"The Green Mist"
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dochermes"The Green Mist"
(6/26/1973)
12/16/1983
I.
Cindy yanked the white-sheet/carbon/yellow-sheet sandwich out of her typewriter and took it apart. There were two piles of paper on her desk in more or less straight stacks. She put the white sheet on one pile, the yellow sheet on the other and crumpled the carbon into a ball which missed the overfull wastepaper basket. This was taking forever. CHECK OUT YOUR MIND was now over five hundred pages, with no end in sight. It wasn't that she rambled, but a telepath naturally had a great many things to say about the human mind.
Maybe she would have to rewrite it into two separate books covering orgazined topics. There was no rush to get this published.
She stood up and stretched, arms rotating slowly up and back with her fingertips interwoven. Since the death of Christopher Lincoln two years earlier, Cynthia Lee Brunner was probably the most highly skilled telepath in the Midnight War. Physically, she was a rather small woman, barely an inch over five feet in height and weighing ninety-five pounds. Although she was thin, with a narrow waist and a behind that was nearly flat, her breasts were well-shaped and a bit large for her frame. As a knight of Tel Shai, she was in constant training, fit as any athlete and much stronger than her build would indicate. The KDF headquarters where she lived with Bane had an array of Nautilus machines she used as much as he did.
Cindy had a face that was cute rather than gorgeous, with a snub nose and pointed chin, a wide mouth which smiled easily, and a sprinkle of freckles. Her eyes were large and wide-set, dark blue, with a clarity and alertness that took people off guard. Although it was December in New York City, a rainy miserable month so far, she had her summer coloring. The long straight hair was a bright gold and she was as tanned as she ever got. This was because she had just returned from Cairo, where the KDF had spent a hectic week investigating the Jackal Cult. On this morning, she was month away from her twenty-third birthday, as happy and fulfilled as she had ever been.
'
On this morning, she had never heard of the Green Mist.
Cindy was wearing faded blue jeans starting to give at the knees, old white sneakers, and a baggy maroon sweatshirt with nothing underneath. Leaving her room with a satisfied glance at how much writing she had gotten done, she moved down the hall. No one else was in the headquarters building. A normal Human might sense the emptiness without really knowing why, but she knew. It was the lack of mental activity, daydreams and planning and filing of observation, that she always felt when others were nearby. It was like being used to hearing a sleeping person breathe and then moving to an empty room. Cindy smiled to herself, bypassed the elevator, and trotted down the stairs to the second floor. In the conference room, there were no new memos on the bulletin board. She plopped down in a chair at the long oak meeting table, with its rows of chairs on either side. Pulling a yellow legal pad toward her, she began doodling idly as she thought. With Jeremy Bane at Tel Shai for training (and not the Kumundu he loved, but spiritual discipline he would rather skip), the headquarters building was definitely missing the sense of purpose it usually crackled with.
Drawing little faces and patterns as she thought, Cindy went through a list of possible new members. Michael Hawk had been dead for six months now, fallen in the Snake War, and the shock of his death had faded. With the emptiness he left in the KDF roster, though, it became clearer that the team needed some new blood. Only she and Bane served full-time and lived in the headquarters building, although the others had rooms set aside for them. Ted Wright used his healing abilities in his free clinic in the building next door. Stephen Weaver and Leonard Slade both worked at the Human Capabilties project in New Mexico and were called in as needed. Khang and Larry Taper were off on missions of their own much of the time and, although they would come when summoned, it was not the same as having members ready at a minute's notice. But then, people who had the necessary abilities and who were interested in signing up were rare indeed. It wasn't like hiring professionals who worked for just the money.
Still... they had met Karina few months ago, and she seemed perfect. It would be nice to have another female around, even one a little too good-looking. Garrison Nebel had worked with them a few times and had said he would available. Who else? There was that martial arts buzzsaw, Shiro Mitsuru. He livened things up. Or maybe the famous Sulak of Androval....
She jumped half out of her chair as the phone rang. Giving it a resentful glare, the blonde telepath picked up the receiver and used her mellow, professional voice. "Kenneth Dred Foundation."
"Long distance from California," came a voice.
"We'll accept it," Cindy said and waited.
"Hello? Hello, is this the KDF in New York?"
"That's right, go ahead."
