Chapter 24

Out in front of the building Lam and Lucy were busily splitting their people up into groups and loading them into the two vans. I looked around, trying to determine how much collateral damage to expect, and where the best and safest location for the vehicles was.

Once everyone was packed in and ready to go, Lucy and her brother approached us.

"Lam, have you ever used a pistol before?" I asked as I removed my overcoat and handed it to Lilly. He eyed the weapons hanging beneath my arms.

"Yes, but I don't like guns." It was the most English I'd heard from the man since we'd met.

"Me either, but there are times when they come in handy."

I took the pistol from under my left arm and handed it to him, grip first. As he reached out to take it from me I linked with the man and implanted a ring, filling it with three times the usual mix of emotions I put into my followers. His pupils dilated to the point where I couldn't see any color but black.

"Protect your sister and Lilly. No one hurts them. Understand me? No one."

He nodded sharply and wrapped his long fingers around the pistol.

Lucy stared up at both of us, her face expressionless. Inside she was a mass of confusion, worry and growing concern.

I removed my shoulder rig with the second pistol still in its holster and handed it to Lilly. I took the little secure phone from my shirt pocket and entered a long sting of letters and numbers. I had to wait nearly fifteen seconds before being connected.

"Whitcomb here."

"Captain, this is Doctor Blacktower. File your flight plan and get the engines warmed up. We'll be carrying seventeen additional passengers."

"Roger that, Doctor."

I disconnected, began emptying my pants pockets of their contents and tucked them into the pockets of the overcoat draped over Lilly's arm. Finally I removed my shoes and socks, stuffed the socks into the shoes. Lilly took them from my extended hands.

"Okay folks, I think the closest safe place to move the vans ought to be across that empty field and parking lot next to the ball field. Park there and wait. As soon as I'm done here I'll join you and we'll head to the airport."

"Be careful Ike; remember what happened last time." Lilly urged. I drained away her fear and sent a pulse of love and confidence to take its place.

The three of them climbed into the lead van, slammed the doors shut and the little two vehicle convoy pulled away down the street, turned left and headed for the baseball field a block and a half away.

I turned around and faced the front of the big warehouse.

'Remember what happened last time.' I knew which last time she meant. The night I'd left the house, the night I'd walked out on my family. The second tree I destroyed using only my feelings. I remembered. Remembered getting up off the snow covered drive and pulling slivers of scorched wood out of my chest.

If I somehow managed to do what I planned, this time I could look forward to pulling shards of metal out of my body ... if I was lucky.

The building wasn't alive so I couldn't link with it. How was I supposed to transfer the power?

I didn't have the slightest idea.

When I told Lilly I'd blow up the island it was just a bad joke. I was pretty sure that wouldn't work. Linking with the earth had always been a way for me to unload, the way a capacitor discharges to ground. No, no way that would work.

But there was something else...

Lilly said that I had, that night on the balcony in LA, a lightning bolt shoot out of me. I hadn't been aware of doing anything. I simply thought I'd exploded.

Maybe there was a way to consciously recreate that discharge.

"I'm open to suggestions." I mumbled.

There was no answer.

I was on my own.

I looked beyond the warehouse to the southwest and saw the choppy water of the Bay and beyond that a thinning bank of morning fog slowly fading back into the distance. The chilly breeze whipped my hair around my face. I pushed it back behind my ears, flexed my shoulders and took a deep breath.

I wasn't accomplishing anything just standing around and thinking in circles. Might as well do something.

Power. I needed power; lots and lots of power.

Well, there was plenty to be had. It was all around me. So I opened my senses and started drawing in two cities worth of emotions. Forget the happiness, the pleasure, the love. Forget all the good stuff.

I was planning destruction. I needed nasty.

Pull it in, from close, from far, from land and sea. Wherever there were people there was hate, fear, pain, greed, jealousy, frustration, pettiness and deceit. Pull it all in ... more and more and more ... don't tuck it away, don't ignore it or hide from it ... revel in the feelings ... bask in the rancid rays of unlimited power...

My shirt began to feel tight across the shoulders, the collar dug into the skin around my neck. I reached up, dug a finger between skin and cloth and pulled. The button popped off and some of the pressure went away. I took several deep breaths and reached out for more...

More fury, more rage, more aggression ... more, more, more.

I felt flushed and beads of sweat formed on my forehead, rolling down my cheekbones and dripping down onto my chest.

