Chapter 10
A my found the boss man looking at them in delight, a gun in his right hand, nonchalantly hanging at his side. Amy nodded. “I figured it was you. You’ve just been trying to get rid of Dominic.”
“Dominic is small fry.” He looked at her and the others. “Is this stuff for real?”
Terk replied cautiously, “It might be for real, but trying to wield it against somebody’s free will simply won’t work.”
The boss man frowned at that and turned to Wallace. “You tried to tell me that earlier, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, and you didn’t listen.”
He shrugged. “You told me to find a group who would work for me willingly.”
“It’s the only way it could ever work,” Terk confirmed. “The more you try to coerce somebody, the less effective it will be.”
He grouched at that. “I could still take you guys with me.” He raised his gun to make that point.
“How do you expect that to happen?” Terk asked, with a cool bemusement.
“Why not? I have power. I have money, and I have the sheer might to make it happen. I have a gun .”
“In your right hand too. I see it, but there’s more of us now,” Amy pointed out, walking toward him. “What is it you think you’ll do?”
“You just keep walking my way,” the boss man declared, “and I’ll show you.”
“Don’t do it,” Wallace said to her, an urgent note of concern in his tone.
Amy nodded, smiling, but not taking her gaze off the boss man. “It’s okay, Wallace.”
Even Terk sent out a warning to her.
She nodded again, walking closer to the boss man. “See? They don’t want me coming anywhere near you.”
“That’s because they know I’ll just grab you and keep you close. Then they’ll do anything I want,” the boss declared, with a smirk.
“That’s your faulty reasoning talking. You’ve discounted me completely, thinking I couldn’t do anything because, in your mind, I’m just prey,” she explained.
“That’s the thing with discounting someone this way.
That prey can turn to predator very quickly, and, before you know it, it’s too damn late.
” With that, she placed a hand on the side of his neck.
“I get it. You don’t know anything about this.
You don’t know anything about us. From your perspective this is all fun and games, but you don’t see how serious it really is.
You have no idea just how very serious this really is. ”
He laughed at that. “Good, in that case you can come with me and show me just how serious it really is .”
“No, no, and hell no. I don’t want to go with you or with anybody like you. That isn’t what I want to do with my life, so my answer is a resolute no.”
He grabbed her by the arm. “I won’t give you a choice.”
She patted his cheek with her free hand and added, “I won’t give you a choice either. Look at me.”
He frowned down at her, gripping her arm even harder.
She snapped the fingers on her free hand, smiling all the while.
The resulting jolt made him jump.
She nodded. “See? You have these meridians that run up and down your system, and just a snap of my fingers sends the energy flowing in one direction or the other,” she shared. “I can just as easily make the energy go the other way.” With a snap of her fingers, he jolted again.
“What the hell?” he yelled, releasing his hold on her.
“This is what I warned you about. You thought you could hold me against my will, but really I’m holding you against yours.
” She patted his cheek again. “So, when you start playing games with people who have abilities, you might want to remember that they probably have more power than you do and can make you act like a puppet on a string. You may have the urge to ask why, and I will say this one time only, so hear me well. Because they can ,” she declared, as she snapped her fingers yet again. “And so can I.”
He jolted once more and took a step back from her.
She nodded. “Now I’ve got your energy pattern.
I have a lock on it, so guess what? You can run, but you can’t hide.
You can get to the end of this hallway, and I can snap my fingers and make you dance and do things you don’t want to do.
So, if I ever see you again on this side of the ocean—or anywhere in the world, for that matter—just remember. All I need to do is snap my fingers.”
She did it again.
He jolted again, the corner of his lips floundering, as if he were having a stroke.
She nodded. “When you play with energy, there are often repercussions, which can do much damage, can cause a stroke even. How would you feel about losing all control of your left side?” she asked, staring at him intently. “Are you okay with never speaking normally again?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he mumbled, as he stepped back once more. “That’s… that’s not possible.”
“What? That you can have a stroke? You’re having a stroke right now,” she stated, “and that’s a whole different story.
You see? A stroke is caused by a blockage of your heart, so just a snap of my fingers—not everybody’s fingers but my fingers—can make you have a stroke, like you are experiencing right now. ”
She stared straight at the boss man. “And you know something? I’m okay with that because I’m a little tired of you guys pushing me around, trying to do things with my friends and using me to hurt people.