"Could I speak to the man in charge, please?"
"I am in charge," she replied, a bit more sharply than she intended.
"Sorry, sorry. I was trying to reach Jeremy Bane."
"He's not available," Cindy said. "You can deal with me."
"Well, my name is Ogden, Willis Ogden. I'm the sheriff in Merril County. A few years ago, Bane came out here and helped us with a maniac named Samhain. I've heard something of the work he's done with this KDF agency since then and I figured, you folks would be the ones to contact with our problem."
"Fair enough," she said. "What's the problem?"
"The Fiedler Institute, that's a retreat here where people go through mumbo-jumbo self-help courses. It's shut itself off. No one allowed in, no phone calls taken, it has cut itself off from the outside world."
"Well, that's intriguing," she said, index finger tapping her teeth. "What's that all about?"
"No one knews. It's quite the mystery."
Cindy swiveled a bit in her chair. "I haven't seen anything about this in the news."
"Just happened two days ago. So far, only a local TV station has been interested and that's as far as it went." The sheriff's voice hesitated. "It's not exactly a threat to the general public. If those folks want to stay in their retreat and not come out, that's their business. But you know, there have been cults in the past that went wrong and people died who didn't need to. I'd like to prevent another Jonestown if we could."
"Certainly," Cindy said. "You know, I'm going to look into it. It might be nothing but I have a funny feeling about it. I'm on my way."
"Thank you, miss. Bane told me to contact him if I ever ran into anything, and these are his words,'weird and creepy.' "
Cindy broke the connection and stood up. One wall of the conference room was filled with reference books, and she did some digging. She found that the Fiedler Institute had been established in 1981 by Clark and Maribeth Fiedler. It offered courses and seminars in psychological restructuring and balancing that did indeed sound to her like what the sheriff called "mumbo-jumbo" and it charged fees so high she thought there must be a typo. The Institute occupied grounds covering forty acres in the hills outside of LaPadura, California, and had won many awards. Dragging out the huge atlas, she located LaPadura and fixed its location in her mind. It would be better to have a visual image to work with, but she thought the coordinates would enough that the Eldar crystal would take her.
Before leaving the conference room, she wrote down where she was going and why on a sheet from the legal pad and tacked it up in the exact center of the bulletine board, where it stood out next to the tiny schedules and reminders on index cards. The blonde telepath hurried back up to the stairs to her room on the third floor where she had been only a few minutes earlier. She and Bane had been lovers for three years now, but they had kept their seperate adjoining rooms. Cindy took a quick shower, toweled briskly and got her gear from a trunk at the foot of her bed. Over plain bra and panties, she put on a bodysuit that gleamed with the sheen of silk but which was Trom-metal armor. Black jeans, a blue denim work and ankle boots followed, chosen for durability and comfort. Then the waist-length jacket of a field suit, made of tough leathery material, with a dozen pockets and inner pouches holding various tools and gadgets, as well as her ID documents and badges. She buckled a leather gunbelt around her tiny waist low on the right side and she examined her airgun before clicking the assembly shut and holstering it. Even with her powers, there were times those anesthetic darts had been more than handy. Standing in the center of her room, she did a final rundown to make sure she had everything with her.
Cindy could have worn the full field suit, with its heavier armored jacket and visored helmet, but she preferred not to. It was her theory that looking like a commando tended to start trouble. She didn't like violence itself, certainly she did not enjoy fighting the way Jeremy did. On the other hand, curiosity was her strongest trait. She was a born puzzle-solver and finding answers to mysteries gave her deep satisfaction.
This time, she took the elevator because she was going to the ninth floor. This had once been the roof of the building until Bane had had it covered over with sliding panel and made it into a hangar for the CORBY jetcopter. The CORBY was not there now, as Weaver had it out in New Mexico revamping it again. That was okay, she thought as she entered the empty hangar. She could have taken it out to California herself; her pilot's license was current and she was fully certified. BUt there was a quicker way. Cindy stepped up to a blue gem in a pale gold setting, fastened to the wall just inside the door. This never got easier. Placing her hand on the Eldar crystal, she fixed where she wanted to go and put all her will into wishing she was there now. She tried harder. Beautiful blue light flared soundlessly, filling the hangar, and when it faded, she was gone.
II.
