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  Geoffrey closed his eyes and tried to process the fact that his search was over, that he'd failed, but Jasmin put a hand on his shoulder.

  "Maybe we can try to go back there and pick the trail up in a couple of days."

  Geoffrey's laugh was a bitter-sounding thing. "That will never work and you know it. There is almost no chance that a rain storm won't sweep through that area before then. Even if it didn't, you lost her when the trail was still fresh, we missed our chance. She's gone. I need to just accept that—at least I can be happy knowing that she managed to escape somehow on her own."

  Jasmin had an unusually obstinate set to her mouth. "Maybe Rachel can help us some more. She knew that Melody was with Puppeteer before, there's nothing to say that she can't tell us how to find her again."

  "Maybe, but the odds aren't good. Rachel seems to be less omniscient as time goes on rather than more omniscient."

  Jasmin's mouth went tight at his observation, but she apparently couldn't disagree with what he'd said. Geoffrey put one hand up against the right side of his head. He could feel the beginnings of a migraine. It wasn't because he'd overexerted himself, this was something different. It was almost like his mind was working overtime trying to keep him from realizing something.

  "You said that we're almost ready to leave Duluth. What are you doing with Jeete and Jorge?"

  "I executed Jeete an hour ago. Based on what you told me you'd seen inside of his mind I figured he'd earned the death penalty several times over."

  Geoffrey nodded. "What about Jorge?"

  "I let him go. I made him swear a ritual promise that he wouldn't go to any other packs for at least three weeks. He's also prohibited from telling anyone anything about what's happened here during the last week or ever joining up with the Coun'hij. I didn't want to let him go, but I didn't have any proof that he needed to be put down."

  Geoffrey reached over and clasped Jasmin's arm. Wordlessly conveying support and understanding of how hard it had been for her to make that call.

  "That was the right decision. We'll still probably end up fighting him at some point, but it was still the right thing to do."

  "I guess. I keep thinking how I'm going to feel if he ends up killing one of my friends, but I just couldn't bring myself to cut his throat. I guess I should be glad that I still have some limits. I was starting to think that maybe there wasn't anything that I wouldn't do."

  Geoffrey started to turn away from Jasmin, but something stopped him. "What's going on, Jasmin? You're acting weird."

  "It's Ben. He's gotten a lot worse over the last couple of days. I keep thinking that he's as weak as he can get and he keeps lasting a little longer, but I think this is the end. He's stopped breathing on his own. We bagged him and have been forcing air into his lungs for the last six hours. Sally is with him right now, but we can't keep doing that. I've been hoping that you'd regain consciousness before we had to leave Duluth, but now that you're awake it doesn't seem fair to ask you to help, not when we didn't find Melody for you."

  "Take me to him. The deal was that I would do whatever was required to keep him alive. You've proved that you'll honor your promises. You and your people nearly died a number of times already. I couldn't ask for more than that."

  Geoffrey was less steady on his feet than he would have liked, but Jasmin pulled one of his arms over her shoulder and they made it across the house without any mishaps. After having helped take care of Ben for so many days, it was hard for Geoffrey to see Ben lying there completely unresponsive like that. He could only imagine what Jasmin must be going through.

  "He's still got a pulse?"

  Sally nodded. "I've been checking it every few minutes. It's still there, but it's getting weaker too."

  He hadn't wanted to say anything to Jasmin, but Geoffrey had been more than a little worried that the blow he'd taken to the head was going to get in the way of his mentalist abilities. Those fears fell by the wayside though as he sent out his first few probes and they slipped free of his body with an effortlessness that seemed to indicate that his mind was well-rested and ready to do whatever was asked of it.

  "I'm starting now."

  The words drifted out of his mouth out of little more than reflex and then Geoffrey shut down all of his other senses and focused solely on the golden threads connecting him to Ben. The surface thoughts were much as Geoffrey remembered, but they'd become even fewer and weaker than they'd been before.

