself
though. I'd never been the best at keeping my mouth in check and
these days I was even worse at it. My beast was just too powerful.

"I
swear it. The road isn't going to be easy but if we all do everything
just right, this ends up with you both getting what you want."

"Fine,
we'll do it your way. Melody first and then Ben gets cured."

Geoffrey
nodded, but Rachel wasn't done.

"That's
not the extent of the deal. Ben can't die or the whole deal is off,
and I don't just mean that I won't help you find Melody anymore, I
mean I'll lead you into a trap that is guaranteed to kill you,
Geoffrey."

"I
can live with that. As long as the two of you lead me to Melody I'll
do everything within my power to save him."

There
was a new edge to Rachel's voice that I wasn't sure I'd ever heard
before. "That's not good enough, not for either side. Melody
isn't just sitting in the suburbs somewhere waiting for the two of
you to come get her, she's being held captive. The deal is this.
Jasmin will help you break into where Melody is being held, and in
return you will do everything possible to help Ben, including going
into his mind and strengthening whatever needs strengthened to keep
him alive if it takes longer than you're expecting to get to Melody.
In return I'll do everything I can to move the two of you along
towards your goals of saving Melody and saving Ben. That's the deal,
take it or leave it."

Geoffrey's
poker face slipped a little and I couldn't blame him. The 'deal' that
Rachel had just offered him was actually better than what he'd been
after. She'd thrown in me helping him free Melody from who knew what
kind of nasty beasties and all that I'd gotten in exchange was
slightly different language when it came to him saving Ben. Geoffrey
was very satisfied with what he'd been offered, but that didn't mean
that I was happy with it.

"Hold
on, Rach, I never agreed to throw myself into any kind of fight to
save this Melody chick."

"Do
you trust me, Jasmin?"

"Honestly?
For the last week or two all you've done is throw me from one mess
where I've almost died to the next bloody snafu. I'm not sure that
you really deserve much trust anymore."

For
the first time in a while Rachel sounded a little hurt. "You've
had a rough go of things, but I've kept you alive so far. I'm not
going to throw you into anything you can't win, Jasmin. Everything
that's happened so far has happened for a reason, you have to believe
me."

I
didn't want to agree, but something like fifteen or sixteen years of
shared trials pulled an answer out of me.

"Yeah,
I guess I still trust you."

"Then
agree to the deal. It's the best you're going to get out of him. I
promise. I've
seen
it."

"Okay,
I agree, as long as you and Mr. Fangs over there agree to hold up
your ends of things."

Geoffrey
nodded, but before I could tell him that he had to actually
say
yes, Rachel jumped in again. "A nod isn't going to suffice,
Geoffrey. Oh, and I agree, or promise or whatever."

"Very
well, I agree too. I have to say though that you're a pretty poor
fortune teller. Anyone who could really see the future would have
found a way to corner me into agreeing to something more along the
lines of what Jasmin wanted just now. After the way you've botched
this little negotiation you're lucky I'm agreeing at all. I don't
know how you're accomplishing some of these little tricks, maybe
you've got some kind of video feed here or something, but it's
obvious to me that you can't see the future like you've been
implying."

Unlike
before, Rachel didn't sound hurt, she just sounded tired. "I
don't actually care what you believe, Geoffrey. The truth is that
there isn't anything important out there that's hidden from me, but
that doesn't matter, at least not right now. You still believe me
enough that you're going to act. You're going to go after Melody and
when the appropriate time comes you'll go inside of Ben's mind and
you'll exercise every bit of knowledge and power you have at your
fingertips to do what you've just committed to."

Geoffrey
hadn't looked particularly mad before, but he was obviously angry
now. "I've had more months than I care to think about listening
to that kind of all-powerful garbage from Imastious. I'll help Ben
after you two take me to Melody, but don't try to double-cross me,
and stop lying to me. It's only a matter of time before I figure out
how you're doing this. Nobody is omniscient."

"I
never said that I was omniscient, merely that I see the important
stuff. Maybe you're operating from a false premise, maybe this
negotiation wasn't important enough for me to see it."

Geoffrey's
laugh was biting. "Maybe, but that isn't the only possible
answer."