The blonde telepath appeared with a jolt on a wide asphalt drive off a highway. She dropped to one knee and caught herself with her fingertips on the ground. To her, using an Eldar travel crystal always felt like jumping from a waist-high fence and she needed a second to orient herself. To her left was a highway, and a big semi roared by as she watched. It looked like she was near the mountains of northern California, all right. She had asked Bane early on what would happen if the travel crystals made them materialize inside a brick wall or something. He had said that if there was any obstruction, the trip would not be made. For that matter, if they were not focused enough or were uncertain where they wanted to go, the Eldar magic would not work, either. Even so, there was a little trepidation in her mind every time she hopped three thousand miles in a second.
Cindy turned to face the drive, which went up the side of a steep hill. Parked not twenty feet away from her was a black and white police car that said PUTNAM COUNTY SHERIFFS DEPARTMENT, with two uniformed officers standing beside it. They had not seen her arrival. Just as well. She strode up, and they turned as they heard her. She tried not to smile at the surprise on their faces. "Hi!" she called out.
"What the hell..? Where did you come from?" barked the older man. He had a lined, weathered face and metal-rimmed glasses low on his nose.
"I got dropped off," she said. Taking out her cardcase, she showed them her various IDS. "You called for the KDF. You ARE Sheriff Ogden, if your name tag is right?"
"Right as rain," he answered. "Cindy Brunner. I've seen your name in the papers once or twice. You've worked with Jeremy Bane and it sounds as if you've done some right proper investigative work yourself. But... how did you get here? Wasn't I talking to you a half hour ago and you were in New York?"
Cindy smiled disarmingly. "Obviously, I didn't get here from New York in half an hour. Fill me in a bit, sheriff. That's the Fiedler Institute up there?"
"It is. They've put a barrier across the road. I don't have the authority to force our way in. There is no reason to believe any one has been hurt, no complaints have been made. But those people were supposed to be done with their hoodoo sessions two days ago and some of their families have been asking us what the problem is."
As Ogden spoke, he felt the vaguest foggy feeling in his head, making him a little distracted. He had no way of knowing his mind was being scanned by a highly trained telepath. Cindy was careful to do no harm, to just skim the surface of the man's awareness. She found integrity and honesty, maybe way too much stubbornness and a tendency toward impatience. But she found she could trust what he said.
"All right," she said. "I'm going to walk up there. Maybe I can talk them into letting me in. I can be persuasive." Cindy tugged her jacket down where it was slightly out of kilter from the trip. "Don't worry if I'm not back right away."
The blonde telepath headed up the drive. For an instant, she picked up the minds of the two men and knew they were watching her behind as she walked. She fought down and urge to look back over one shoulder and wink mischievously at them. The hill was steep, and it curved to the right. Up ahead, it narrowed between two rises and she saw a chest high barrier of loose rocks had been piled across it to prevent traffic. This is getting interesting, she thought. These people have also made it hard for themselves to leave. Reaching the barrier, without breaking stride, she placed her hands on the top and swung her legs up and over. She dropped to the other side.
Now the Institute was in sight. A low brick wall surrounded the grounds, and she saw a cluster of low white buildings that gleamed in the mountain sunlight. As she neared the gate in the encircling wall, a wave of terror and misery came toward her, hitting her mind the way an ocean wave crashes on the shore. She had not been expecting it. Cindy gasped and stepped back, raising her hands defensively, even though the attack was not physical.
Cindy pressed her hands to the sides of her heads, took a deep breath, and lowered her telepathic awareness. She could not just turn it off completely, it was too much a part of how her mind worked, but she could bring it down to a level just above normal Human awareness. There. That was better. Now she felt just a mild uneasiness. The blonde gazed up at the Fiedler Institute with new wariness as she started marching through the gate again.
As she entered the grounds, an odor of sour milk made her wrinkle her nose. It was unmistakable. Cindy still saw no around until a man in khaki shorts and short-sleeved khaki rounded a corner. He was carrying a Winchester and he swung it around and fired as soon as he caught sight of her. Without her telepathy giving warning, Cindy was caught flat-footed. The heavy slug punched home high on her rib cage, just beneath her right breast, knocking her down. Hundreds of hours of practice took over and she hit the ground, rolled over, and drew her own weapon in under a half second. The air-powered pistol coughed, and the man twitched and yelped in sudden pain. The anesthetic darts smarted worse than a bee sting, enough to get anyone's attention for the instant it took for the drug to get into the bloodstream. The Winchester clattered to the asphalt as the man swayed and fell face down on top of it. Getting to one knee, Cindy rose with the dartgun still in her grip, rubbing her bruised side with her other hand.
