“I did,” Zollers said, and I could see him start to hesitate, could sense the emotional friction from him. “He’s ... fearsome—”
“And he let you live,” I said with a twisted smile. “Just let you walk away after you betrayed his organization and left their target—me—alive in spite of their strict orders?” I felt my lips curl up at the corners. “You know what I think? Once a liar, twice a liar—”
“I get the rough sense of what you’re thinking here—”
“That telepathy is real handy,” I snarled, and I was on him in an instant, had him by his faux shirt. “Let me show you the other side of what I can do in a dreamwalk.” I touched a finger to his forehead before he could speak, and I heard a scream rip from his throat in agony, pure anguish and pain that was the absolute opposite of what I’d done with Zack. “Too bad you couldn’t read my mind to know THAT was coming.”
He writhed on the floor and looked up at me with a pained expression. “You have no idea what trouble you’re in.”
“I know that you killed my friends,” I said, looking down at him in silent fury. “Read my mind, Sovereign. Know what I’m thinking—that I’m going to find you and kill you, whatever it takes. You and your one hundred closest pals are going to die by my hand, one at a time or all in bunches. Because that reputation you’ve got of being the biggest badass on the planet?” I started to reach for him and he disappeared, gone from the dreamwalk in a cold second, nothing left behind but a faint wisp of his essence, a surreal haze marking the place where he’d left. “I’m going to take it for my own by killing you.”
Chapter 35
“That was mighty bravadocious of you,” Scott said to me from across the conference table. It was morning, the sun glimmering in from behind him, and I was looking at him across fingers templed in front of my mouth. Ariadne’s coffee was the dominant smell in the room. It carried a hint of hazelnut. It was honestly making me reconsider my personal ban on coffee, it smelled so good.
“I had the upper hand,” I said. “It was my dreamwalk.”
Scott’s eyes got a little dodgy. “Um ... when you touched me the time you dreamwalked to me, it didn’t cause me any pain at all. It was, uh ...” his face got red, “... quite the opposite.”
“It’s something I figured out a while back,” I said, covering my own embarrassment by looking away and catching my mother’s half smile. I’m sure that made me flush harder. “With Zack, unfortunately for him. It’s controlled by mood, and if you dreamwalk while angry ...” I let my voice trail off.
“I made a man go into a coma one time by doing that to him,” my mother added.
“Which was it?” Reed asked, a little sarcastic. “Pain or pleasure?”
She smiled thinly at him. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“Please stop the world of ugh,” I said, ready to throw a flag down between the two of them. “And don’t ever talk like that to each other in my presence again. Ever. There are way too many naughty stepmother ebooks out there for me to feel at all comfortable with that exchange.” She just rolled her eyes.
“If I might interject,” Karthik said a little hesitantly, “you just told the man who has been called the most powerful meta in the world to step off, essentially. Was that the wisest move?”
“I made him angry,” I said. “I aimed to provoke him.”
“Which brings us back to Karthik’s question,” Reed said sourly.
“It worked,” I said, trying to reassure them. “I needed him focused on one thing and one thing only—being pissed off at me, afraid of me, even. I needed to get him seeing red.” I looked down the quiet table, saw Scott looking at the black glass surface. Li hadn’t spoken throughout the entire meeting, and he was sitting next to Ariadne looking somewhat dead of disposition.
“I suppose if that’s what you were aiming for, then well played,” Reed said acidly. “Can I just say that I’m not thrilled by your plan?”
“That’s all right,” I said. “You don’t have to be thrilled by it.”
“I also have grave reservations,” Karthik said.
“If this was a democracy, I’d be all ears,” I said. “We could set up a voting booth and everything, hand out little stickers once we were done. But as it is, if you don’t want to follow through with it, leave. Please.” I tried not to be brutally blunt but probably fell shy by miles. “This is going to require total buy-in from all of you. It’s a risk, I know—”