"You're
right, it's not the only possible answer. The other option is that
this negotiation needed to happen just the way that it did."

Geoffrey
just laughed harder, but I could hear Rachel continue over the sound
of his amusement.

"Are
you really that ready to dismiss the idea, Geoffrey? Are you really
positive that our little discussion just now wasn't the proverbial
flapping of the butterfly's wings that creates a hurricane months or
even years from now?"

Geoffrey's
laughter cut off instantly, but he didn't seem ready to answer her.

"Right,
I didn't think so. Just do your part, Jasmin will do hers, and you'll
both get what you've asked for once you've paid the price."

I
cleared my throat. "So what's the next step?"

"Go
find Melody. Puppeteer has her."

Jasmin Bianchi
Pinnacle Luxury Hotel
Manhattan, New York

Rachel
hung up on us before I could ask her where Puppeteer was. I should
have gotten my question out sooner, but I'd been so shocked by the
revelation that Geoffrey's girl was being held by one of the Coun'hij
that I'd just sat there for several seconds.

"How
about you tell me who Puppeteer is and why Rachel just made sure that
she wouldn't have to tell us how to find him?"

Geoffrey
looked calm, but I could hear his heart hammering away at his chest
and he smelled like his body temperature was elevated. It wasn't
until that point that I realized just how controlled he usually was.
I should have been getting all kinds of non-verbal clues off of him
before then. Scent, heartbeat, respiration, normally all of that
combined to tell a shape shifter what another person was feeling.

Usually
I could tell when someone was lying to me, but Geoffrey hadn't been
giving off any of the normal cues until right after Rachel hung up on
us. Usually you didn't see that kind of thing out of anyone other
than a sociopath or another shape shifter, one who'd spent decades
training themselves not to betray what they were actually thinking.

It
was a bad sign, not because I really thought that Geoffrey was a
sociopath, at least not any more or less than any other vampire, but
because I didn't actually
know
whether he'd been telling the truth when he'd said that he would help
Ben. I was depending on Rachel too much and it had happened without
me even realizing it.

"You
just realized something, what was it?"

I
looked over at Geoffrey and shook my head. "It doesn't have
anything to do with Puppeteer."

"That
doesn't mean that it isn't important though, and you don't expect me
to really believe that you were just thinking about something
unrelated to what Rachel just told us."

"I
said drop it."

For
a second I thought that I'd gone too far. I wasn't any more prepared
to fight him now than I'd been a few minutes ago and this time Rachel
wasn't available to keep us from going for each other's throats.

"I
could find out if I really wanted to."

I
shook my head. "If I catch you poking around in my head I
will
kill you, no questions asked. Don't think you can sneak something in
there without me realizing it either, my beast is very good at
detecting those kinds of things."

I
dialed Rachel's latest number again, hoping beyond hope that she'd
pick up, but it went straight to voicemail. I sighed in frustration
and then looked up to find Geoffrey looking at me, but he looked more
curious than angry.

"Your
beast? You talk like it's a separate entity inside of you."

"She
is. I'm in control almost all of the time, but she's always back
there. She's where the power to change shapes comes from, and she
doesn't view the world in quite the same way as you or I do."

Geoffrey
nodded, obviously filing that information away for later analysis.
"So who is Puppeteer?"

"I
want your word that all of this stays a secret. My people have worked
very hard for a very long time to keep our existence a secret from
the vampire community."

"I
didn't think that you trusted me to keep any promises."

"I
don't, but I'd be pretty stupid not to swear you to secrecy on the
off chance that you really do take your promises seriously."

Geoffrey
looked at me for several long seconds before nodding. "Very
well. I don't actually associate with any other vampires and I'll be
doing my best to keep things that way, but if things change for some
reason I'll keep your secrets as best I can."

I
was going to protest the weak wording he was using, but he stopped me
with a gesture. "I'd like to promise that I'd take what you're
about to tell me to my grave, but the truth is that I can't guarantee
that. I could be recaptured by Imastious at any point, and if that
happens it's unlikely that I'll be able to keep anything back from
him. It's one of the hazards that come along with being a vampire."