Damn, that hurt. The Trom-metal armor was great but it didn't mean she could laugh at high-powered rifle bullets. She could have gotten a cracked rib from that impact. She walked over to where the man sprawled and yanked the rifle out from under him. He would be out for maybe an hour, depending on his resistance, but she wanted to get that gun away for when he woke up.
"Stop her! Bring her to me!" called out a cultured baritine voice. Cindy snapped her head around and saw three men approaching. This was awful. She was so used to having her telepathy to keep her aware of her surroundings that she was way too vulnerable now. She threw the Winchester as far away as she could, and raised the dart gun up by her cheek. Two men were walking grudgingly toward her, both pudgy and middle-aged, one wearing a gaudy Hawaiian shirt. They were unlikely-looking henchman. Standing behind them was a tall thin man who she immediately pegged as the ringleader. He was wearing a black suit, with a dark grey shirt and white necktie, and he had on white formal gloves. From the distance, all she told was that he had a long bony face and longish dark hair.
The two men were getting close and she decided not to fool around with them. She extended her right arm full-length, bracing it with her left forearm and tagged each of them with a dart. In the open like this, the soft noise of the expelled CO2 was not audible from more than a few feet away and the men did not act as if they had been shot by a gun. They give a start, seemed to get drowsy and sagged to the ground. To onlookers, it was a little eerie. Cindy sniffed. The sour milk odor was strong enough now to be uncomfortable. She looked over at the third man and saw the Green Mist.
III.
It surrounded the man, a thick swirling cloud of a bright Kelly green. He was visible in it, grinning, holding up his hands in a strange gesture. The mist expanded, streamers of it spreading out like tentacles.
With her free hand, Cindy dug in the top left pocket of her field jacket for the oxygen membrane. She did not want to breathe whatever that was, but the pervasive odor suggesting she had already been doing so. She saw a dozen people emerging from doorways. Most of them were in their sixties and out of shape but well dressed, watching her with odd disinterest.
From inside the emerald cloud, the man shouted in his deep voice, "She is trying to kill her! She wants to kill you. Bring her to me." And the people crowded together and began stepping reluctantly toward her. They moved slowly, their faces blank, but they were coming for her just the same. Cindy watched them uneasily. What was wrong with them? Not only had she muted her telepathic powers but her head was starting to feel as if it was muffled in cotton.
The man in the Green Mist yelled, "Here comes the bull! The black bull!"
While the crowd screamed and ran for cover, Cindy saw to her horror an immense black bull with gleaming white horns, charging around the corner of a white brick building and thundering right at her. The blonde telepath did not have time to bring her powers back up to normal and get control over the bull's mind, which would not be easy in any case. Nor did she have much faith in the anesthetic darts bringing down an animal that size. She plunged her free hand to the small of her back and plucked a thick disc the size radius of a silver dollar. When it detached from its contact, the resonance cap became armed. Cindy threw it hard and it detonated right in the bull's face with a sharp deep cracking noise. She reached behind her for the other resonance cap on her belt but stopped. The animal was gone. Not dazed or killed by the blast, but simply vanished.
It was getting hard to think clearly for some reason, but she understood that the animal had been some sort of illusion.
Striding closer, the man in the formal suit waved dismissingly to the crowd. "All of you, back to your chores. You! the blonde girl! Come with me. The Green Mist has use for you."
And Cindy meekly obeyed.
IV.
To her own faint surprise, she followed the man as he walked past an administration building and down a walkway to where a row of cottages. Each had a tiny front yard. The Green Mist opened the front door and waited for her to pass through, then closed it behind them. They were in a neat but bland living room done with shades of brown and tan. He went over to sit in a large armchair and said, "Stand in front of me."
Cindy could not imagine why she was cooperating. It was like when she had the flu and took ten minutes to get up and go for a drink of water, everything seemed so foggy.
