Chapter 27

Sally, full of fury, was red-faced and screaming at the top of her lungs, her hands curled into claws.

James, unable to think, reacted instead. He sent a burst of power down that slender thread that remained, forcing every erg of his being into Sally’s mind.

There, wrapped around her emotions, tangled in the fibers of her very being, was a mass of emerald threads, all tying into a single emerald-colored cable that stretched off through the wall, out of the hotel and into the city.

Without even consciously making a decision, he linked with Sally and Zoe, then thrust himself down the massive, emerald cable towards its source, determined to destroy this ... thing that had dared to hurt one of his. The pathway he traveled wasn’t long, though how that translated to the real world, he wasn’t sure. It was just a second before he was stopped by a green wall, a barrier. The emerald cable seemed to come from the wall, not necessarily through it, and he couldn’t progress any further.

He imagined himself standing on a plain, a green wall in front of him like the wall around a city. It was featureless except for threads that emerged from the fabric of the wall, hundreds of them, and disappeared into the darkness in every direction. Somehow, he knew that he might be able to use brute force to pierce the wall, but he would be too weak to do much else, even with Zoe and Stacy. Maybe if Sally was here. Despite her issues, she was stronger than either of his other girls.

Instead James decided to retaliate. He imagined a giant ax, its edge gleaming in the pale light. With the power of his mind, he sent it whirling through the air, severing one, two, a dozen of the threads that emerged from the wall.

The response was instant and he felt as much as heard a scream of pain and anger, mixed with more than a little fright.

‘Release her, you cunt, or I will cut every one of them and then take down this wall. When I get my hands on you, you will wish you had never been born!’ He screamed into the pale sky.

‘I’ll kill her! I will tear out her mind and leave her a mewling, pissing and shitting vegetable.’ the strident voice replied, the anger and pain making it even more strident.

‘Let her go, you cunt. We haven’t harmed you but I swear on everything I hold dear, if you harm her, I will track you down and you will pay. Everything you do to her will be returned to you ten fold. You will wish you were dead!’ James cried, his ax still whirling, still cutting threads.

‘OKAY! STOP! STOP CUTTING! STOP KILLING THEM!‘ the scream was enough to make James, even his mental image, put his hands over his ears. He willed the ax back to his side and waiting.

‘You call me a monster? I was trying to scare you off! You killed dozens of people. How could you?’ The voice was softer now, the tone one of great pain and loss, heart-broken sobbing followed.

‘I cut your threads, nothing more. If you have controlled people like you did my Sally, and removed their ability to control themselves? Then you killed them. Think! What would happen if you got sick and died? What would happen if you got hit by a car? If you did that to them, they were already dead.’ James said, clamping down on the nausea that threatened to overwhelm him. If she did what she claimed, then he really had killed a bunch of people, cut the threads like some demented avatar of fate.

“Release her. DO IT!’ James screamed, suddenly terrified for Sally. ‘DO IT!‘ His terror and his fear were like a battering ram and cracks appeared in the great wall in front of him.

The response, when it came, was so soft that it was barely a whisper.

‘I don’t know how.’

James was stunned. That simple declaration was like a death knell for Sally, for a damage, sweet woman he had come to love, one of his family.

‘Why ... how did this happen? How can you seize control and not know how to let go again? You can’t have her! You can’t just enslave people!‘ James cried, and he could hear the cries of fright and anger, despair and pain from Stacy and Zoe, though he kept them back, using their strength to bolster his.

‘How could I not?‘ came the reply, softer still and filled with resignation.

A tendril of emerald green appeared to ooze out of the cracked green wall. It moved slowly, snaking forward until it was just a couple of feet away from James. He watched, his ax fairly quivering at his side, ready to strike if it came closer, if it tried to take him like it had his Sally.

Instead it did something fascinating. The end flattened and began to grow. It got larger and larger until it was five feet or so across and vaguely rectangular in shape. On the flat surface presented to James, an image appeared.

The neighborhood was run down. The yards, tiny and unkempt, were as likely to have garbage or discarded appliances as they were to have grass. The houses were run down and neglected, with holes in the siding, missing shingles, boarded up windows and most had at least one graffiti tag.

The vehicles at the curb in front of the run down houses were no better for the most part, except for one. There was a Cadillac down the street from where James appeared to be standing, and it was gleaming softly in the light of the single, unbroken streetlight.

Clustered around the Caddy were a half-dozen young men, there dark clothes and dark skin broken up only by a single flash of color on each, a bandanna that was various worn, draped, tied or otherwise displayed in some manner. This was obviously some sort of symbol, a sign that they were a group, a team? A gang.