  It was something he'd never seen anywhere else before, but it very much seemed as though Ben's higher brain functions had been almost completely suspended. Past experience had taught Geoffrey that there wasn't any reason to hang around in the outer layers of someone's mind for the kind of work he was about to try.

  The surface could accept workings and even hold them for a short period of time, but what he needed to do with Ben was to create a powerful, long-lasting construct to counteract whatever the other vampire had done to the young man. Geoffrey gathered himself and then dove deeper into Ben's mind.

  In some ways it was analogous to diving into water. The deeper Geoffrey went into Ben's mind the more he wanted to turn around and fight for the surface again, but as his strength started to trickle out of him, he knew that he wouldn't get a second chance at this. Ben didn't have the luxury of waiting for Geoffrey to rest up and try again in a day or two.

  Time flowed differently when Geoffrey was this enmeshed inside of someone's mind. It seemed to take forever before he bumped up against the barrier that protected Ben's innermost psyche from intrusion, but only a second or two had actually passed. Geoffrey matched his probes up to the frequency of the barrier and slipped inside.

  The first time that Geoffrey had entered the seat of someone's consciousness it had taken the form of a pool of water, but this time he was faced with hundreds of strands of living light. If not for the fact that he'd seen Ben gradually declining, Geoffrey might have been tempted to think that there was nothing wrong with the picture before him. The lights were so brilliant, so breathtakingly beautiful that it seemed impossible that they could be anything other than perfect, but Geoffrey kept sampling them and eventually he started to detect a pattern, dull threads that wound their way around the strands, robbing them of some of their brilliance.

  It was almost more than Geoffrey could grasp. He could follow individual threads and even understand how some of the threads interacted with each other, but the complexity he was facing was almost more than he could hold inside of his mind.

  Geoffrey built a theoretical framework inside of his mind, placing each thread in its place until he was finally able to see all of them together, but even then, he got the sense that there was something there he didn't understand. Making changes to a construct he didn't understand was risky, but he didn't have any other choice.

  Simply destroying the constructs, dozens or even hundreds that there were, was the safest bet, so Geoffrey reached out and snipped the first of the threads, only it grew back almost as soon as it had been cut.

  Geoffrey cut another, but the result was no different and he suddenly understood what he'd failed to see before. This wasn't a host of workings all layered together to create a single result, he was dealing with a single, multi-legged working with a complexity that exceeded anything he'd realized was possible. Even worse, it wasn't just designed to serve as a static working that only influenced Ben, it was actively drawing energy from Ben's thoughts to power itself and repair any damage done to it.

  That was something else that Geoffrey hadn't known was possible, but the parasitic nature of what he was seeing turned his stomach. Most constructs had to be periodically refreshed or they lost cohesion. If they were set inside of the utter calm of the seat of someone's consciousness they could still last for years, possibly even decades, but there wasn't any possibility of outlasting this particular working.

  Geoffrey realized he was going to have to uproot the entire working at once if he was going to have any chance of defeating it. He tried t
o work fast, severing the attachment points of one strand and then holding it away from the strands of light while he worked on stripping another thread away, but after only a few minutes he'd reached the end of his strength. He still had energy that could be dedicated to the battle, but he wasn't strong enough to continue to hold the writhing threads away from the glowing tendrils, and he'd only managed to strip away roughly half of the threads.

  There wasn't any way around it, Geoffrey had failed. The dull grey threads snapped back into place, ripping holes in Geoffrey's mental fingers as they did so, and the glowing pillars of Ben's mind darkened perceptibly as the working drew power into itself to heal the damage that Geoffrey had just done to it.

  Geoffrey could continue to try and fight the construct, but it was obvious that doing so would just kill Ben even faster. Geoffrey backed up to the very edge of the pocket of calm in an attempt to take in the whole of the working and saw something even more amazing.