The Green Mist tugged off his gloves, loosened his tie and opened the collar of his starched shirt. This close, it could be seen he was around fifty, thin to the point of seeming unhealthy with sunken cheeks and a prominent adam's-apple. "I see now what my kingdom has been missing," he announced. "The women at these seminars are all without exception hags. But not you. You are tasty indeed. I shall start a harem. Tell me your name."
"Cindy Brunner."
"Where are you from? What do you do in life?"
"Bearsville, New York," she answered placidly. "I am a knight of Tel Shai."
He jolted upright as if he had received a shock. "Tel Shai?" and he sank down again. "Tel Shai. That is a name I did not want to hear. Does anyone know you are here?"
"Yes. Sheriff Ogden and his deputy saw me walk this way."
"Hmm, well, they will not bother us for another day or so. And I must move on at any rate."
The Green Mist leaned forward, studying her. "A knight of Tel Shai. Do you know what Velkandu is?"
"Yes, gralic alchemy."
"Just so. And I am such an alchemist. I studied under Dr Vitarius himself, but well, we had a falling out. He has old-fashioned ideas, I am afraid. He is afraid to act out his fantasies and make his dreams come true. The wonderful power of Grendavil, making people more susceptible than hypnosis or brainwashing, scared him."
Cindy said nothing. Within her mind, a struggle was beginning. The words were sinking in, and although she was now heavily drugged, part of her brain understood what the Green Mist was saying. Grendavil. She had learned that word.
The Green Mist rubbed his bony jaw, leering at her. "Know me. I, Alex Weishaupt, am now your absolute master. Take off that gunbelt and put it on the carpet. Now, that jacket. Good. Take off your boots."
The blonde telepath slowly complied. He kept ordering her to strip, until the torso armor peeled off and then the bra and panties. Standing nude, she had the trim build of a gymnast. A fresh bruise showed on her ribcage where the rifle bullet had been deflected.
"Very nice," Weishaupt said gleefully, "Very nice indeed. You will travel with me. Next, I think we will go to Europe. Italy, perhaps." He rose to his feet and stood next to her. "I am your man. See me as the man you love."
Cindy watched him with clouded eyes. He stepped closer and pressed his palms on her breasts, stroking them slowly, barely enough to move them. She made no response, not drawing back, still looking up at him as trying to do a difficult puzzle in her head. "Put your arms around my neck," he ordered and she did so. He slid his hands across her shoulders and down to her bottom. Her face was already upraised, and when he bent his head to kiss her, her eyes remained open and expressionless.
Weishaupt lifted his head angrily. Her lips had not parted. It was like kissing a sleeping person. "I am the man you love. Look and see the man you love."
With that, Cindy pressed to embrace him and raised her head to brush her lips against his cheek. She sighed. It was good to have Jeremy back, he was to have been at the Order of Tel Shai for another three days... wait. He WAS at Tel Shai. The Teachers would not have sent him back early. This was not Jeremy Bane holding her. Cindy broke free, drew her arm back behind her and whipped an uppercut that caught Weishaupt right under his jaw. His mouth clacked shut with an impact that cracked a tooth and he fell over backwards. Cindy had Kumundu training and years of experience, and her small hard fist hit like a rock swung on a whip. The Green Mist sat up, got to one knee and as he rose, she set her stance and gave him a vicious right hook that spun him halfway around. He moaned and did not get up, hands moving aimlessly.
The blonde telepath let out a long angry rumble that sounded incongrous from such a small body. Toughened as it was, her right fist stung from the blows. Oh, he had deserved that! If he had gotten any farther, she would kill him right now. Watching the pain-dazed mastermind sink down into senselessness, Cindy sorted out her clothing and hurried back into it. As she shrugged on the field jacket, she remembered to take out the thin transparent oxygen membrane and stretch it over her mouth and nose, fastening it on by the tabs over her ears. The air smelled cleaner immediately. Her head cleared. At least, now she would not be breathing in any more of that Grendavil.
For a long moment, she stared down at the Green Mist. She could not remember ever being so angry. She was not seriously tempted to kill him now, that would just be going too far against who she was, but she would not have minded if something fatal happened to him. Cindy turned him over. He moaned and stirred but did not regain awareness. Searching him for weapons, she found two flat metal containers about the size of pint bottles strapped under his shirt. Rubber tubing ran up his arms from those bottles, emerging from his sleeves. This must be how he had created that cloud around him.