I’m fed up with you, trying to use me to get what you want.
So,… until we come to an understanding, I’ll just keep doing this.
” That warning given, she snapped her fingers.
His body jolted even harder, his face now flushed and his left arm twitching. He cried out in pain.
“So, are you in agreement?” she asked.
He struggled to answer verbally, but instead he nodded frantically.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That doesn’t do it for me. I need more of an answer than that.”
“I… weave … you awone ,” he mumbled.
“I didn’t quite hear you,” she called out.
“I… weave … you awone ,” he cried out louder this time, stepping back to get farther away from her, almost frantic to get out of her sight.
“Oh, one more thing, just in case you think this is a reach thing,” she added, snapping her fingers one more time.
Even though he’d backed up a good ten feet, he still danced in place.
“It’s not about distance. That gun of yours?
It’s all about energy, and that weapon won’t work anymore.
” She pointed at it. “Go ahead and fire it. I really don’t give a shit. ”
He frowned at her, looked down at his gun, and lifted it, as if forgetting that he even had it.
He fired at her, once, twice, three times, but it did nothing.
It just made a weird clicking sound. He stared at it, stared at her, made an odd sound, then turned and tried to run.
However, his body was dealing with the recent stroke effects, hitting him even now, and he slowly crumbled to the ground about twenty feet away.
She turned to the other men, her temper still evident. “Yes, he’s having a real stroke.” She sounded calm, but her aura was barking mad. “So, it’s up to you guys whether we get him medical help or we just leave him to die in the tunnels, like he left poor Gerry,” she muttered.
Riff looked at her with a newfound respect. “I know what I vote for, but it’s really not up to me.” He looked down at Jonas, held in his arm, and asked, “What do you want to do?”
He looked over at her. “I’ll get a team in here right away.
We don’t want assholes like this running around.
” He turned to Riff and tapped his pocket.
“I’ll need a phone.” Riff helped pull out Jonas’s phone searching for a signal.
There was a single bar but it was enough.
Very quickly he had a team on their way.
She looked around at the others. “Just in case any of you feel like judging me for that…”
Immediately Terk shook his head. “I’m not judging you. I don’t think any of us are.” He added, “Cool trick, by the way.”
“It is,” she agreed, with a smile, “though it’s not one I tend to use often.”
“Yeah, I’m not surprised,” Terk muttered. “How far is the range of your effectiveness?”
She looked at him and then sighed. “I haven’t tested it, to be honest, but I’m pretty sure there’s no limit.” Terk stared at her in fascination, and she nodded. “So, the next time you get pissed at me…”
Terk burst out laughing. “Yeah, we all have skills and techniques that can create all kinds of hell on earth. I’m not afraid of you any more than you’re afraid of me because we all have kept our humanity.”
She grinned. “It would be awfully nice to know that people out there aren’t afraid of me.”
“For that, you really need to join my team.”
Jonas grumbled, turned to glare at Terk, then asked Amy, “Hey, what about my team?”
“Oh, you mean the team you already turned me down for?” she asked, frowning at him.
“I didn’t know you could do all that,” he replied. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“Are you serious?” she asked, her eyebrows raised. “Why would I tell you? That just sounds like a bad deal for me.”
He rolled his eyes at that, and Terk laughed.
“Jonas, you need to give it up. Anybody in this field needs me, not you.”
Jonas shook his head. “The powers that be, they were thinking that both could work out. You know that you could have your team, and we could have ours.”
“Yeah, but it’ll take somebody like me to lead it.”
At that, Jonas eyed him hopefully. “As it turns out, I wanted to ask you about that.”
“About what?” Terk asked warily.
Jonas shook his head. “Would you run our team for us? Official government status and all that other good stuff.”
At that, Riff snorted. “If he does, he’ll lose half his men,” he declared.
Jonas glared at him. “Nobody’s asking you.”
“You may not be asking me, but we’ve already been there, working for the government.
As you may recall, it ended badly,” Riff reminded him, “so the answer is no. Why is it, whenever you guys get anything, you try to control it? As you should see from what just happened here, controlling us doesn’t work so well. ”