The Elders (Mind Dimensions #4)(64)

Before I talk to Eugene, though, I have to check on the Temple.





*





Stunned, I take stock of the frozen battlefield.

I really f*cked up.

A couple of cops are in pieces in front of Kate, their impotent Tasers clutched in their literal death grips. They were good people—honest cops as far as I could tell. The guilt is overwhelming. Their only fault was being Guided by an idiot—me—who thought Kate could be taken down by a couple of Tasers.

But that isn’t even the worst of it.

No, that perverse pleasure is reserved for the fate of a much larger majority of the cops, who fell victim to another force altogether.

To my right, a monk is kung-fu kicking an officer in the chest. To my left, a deputy is flying backward from a monk’s punch to his shoulder. And these must be the tougher cops, because their colleagues have long since been thrown to the ground, clearly having been beaten up by the monks.

Reading one of the younger monks confirms what I already suspected. The cops stopped shooting the monks, but the monks didn’t catch on. Instead of joining the officers in attacking Kate’s team, the monks used the opportunity to take out the cops. They didn’t understand that the cops are now their allies.

As a result, only a few cops attacked Kate and her people, and they paid with their lives. And this is why I know I really f*cked up.

I was the one who instructed the cops not to use lethal force, making them easy targets. I should’ve listened to Rose. You’d think I would’ve learned my lesson back at the cemetery, but clearly, I didn’t. In my defense, what I truly haven’t adopted is the willingness to Guide someone to kill willy-nilly.

James’s automatic rifle also made matters worse. A number of cops died from his gunfire. I count at least four. Didn’t the monks see this? Don’t they know the old adage that the enemy of my enemy is my friend?

I feel sick with guilt. To keep myself together, I remind myself that I’m not really responsible for these deaths. Kate and her people are, and they’re acting this way because of the Super Pusher. In the end, this is all on his or her head. At least I succeeded in reducing the number of massacred monks, and a large portion of the cops are knocked out, not dead.

It’s too bad that due to the monks’ shortsightedness, this reprieve won’t last, not with Kate and her team behaving so murderously.

Well, not all of them, I see when I walk to where Caleb and John were fighting. Given John’s wounds, he’s as good as dead.

Caleb left him to bleed out and is now locked in a deadly confrontation with a new opponent—Eleanor. At least, given the circumstances, I assume they’re fighting. Strictly speaking, they might also be fornicating. Their sweaty, writhing bodies are tangled up on the ground, with her trying to wrap her legs around him and him trying to lift her back off the ground by her waist.

I pick up a gun, put it in the back of my pants, and wonder whether I should pull Caleb in. No, I decide, not until I know the full situation and can form a plan. This determined, I make my way to the back of the Temple to find out how Edward has fared.

The good news is that Edward hasn’t blown himself up, which I already suspected given that I never heard an explosion. The bad news is that he’s on the ground. It’s hard to say whether he’s dead or unconscious, though the Taser cables in his chest indicate the latter.

The proverbial misfortunes never come solo. Instead of being cuffed on the ground, Richard is missing. The cops who tried to tase him are down, but at least they aren’t riddled with bullets. It looks as if Richard somehow resisted the effects of the Taser when they went in to cuff him. My best guess is that he knocked them out when they got within range.

When I locate Richard, I discover I made a mistake with him as well. I should’ve had the cops shoot him. Though he seems to have lost his gun in the fight with the cops, he doesn’t need it for what he’s doing.

He’s trying to kill a bunch of old people.

He’s standing over my grandfather Paul, who’s on the ground with a bloody lip. The others look on in horror. The old man must’ve stood up to Richard. I feel a trace of admiration before dread grips me.

Paul won’t last a second in this fight. He might have already broken a hip, or worse. If he gets up—and he looks as if he’s planning to—he’s as good as dead.

As nasty as he was to me when we met, I don’t want to lose him. As they say, you don’t get to choose your family.

Eugene better have something useful for me. I don’t see how I can save Paul without entering Level 2. Even then, if Richard is the Super Pusher, Paul is a goner, as are the rest of the Enlightened.

With my mind in turmoil, I make my way to the guesthouse.

When I reach the second floor, my heart freezes in my chest.

I underestimated the blind, pain-ignoring determination of a Guided mind.

Thomas is no longer standing in the hallway; he won his fight against Mira’s door. He left much of the skin of his fists on the wooden frame, but he got into the room.

And now those bloodied hands are an inch away from Mira’s neck.





Chapter 21





“Mira!” I scream, though I know it’s futile. Even if she weren’t in a comatose state, knocked out by the drugs Caleb gave her, she wouldn’t be able to hear me from the Quiet.