Standing up, Cindy went to the phone by the front door. She was not worried about anyone being able to analyze the Grendavil. Serums made by alchemy lost their potency quickly- the usual effective time was just a few hours- and could not be duplicated without knowledge of gralic sorcery. So she didn't have to be concerned that the secret of Grendavil would get into the hands of law enforcement or government agencies. By the time anyone confiscated the samples here and got them to a lab, they would have degraded into useless compounds.
Contacting the sheriff's department, she got patched through to Ogden and told him it was okay for him and his deputy to start walking up the hill. As she explained it, an unscrupulous chemical engineer had been using drugs to brainwash everyone at the Fiedler Institute, which was true enough as far as it went. As she hung up, she thought unhappily that now she would have to testify in court against this guy, something she hated.
Cindy sighed and walked over to gaze grimly down at Alex Weishaupt. Then, despite her anger, despite her hatred of him, one corner of her mouth turned up wryly. Because of her powers, even as a teenager she had always known when boys were going to make a pass. She was never caught off guard in high school by quick hands. Cindy finally smiled. The Green Mist had the dubious distinction of being the only bad guy to cop a feel off her.
(3/22/2013)
(6/26/1973)
12/16/1983
I.
Cindy yanked the white-sheet/carbon/yellow-sheet sandwich out of her typewriter and took it apart. There were two piles of paper on her desk in more or less straight stacks. She put the white sheet on one pile, the yellow sheet on the other and crumpled the carbon into a ball which missed the overfull wastepaper basket. This was taking forever. CHECK OUT YOUR MIND was now over five hundred pages, with no end in sight. It wasn't that she rambled, but a telepath naturally had a great many things to say about the human mind.
Maybe she would have to rewrite it into two separate books covering orgazined topics. There was no rush to get this published.
She stood up and stretched, arms rotating slowly up and back with her fingertips interwoven. Since the death of Christopher Lincoln two years earlier, Cynthia Lee Brunner was probably the most highly skilled telepath in the Midnight War. Physically, she was a rather small woman, barely an inch over five feet in height and weighing ninety-five pounds. Although she was thin, with a narrow waist and a behind that was nearly flat, her breasts were well-shaped and a bit large for her frame. As a knight of Tel Shai, she was in constant training, fit as any athlete and much stronger than her build would indicate. The KDF headquarters where she lived with Bane had an array of Nautilus machines she used as much as he did.
Cindy had a face that was cute rather than gorgeous, with a snub nose and pointed chin, a wide mouth which smiled easily, and a sprinkle of freckles. Her eyes were large and wide-set, dark blue, with a clarity and alertness that took people off guard. Although it was December in New York City, a rainy miserable month so far, she had her summer coloring. The long straight hair was a bright gold and she was as tanned as she ever got. This was because she had just returned from Cairo, where the KDF had spent a hectic week investigating the Jackal Cult. On this morning, she was month away from her twenty-third birthday, as happy and fulfilled as she had ever been.
'
On this morning, she had never heard of the Green Mist.
Cindy was wearing faded blue jeans starting to give at the knees, old white sneakers, and a baggy maroon sweatshirt with nothing underneath. Leaving her room with a satisfied glance at how much writing she had gotten done, she moved down the hall. No one else was in the headquarters building. A normal Human might sense the emptiness without really knowing why, but she knew. It was the lack of mental activity, daydreams and planning and filing of observation, that she always felt when others were nearby. It was like being used to hearing a sleeping person breathe and then moving to an empty room. Cindy smiled to herself, bypassed the elevator, and trotted down the stairs to the second floor. In the conference room, there were no new memos on the bulletin board. She plopped down in a chair at the long oak meeting table, with its rows of chairs on either side. Pulling a yellow legal pad toward her, she began doodling idly as she thought. With Jeremy Bane at Tel Shai for training (and not the Kumundu he loved, but spiritual discipline he would rather skip), the headquarters building was definitely missing the sense of purpose it usually crackled with.
