She stood alone in a room that looked like a concrete bunker but felt like something else. Broken conduit pipes ran across the low ceiling overhead. Tables lay overturned in the center of the room, cards and multicolored disks spilling from them and littering the floor.
Corpses littered the room as well. Some hung over the chairs and tables, and others lay across the cards and disks. Many of them were years dead and missing parts from greedy insects and animals, but at least two of them still glistened with their own fresh blood. All of them had died violently.
A shadow lurched against the wall to her left and made hacking noises.
Krysty turned, her hand dropping automatically for the butt of her .38. But somehow she wasn’t able to reach it. In her frustration she started to lose the vision.
“Concentrate,” a woman’s voice ordered. The words sounded nearly empty, as if the speaker had used her last dying gasp to deliver them. “You don’t need a weapon here. You are not here. Find the boy. He must know what you have to say.”
Krysty tried to ask who was talking to her.
“Do not waste this time. They will die if you do.”
Going forward, Krysty stared hard at the shadow. Strangely colored lights caressed the high points of the young man’s face and the armor that he wore. In the darkness, she believed the armor was a full-length bulletproof vest that covered the young man from his shoulders to his crotch.
He gasped, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, and kept his handblaster pointed toward the door. The barrel wavered, taking all his flagging strength attempting to hold it level. Even in the darkness she could tell that he was blond and light eyed.
It wasn’t Dean. Krysty felt relief wash over her.
“Wait,” the woman’s voice advised.
Watching the young man, Krysty saw the pattern of the colored lights change, winking and shifting to track across the dark skin. A shadow suddenly filled the doorway behind the young man, leaner but with a dangerous air of self-assurance.
The young man obviously heard some kind of noise and whirled to face the doorway. His blaster roared.
The shadow jumped out of the way as the bullet smacked into the door frame.
“Shit, Louis, put that blaster down before you hurt somebody you’re not supposed to,” a young man’s voice directed.
Krysty recognized Dean at once. She tried to call out to him as he crossed the room to the wounded boy.
“Save your strength,” the woman’s voice said. “You’ll get your chance to speak with him if you work with me. And you’ll have to speak with him if you’re going to save his lifeor that of your mate.”
“Who are you?” Krysty demanded. She tried to find the source of the voice, using her gift.
Abruptly Dean started to fade away.
“Concentrate!”
Krysty returned her attention to Dean.
The boy looked at Louis, then pulled at the straps holding the body armor. Blood smeared Dean’s fingers as he worked.
Reluctantly the body armor separated with a sucking sound. Dean peered under the armor, his face wrinkling in fear and anger. He still looked like a little boy, not yet twelve, but Krysty felt the need to comfort him, too.
“Those shitters!” Dean yelled. “They shot you bad, Louis! They shot you real bad!”
Without saying a word, the taller boy suddenly slumped forward. His face went slack as crimson-stained spittle threaded from his mouth.
Dean went down under Louis’s weight. “Louis, you can’t die! You can’t leave me here alone! Louis!”
The querulous snuffling of a large beast sounded outside the room. Then it came closer. Split hooves rang on the concrete floor.
Dean heaved himself from under the dead boy. Blood, old and new, stained his green armored vest. He leveled his Browning Hi-Power before him, back against the wall.
“Talk to him!” the woman’s voice urged.
“He can’t hear me,” Krysty said.
“Now,” she stated, “now he can. Your mind will know the words.”
Krysty stepped forward and reached out to touch Dean, who still gave no indication that he saw her. Her hand passed right through his shoulder, but for an instant there was the sensation of an electrical discharge.