The small house in front of James was as run down as any other, and on the front porch, dressed only in a dressing gown worn thin by the passage of time and countless washings, was an older woman. She might have been fifty or a hundred and fifty. Her lined and creased face, her toothless mouth and squinting eyes made it hard to tell. She had a thin cigar hanging from her lips and her eyes were carefully not watching the well-dressed gang members a few houses down.

There was movement at the window and a curtain twitched aside, a tiny pair of bright eyes and a little button nose appeared, peering out into the yard and the street.

“Grandma, a bad thing! A very, very bad thing is going to happen. Please come inside!” A thin, reedy voice, that of a small child, could be heard from inside the small house. The only response from the old woman was a twitch of her shoulder, as if a fly had landed. The woman’s face never changed and, somehow, James knew she had heard and was terrified of what it meant. Her granddaughter, the tiny face at the window, had been making little predictions for almost a year now. They all came true.

The old woman was unashamedly afraid of her granddaughter, but that hadn’t kept her from using the little tidbits the girl dropped. It had never been anything concrete, like finding money or something. Instead it was in the form of warnings. “This person was about to run up on the curb because they were distracted, Grandma, so cross the street a block early.” she had been told and did so. The car that ran up on the curb hit the storefront, doing some pretty good damage to both the building and the car. If she had been standing there, they would have been dead for sure.

Now, last night, the girl had told her that a gang was moving in. They wanted every house in the neighborhood. They wanted to build a gang community and they needed the current owners out. They had no where else to go, no money, no transportation. The grandmother ignored the warning. That is why she was on the porch tonight, watching, waiting.

James watched with fascination as the gang members, a full dozen of them out there now, split up in two man teams and started knocking on doors. Two of them headed directly here, to granny’s house, and kicked open the small wooden gate.

“Yo, grandma. You gots to leave. Pack yo shit and get the fuck out. The Disciples own this block now.” One of them growled, crossing his arms over his muscular chest and striking a pose.

Grandma surprised everyone, including James who wasn’t even really there, by pulling out a revolver and putting a bullet right through the tough’s forehead, and another one through the lungs and into the spine of the second man.

The gunshots were shockingly loud in the quiet neighborhood and every head turned towards the source. Some of the gang members ran away, but several of them pulled guns and ran towards the disturbance. One of the men was firing before they even reached the yard and James saw two bullets strike the old woman.

By the time a half-dozen of the thugs were standing around the bodies in the yard, including that of grandma, a man who was obviously the leader was cursing up a storm.

“Dumb motherfuckers let an old bitch cap they asses? What the fuck is wrong with this motherfucking picture? You motherfuckers are getting slack, let some old bitch pull a piece and start blasting. Who know this bitch? Who know her?” he screamed out, waving his arms around, a gun still in one hand.

From the back of the group, someone called out, “She got a granddaughter, I think. I seen a little girl with the old lady.

That seemed to galvanize the leader and he spun around, kicked the rapidly cooling body of the old woman, then stepped over her and literally ripped the screen door from its frame.

The rest of the group seemed frozen in place as the one man entered the house, choosing to stay outside where it was, slightly, safer.

James’ viewpoint switched then, and he was suddenly standing inside the house. The indoors was as run down as the outside, but the difference was that the place was spic and span, spotless and neat. Sure, there were bare spots in the carpet, but the rug was freshly vacuumed. The worn wooden floors were mopped, the stained sink was empty with clean dishes in the drainer.

The gang leader who had busted through the door was looking around the living room with a sneer on his face.

“Where you at, little ho? You make me search for you and I will just give you to my boys, you can be their toy until they get sick of you. You come out now, I won’t even kill you.” he called, his voice mocking and his eyes hard. He stuck his handgun in the waist of his pants and flexed his big hands, stalking forward towards the small hallway that led to the rear of the house.

He stepped forward and James started when the big man froze in place, one foot in front of the other, his face a mask of anger. Only his eyes seemed to be moving now, and they were going wild, moving left and right, up and down, practically quivering like they were trying to escape his face! It would have been humorous in any other context.

James’s view changed again and he was in a bedroom. It was tiny, barely more than a closet, but it had pink frilly curtains, a pink comforter on the tiny cot that was being used as a bed, and perched on the bed was a tiny girl. The pink dress she wore could have fit a large doll and it made her dark skin appear even darker.

She was emaciated, her joints looking abnormally larger and her cheekbones appearing as if they were about to cut through the thin skin that covered them. Her eyes were wide and filled with tears that threatened to slop over and run down her cheeks. She had one had thrown out as if to ward off a blow.

James’s view switched again, and he was in a fantastic landscape of images. It was as if someone had taken thousands of photographs and hung them up by strings from the ceiling, and then opened the door to let the breeze in. The photos were all spinning slowly in place, sometimes connected by strings to others, sometimes on the own.