Drawing little faces and patterns as she thought, Cindy went through a list of possible new members. Michael Hawk had been dead for six months now, fallen in the Snake War, and the shock of his death had faded. With the emptiness he left in the KDF roster, though, it became clearer that the team needed some new blood. Only she and Bane served full-time and lived in the headquarters building, although the others had rooms set aside for them. Ted Wright used his healing abilities in his free clinic in the building next door. Stephen Weaver and Leonard Slade both worked at the Human Capabilties project in New Mexico and were called in as needed. Khang and Larry Taper were off on missions of their own much of the time and, although they would come when summoned, it was not the same as having members ready at a minute's notice. But then, people who had the necessary abilities and who were interested in signing up were rare indeed. It wasn't like hiring professionals who worked for just the money.
Still... they had met Karina few months ago, and she seemed perfect. It would be nice to have another female around, even one a little too good-looking. Garrison Nebel had worked with them a few times and had said he would available. Who else? There was that martial arts buzzsaw, Shiro Mitsuru. He livened things up. Or maybe the famous Sulak of Androval....
She jumped half out of her chair as the phone rang. Giving it a resentful glare, the blonde telepath picked up the receiver and used her mellow, professional voice. "Kenneth Dred Foundation."
"Long distance from California," came a voice.
"We'll accept it," Cindy said and waited.
"Hello? Hello, is this the KDF in New York?"
"That's right, go ahead."
"Could I speak to the man in charge, please?"
"I am in charge," she replied, a bit more sharply than she intended.
"Sorry, sorry. I was trying to reach Jeremy Bane."
"He's not available," Cindy said. "You can deal with me."
"Well, my name is Ogden, Willis Ogden. I'm the sheriff in Merril County. A few years ago, Bane came out here and helped us with a maniac named Samhain. I've heard something of the work he's done with this KDF agency since then and I figured, you folks would be the ones to contact with our problem."
"Fair enough," she said. "What's the problem?"
"The Fiedler Institute, that's a retreat here where people go through mumbo-jumbo self-help courses. It's shut itself off. No one allowed in, no phone calls taken, it has cut itself off from the outside world."
"Well, that's intriguing," she said, index finger tapping her teeth. "What's that all about?"
"No one knews. It's quite the mystery."
Cindy swiveled a bit in her chair. "I haven't seen anything about this in the news."
"Just happened two days ago. So far, only a local TV station has been interested and that's as far as it went." The sheriff's voice hesitated. "It's not exactly a threat to the general public. If those folks want to stay in their retreat and not come out, that's their business. But you know, there have been cults in the past that went wrong and people died who didn't need to. I'd like to prevent another Jonestown if we could."
"Certainly," Cindy said. "You know, I'm going to look into it. It might be nothing but I have a funny feeling about it. I'm on my way."
"Thank you, miss. Bane told me to contact him if I ever ran into anything, and these are his words,'weird and creepy.' "
Cindy broke the connection and stood up. One wall of the conference room was filled with reference books, and she did some digging. She found that the Fiedler Institute had been established in 1981 by Clark and Maribeth Fiedler. It offered courses and seminars in psychological restructuring and balancing that did indeed sound to her like what the sheriff called "mumbo-jumbo" and it charged fees so high she thought there must be a typo. The Institute occupied grounds covering forty acres in the hills outside of LaPadura, California, and had won many awards. Dragging out the huge atlas, she located LaPadura and fixed its location in her mind. It would be better to have a visual image to work with, but she thought the coordinates would enough that the Eldar crystal would take her.
Before leaving the conference room, she wrote down where she was going and why on a sheet from the legal pad and tacked it up in the exact center of the bulletine board, where it stood out next to the tiny schedules and reminders on index cards. The blonde telepath hurried back up to the stairs to her room on the third floor where she had been only a few minutes earlier. She and Bane had been lovers for three years now, but they had kept their seperate adjoining rooms. Cindy took a quick shower, toweled briskly and got her gear from a trunk at the foot of her bed. Over plain bra and panties, she put on a bodysuit that gleamed with the sheen of silk but which was Trom-metal armor. Black jeans, a blue denim work and ankle boots followed, chosen for durability and comfort. Then the waist-length jacket of a field suit, made of tough leathery material, with a dozen pockets and inner pouches holding various tools and gadgets, as well as her ID documents and badges. She buckled a leather gunbelt around her tiny waist low on the right side and she examined her airgun before clicking the assembly shut and holstering it. Even with her powers, there were times those anesthetic darts had been more than handy. Standing in the center of her room, she did a final rundown to make sure she had everything with her.
