I knew what this was. Samrael had done this to me at Joy’s party. Except this was over faster. Sebastian straightened again almost immediately and looked at me. “What was that? What did he just do to me?”
“Help me understand something,” Samrael said. “You’re both involved in this—I can sense that you know that—but you haven’t been told the most salient crucial piece?” He laughed, and said something to Ronwae and Pyro. I didn’t hear it, but it made Ronwae laugh too. Not Pyro. He stared at us with crazed eyes, shifting his weight like a hunting dog waiting to be released.
“This is stupid,” Pyro said. “Let’s just kill them.”
“Not yet.” Samrael’s focus moved to me. My turn again.
The pressure started over my eyes, the sensation of thumbs digging their way into my head, probing inside. The feeling spread and turned sharper, casting a barbed net over my brain. The darkness came, wheeling around me, pulling me back as the world pushed further and further away.
I wanted him out. Out of my head.
Get out. Get out. Get. Out.
But I need something, Gideon. Where is it?
His voice was inside my mind.
Then I saw images. Quick flashes. Daryn at breakfast in Cayucos, writing in her notebook. Daryn sitting in the passenger seat of my Jeep, feet up on the dash. Daryn in the elevator, finger drifting over the panel to the eleventh-floor button.
This was why she’d withheld critical information about our mission. She knew what Samrael could do. He wasn’t attacking. He was searching. Through my head.
Daryn is her name? Unusual. She’s kind on the eyes, isn’t she? And much smarter than you, it would seem. In the context of her strategy, your extreme cluelessness is almost forgivable. Where is she, Gideon? Right now, where is she?
I tried to fight back, concentrating on pulling down the net. Pushing against the pressure.
Admirable attempt, but not good enough. Let’s try this again. Where—pain, pain like nails driving into my head—is she?
A sound ripped into the quiet of the street. It came from close, from my throat. My knees smacked the asphalt. Sebastian yelled something. Yelled for Samrael to stop.
Samrael didn’t stop.
Insanity. Death. They were the only ways out of this agony. Were they close?
Yes, Gideon. Very.
No. This was just pain. I’d felt it before. Every day. Every time I thought of my dad. I could take this.
The net released suddenly, the pressure and darkness withdrawing, and then there was the lift. The huge lift of being free of the pain, like hot rain pouring up and down my body, running through every part of me.
I pulled myself to my feet. The disks were still in my hand, but I felt dazed and slow. Up the street at Samrael’s side, Ronwae blurred in and out, like I was seeing her through heat waves. Sebastian. Samrael and his buddies. Everyone was focused on the tricked-out ATV that had just come around the corner.
The studio cop pulled to a stop and brought a microphone up to his mouth. “This set is authorized-access only.” His voice projected through speakers mounted on the roll bar. “I’m going to need to see your passes, please.”
Sebastian and I were on the opposite end of the block, leaving the Kindred boxed in the middle—the weakest position to be in during a conflict—so why did I feel like they still had the advantage?
“We’ll be on our way shortly,” Samrael replied. “We’re just finishing up a conversation.”
The studio cop climbed out of the vehicle. The guy was ripped in that gym-dweller way. Loaded with muscles that had no real-world application. He pressed his shoulders back, sensing trouble. “I’m sorry, sir. Unless you show me your ID, I’m going to have to escort you off the lot.”
“Gideon, we should leave,” Sebastian said.
But I couldn’t leave. Something was about to go down. I was sure of it.
And I was right.
Samrael made a snapping motion with his hand, a flick like he was opening a switchblade. Something appeared at his fingertips. There was nothing in his hand, and then there was something. A knife. Sebastian and I weren’t that far away. I couldn’t be imagining the long ivory-colored knife Samrael was suddenly holding.
The studio cop froze as Samrael turned back to him.
I broke into a sprint, straight toward him, dread shooting through me.
Samrael reached back and hurled the knife. It traveled through the air at shocking speed, but time broke down and I saw it in pieces. Slow. The entire thing, clear and sharp. The guard’s utter look of shock at seeing a weapon used against him. The knife’s bizarre trail of pale light, like a comet’s. And my thoughts. I had so many thoughts as that knife sailed on and on in that instant.
That man’s going to die.
By a weapon that appeared from nothing.
Because I didn’t anticipate again.
I should’ve stopped this.
The blade sank into the guard’s neck. Five, six inches disappearing at the base of his throat, right beneath his Adam’s apple. The force of the strike rocked him backward. He landed on the street, his keys jangling, his cell phone skidding across the pavement.