Through the middle of the scene, as fantastic as it appeared, was something familiar. There was an emerald green rope, the end of which pierced through the scene, a thousand tiny tendrils arcing off left and right, top and bottom, and touching just about everything in sight. James was able to follow the main cable a bit and he could see that it had invaded almost every facet of the place, much as it had done to Sally’s mind, though the references he used presented a different scene. He followed the cable back now, out of the head of the thug and to the girl whose eyes were now open, the tears starting to dry, and a wondrous expression was on her face.

The scene unfroze and sped up again. The leader continued down the hall, but no longer stomping. His face was serene now, the anger gone. He reached the room where the little girl waited and opened the door.

“Let me help you, mistress.” his deep voice rumbled, and he reached down to cradle the small girl in his arms, lifting her from her tiny bed and perching her on his hip like a child.

“We have a lot to do, Dewayne.” her thin, reedy voice said, and she smiled.

The scene changed again, the passage of time obvious, and the small girl was older now, fitter, healthier, though still painfully thin and frail. She was seated on a fur-covered bean bag sort of thing. There were naked men, both of them nearing seven feet tall and both massive and heavily muscled. They were standing beside her, body guards and clearly a display of power.

The building she was in now was a huge house in a nice neighborhood. The house was filled to overflowing with ‘things.’ There were three stereos, a dozen televisions, half a dozen DVRs and that was just in this room. The rest of the house was just as bad, stuffed with more equipment and possessions than a dozen families could use in a lifetime.

James shook his head, understanding what he was seeing, but disappointed, even disgusted by what it told him. She had obviously built herself someplace she felt safe, taking over people like she had the first one. He guessed she had acted instinctively when she took over the gang boss, and had continued just taking people as she had to or even wanted, he supposed. She had surrounded herself with the things she couldn’t afford when she was living with her grandmother, a type of security blanket.

‘You never bothered to learn how, just used what you knew.‘ he said mentally, shaking his head.

‘I did try. I took my friend, Tyesha, by accident. At first, I stayed home, in grandma’s house, and Dewayne and his guys protected me. Tyesha was my only friend and she would come over sometimes. One day, we had an argument and she made me mad. I wanted to make her do what I wanted, but when I did, I felt bad. I tried to set her free, to cut the link, but she went into convulsions and right there, in the living room, she died. I killed my best friend.’

James mentally shook his head. He wanted to feel bad for the girl, but he couldn’t allow that to interfere right now, he needed to save Sally!

‘Master, we have to do it. We have to go in and untangle that mess. We have to figure it out, this girl is not strong enough.’ Zoe sent. James could tell that Zoe’s anger was barely in check, that she wanted to tear out the little girl’s eyes!

‘Zoe is right, but we need the girl too. It is her power, her control. We have to bring her along, let her pull the strings out again.’ Stacy made a lot of sense, and it seemed like the smart way to go.

James turned his might outward again.

‘What do I call you?’

‘Angela, please.’

‘Angela, you will have to help me. Help me undo what you have done to my Sally. If you ever want peace, you will do this for me.’ James said, his tone resolute and implacable.

‘If I do this, you go away and leave me alone. Stay away from me, from this part of the city. This is my area, mine!‘ Angela said, sounding in turns amenable and resolute.

James, knowing that there was no way he could let her continue enslaving people, ignored the second half. Instead, he lined up his probe at a crack in the wall, a crack he had created, and speared inward with all of his mental strength, all of his concentration, and pierced her core.

Once inside her mind, he quickly seized control over every facet of her body, then began searching for the controls to her mental powers. Angela fought back, pummeling the shield he imagined time and time again. Her cries of anguish and fear tore at his heart, but he had to take control, he had to force his way in.

When he had enough, when the attacks on his shield were increasing, he grabbed a hold of the nerves to her lower body and did what he had done to Evers, he squeezed.

The attacks on his shield ended instantly and a wordless howl of agony echoed across his connection.

He released his hold on her pain for a moment.

‘Angela, you need to stop fighting me. If you do not help me, I will destroy everything you hold dear and your life, your entire universe, will be pain. What you felt was just a tiny taste of what I can and will do to you. Do you understand?’

James hid the disgust and self-loathing that filled him. He had to get through to her. He had to stop her and free Sally. What other choice did he have?

‘Angela, this is Zoe, and James is a wonderful, loving and caring man. He protects us and loves us and you hurt one of his family. If you just help us, he won’t hurt you!’

‘Lying slut! Fucking whore! Skank! I saw! I saw what you were doing, you disgusting whore. I saw in her mind, calling him daddy, pretending that he was her father, I saw how sick you all are. He made you do this, I know how men think. Even my tiny, sick body, men are fucking animals. They imagined raping me! ME!” Angela was ranting, her mind filled with hate and pain and fear.