  The guttering lights of Ben's mind strengthened, inexplicably growing brighter until the strands of light were almost as bright as they'd been before Geoffrey's latest attempt to rip away the construct. It took several more minutes before Geoffrey was able to figure out what had just happened, and even then it was mostly sheer dumb luck that allowed him to find the tiny golden thread that led from the base of Ben's mind out of the bubble of calm.

  Geoffrey didn't follow it any further than that, he couldn't leave the bubble of calm or he'd be too tired to return for at least a day or two, but he was confident that the golden thread must lead to something or someone exterior to Ben. Geoffrey plunged one of his mental fingers into the golden flow and it was like bathing in a pool of warm water that rejuvenated and healed in a way that no water had ever been capable of doing.

  For one glorious second Geoffrey felt his mental reservoirs being topped off with energy and then the thread seemed to recognize him as not belonging and pushed him away. The next time that Geoffrey tried to dip into that miraculous stream it twisted away from him. It appeared that he wasn't going to get another taste of the nectar that had kept Ben alive for so much longer than should have been possible.

  Geoffrey had been surprised that the kill switch had taken so long to run its course, and one as powerful as what he'd actually found inside of Ben's mind should have finished Ben off in a matter of minutes, but instead of dying Ben had found a way to tap into a power source outside of himself and that had made all of the difference.

  There was no way for Geoffrey to ever hope to replicate what Ben had done. He had no idea where Ben had gone in order to tap into such incredible power, but there was one thing that he could do still.

  Geoffrey worked as quickly as he was able. The extra energy he'd siphoned off a few minutes ago was the only thing that even made what he wanted to do possible, but even so he was working at the very edge of his capabilities.

  It was incredibly hard to force a better connection between Ben and the power source that was keeping him alive, but in the end Geoffrey managed it by creating workings on the far side of the link that forced the glowing tendrils of Ben's being down so that they rested more broadly against the glowing thread.

  Once that was done, Geoffrey created another series of workings that boiled down to single-word commands designed to begin counteracting the construct that Ben's old vampire master had implanted inside of him.

  Live. Thrive. Survive.

  The workings were simple because Geoffrey knew that simple workings lasted longer, but they were strong, the strongest he could manage. They laced back and forth around the glowing pillars of Ben's psyche, forming a lattice of support that helped counteract the imperative that was draining his will to live.

  There was just one last thing to do. It was risky and it would take every bit of energy remaining in Geoffrey's reserves, but it was what he would have wanted done if their positions had been reversed. Geoffrey reached out and fed his energy directly into Ben.

  Chapter 23

  Jasmin Bianchi

  Stekensbridge House

  Duluth, Minnesota

  Geoffrey opened his eyes and I knew immediately that he hadn't been able to save Ben. He didn't look like someone who was about to deliver good news, he looked like someone who had given his all, just like he'd promised he would, but who'd failed.

  "I'm sorry, Jasmin, the construct backing up the kill command is just too powerful. Maybe if there were two of me we could rip it out, but I'm just not strong enough."

  "So we'll find another vampire. Rachel found you, you must know someone else you could trust, another mentalist who is strong enough to do what needs to be done."

  Geoffrey shook his head at me. "I've never met another vampire, at least not another mentalist, who you would want to trust inside of Ben's mind."

  I tried to stop the tears, tried to keep control of myself, but it was no use. They trickled down my face despite everything I could do.

  "So there's nothing left to do but just sit here and watch him die?"

  Geoffrey pulled himself to his feet and walked over to me, moving like an old man, like someone who had given more than they should have to the fight. He patted me on the arm.

  "I did what I could; I bought him some more time. Sally, you can stop pumping now, he'll breathe just fine on his own for now. I know it's not much, Jasmin, but I thought that you'd want a chance to say your goodbyes."

  I wanted to ask him what he meant, but it didn't matter. Even reaching up to wipe away the tears on my face was too much effort. I watched as Geoffrey ushered Sally out of the room and pulled the door closed behind him.