The breeze continued, but it didn't feel cold as it battered my face. The smell of the ocean was in my nose, the taste of salt and fish was on my tongue and in my throat.

Deeper and deeper breaths, but fewer with every passing second.

From off in the distance I heard the sound of sirens, squealing tires and screeching brakes. Then, after a few moments, closer sounds of shoes and boots as they slapped pavement, the movement of bodies and the rattle of metal against metal.

"Ike Blacktower, I have a federal warrant authorizing us to seize all property belonging to White Dragon Security and to place you and all individuals currently on the property under arrest. Get down on the ground and put your hands behind your head." a braying voice behind me commanded.

Flames began to form behind my eyes and my feet felt like blocks of ice. I turned around very, very slowly.

Four cars, black with tinted windows and a strobing blue light on each roof, were arrayed on the street in front of White Dragon Security. Behind each one were four men, sixteen all total, four with short chopped down automatic rifles, two with stubby shotguns and the rest with pistols. All pointed at me.

"Fuck your warrant." I snarled, ripped out their emotions and fitted each one with a ring exactly like the one I'd given Anya.

I raised my right hand, which felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds, and pointed a finger at the closest man.

He was about my own age, short cropped brown hair, blue pants, white shirt and blue flak jacket, and a vacant look in his light blue eyes.

"Who do you work for?"

"ATF. Commander Remmson."

Fucking Justice Department, fucking Attorney General and fucking Marcus.

Well, he couldn't say he hadn't been warned.

Still, I'd have to thank him the next time we met for solving my explosion problem.

"All of you get inside the building. Prop open the front doors and when you're inside line up in rows of two, no more than three feet behind the doorway. MOVE!"

I slowly turned to watch as they trotted around their vehicles and up to the front doors; the two in front swung them out and dropped the door stops to hold them open. The blue jacketed column marched in and formed up just back of the door way, weapons still in their hands.

I smiled coldly, linked with the ones I could see, and started amplifying the reservoir of negative emotions I'd pulled in, over and over, geometrically multiplying the power I held.

The breeze became a pounding wind, hard and bitterly cold. From the corner of my eye I saw the once thinning fog bank had thickened and was storming back towards the island. Sleet began falling from the now overcast sky, and slashed every inch of my exposed skin. I added my own pain to the mix and continued amping.

Right around the tenth round of amplification I burst into flames.

It was different from the other times in that I had no trouble seeing. There was no red haze, no fuzziness or distortion of any kind. I could hear the flames snapping in the howling wind, hear the hiss and pop when beads of frozen rain impacted with my burning body.

And for the first time in several minutes I could feel my toes.

My body was on fire but my thoughts were as cold as a glacier.

I looked closely at the sixteen men lined up inside the building and considered the fate that awaited them.

They're just doing their jobs. Most were probably decent enough human beings, with mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers. Not all that different from me really. Some likely had wives and children. Dreams and ambitions, hopes and desires; plans for the future. Did they deserve to die like this?

Of course they didn't.

I unloaded everything within me down the sixteen links in a single luminously gruesome instant.

Their bodies didn't so much explode as liquefy. And when that happened I saw it. A white-ish blue edged jagged bolt of blindingly intense light erupted down the length of each link. The spraying liquid remains of the sixteen men inside the building turned to plasma and the building that just that morning had housed White Dragon Security blossomed into a five story pillar of black smoke and roaring flame.

There was no debris to speak of. There was a tremendous blast, a shockwave that pushed out in all directions, slamming against me, heat mixed with tiny particles of what had once been a large building with sixteen human beings inside.

I stood there, firmly rooted to the ground not more than thirty feet from the blast and watched the results of my work for several seconds then turned on my heel and began walking in the direction of the two vans parked next to the baseball field.

The wind picked up and tore at my face with each step I took, but at least it kept my hair out of my eyes and carried the stench of burnt earth and melted black-top out towards the bay.

As I got closer to the vans, the driver and passenger doors of the lead vehicle swung open and Lilly, Lam and Lucy emerged. Lucy and Lilly hurried around the front to stand beside Lucy's brother.

It felt as though the air was made of water; my body weighed a ton and each step took an eternity.

Lilly looked at me ... there was so much sadness in her beautiful eyes, so much worry and fear. Then she smiled and it all went away. Happiness and relief filled her heart, blazing stars and a promise of never-ending love in her eyes.