  I'd been chasing Ben for years now; it just didn't seem fair for things to end this way. I'd done terrible things in my effort to save him, and now I was going to be left with nothing to show for it, no Ben, no hope for the future, just my sins and a knowledge of how much further I was capable of sinking than I'd ever realized before.

  I reached out and took Ben's hand, but rather than remaining limp he squeezed my hand in return. I looked up to see that his eyes were open.

  "Where am I?"

  For a second I thought I was hallucinating, but then I realized that it didn't matter if I was. If this was some kind of grief-induced dementia then I never wanted to get better.

  "You're in Minnesota. Isaac and I rescued you, but you went into convulsions when I carried you out of the shop so I knocked you unconscious and you've been in a coma ever since."

  "How long?"

  "I'm not sure, I lost count. Weeks, I guess, maybe a couple of months. I've been trying to bring you out of your coma since before we left Sanctuary. Alec paid for some of the best doctors to come look at you, but they couldn't find anything wrong, your body was just slowly shutting down."

  "It still is, Jasmin. I can feel it like a shadowy spider sitting deep down inside of me, telling me to just give up and die."

  "But you're here. Geoffrey said that he couldn't save you, but you're here, he succeeded."

  "No, I could feel him trying to help me. He gave me a transfusion of strength, but it's already leaking away, I don't have much more time."

  The tears that had been escaping my eyes one or two at a time were now a steady trickle, but I didn't care. It didn't matter that I usually prided myself on not crying, the only thing that mattered was that Ben was going to leave me again, just like he always did.

  "You've got to fight it!"

  "I am, and I'll go on continuing to fight it, but it's using my own strength against me. I'm sorry, Jasmin, this is all my fault."

  "Don't say that, please don't try and take the blame for this. It's my fault. I'm the one that addicted you to my touch, if that hadn't happened then you would have been fine."

  Ben shook his head, a weak motion, but a definite denial. "No, Jasmin, you saved me, just like you always have. It seems like as far back as I can remember you've been saving me. From my dad, from the drugs, from my own clumsiness, you're the one who's always pulled me back from the edge."

/>   "No, Ben, you did that, I helped, but if you hadn't wanted it then nothing I did would have saved you."

  "I know, but I wasn't strong enough to do it myself, I never have been. It's always been you who's given me the strength to do what had to be done. I think that's why I kept running. I never knew why you were willing to go to so much effort to save me when I knew I wasn't worth saving."

  "But you are, can't you see that?"

  "I know you think so right now, but I always figured that if I let you get closer to me, if I ever really let you in, that you'd realize that you were wrong all along. This is my fault. I knew that I was taking a risk when I let Jacque into my mind, but I didn't care. All I cared about was the fact that he made it so that I didn't crave your touch every single hour of every single day."

  I started to let go of his hand, but he grabbed ahold of me with a kind of desperately weak strength that couldn't be denied.

  "It doesn't bother me now. I love it, I love that I can touch you without hating myself for being so weak."

  "I'm going to save you, Ben. Geoffrey said that he bought us some time, you just said as much yourself. Rachel knows things, she'll help, we'll find someone who can reverse what was done to you. I'll do whatever it takes to bring you back."

  "No!" The denial was explosive, it seemed to take an alarming amount of Ben's strength, but he grabbed hold of me even tighter. "You have to promise me. The ends don't justify the means, I know that better than anyone else. You can try to save me, but don't do anything that you'll regret later. No torturing, no murder. I don't want any of that on my head."

  "It won't be on your head, it will be on mine."

  "You say that, but it doesn't change how I feel. Please, Jasmin, promise me. I don't want to survive if the cost is your soul. Survival isn't worth that to me."

  "It is to me, not for just anyone's survival, but for yours it is."

  "How would you feel if the shoe was on the other foot and I had to do those kinds of things to save you?"