Cindy could have worn the full field suit, with its heavier armored jacket and visored helmet, but she preferred not to. It was her theory that looking like a commando tended to start trouble. She didn't like violence itself, certainly she did not enjoy fighting the way Jeremy did. On the other hand, curiosity was her strongest trait. She was a born puzzle-solver and finding answers to mysteries gave her deep satisfaction.
This time, she took the elevator because she was going to the ninth floor. This had once been the roof of the building until Bane had had it covered over with sliding panel and made it into a hangar for the CORBY jetcopter. The CORBY was not there now, as Weaver had it out in New Mexico revamping it again. That was okay, she thought as she entered the empty hangar. She could have taken it out to California herself; her pilot's license was current and she was fully certified. BUt there was a quicker way. Cindy stepped up to a blue gem in a pale gold setting, fastened to the wall just inside the door. This never got easier. Placing her hand on the Eldar crystal, she fixed where she wanted to go and put all her will into wishing she was there now. She tried harder. Beautiful blue light flared soundlessly, filling the hangar, and when it faded, she was gone.
II.
The blonde telepath appeared with a jolt on a wide asphalt drive off a highway. She dropped to one knee and caught herself with her fingertips on the ground. To her, using an Eldar travel crystal always felt like jumping from a waist-high fence and she needed a second to orient herself. To her left was a highway, and a big semi roared by as she watched. It looked like she was near the mountains of northern California, all right. She had asked Bane early on what would happen if the travel crystals made them materialize inside a brick wall or something. He had said that if there was any obstruction, the trip would not be made. For that matter, if they were not focused enough or were uncertain where they wanted to go, the Eldar magic would not work, either. Even so, there was a little trepidation in her mind every time she hopped three thousand miles in a second.
Cindy turned to face the drive, which went up the side of a steep hill. Parked not twenty feet away from her was a black and white police car that said PUTNAM COUNTY SHERIFFS DEPARTMENT, with two uniformed officers standing beside it. They had not seen her arrival. Just as well. She strode up, and they turned as they heard her. She tried not to smile at the surprise on their faces. "Hi!" she called out.
"What the hell..? Where did you come from?" barked the older man. He had a lined, weathered face and metal-rimmed glasses low on his nose.
"I got dropped off," she said. Taking out her cardcase, she showed them her various IDS. "You called for the KDF. You ARE Sheriff Ogden, if your name tag is right?"
"Right as rain," he answered. "Cindy Brunner. I've seen your name in the papers once or twice. You've worked with Jeremy Bane and it sounds as if you've done some right proper investigative work yourself. But... how did you get here? Wasn't I talking to you a half hour ago and you were in New York?"
Cindy smiled disarmingly. "Obviously, I didn't get here from New York in half an hour. Fill me in a bit, sheriff. That's the Fiedler Institute up there?"
"It is. They've put a barrier across the road. I don't have the authority to force our way in. There is no reason to believe any one has been hurt, no complaints have been made. But those people were supposed to be done with their hoodoo sessions two days ago and some of their families have been asking us what the problem is."
As Ogden spoke, he felt the vaguest foggy feeling in his head, making him a little distracted. He had no way of knowing his mind was being scanned by a highly trained telepath. Cindy was careful to do no harm, to just skim the surface of the man's awareness. She found integrity and honesty, maybe way too much stubbornness and a tendency toward impatience. But she found she could trust what he said.
"All right," she said. "I'm going to walk up there. Maybe I can talk them into letting me in. I can be persuasive." Cindy tugged her jacket down where it was slightly out of kilter from the trip. "Don't worry if I'm not back right away."
The blonde telepath headed up the drive. For an instant, she picked up the minds of the two men and knew they were watching her behind as she walked. She fought down and urge to look back over one shoulder and wink mischievously at them. The hill was steep, and it curved to the right. Up ahead, it narrowed between two rises and she saw a chest high barrier of loose rocks had been piled across it to prevent traffic. This is getting interesting, she thought. These people have also made it hard for themselves to leave. Reaching the barrier, without breaking stride, she placed her hands on the top and swung her legs up and over. She dropped to the other side.
Now the Institute was in sight. A low brick wall surrounded the grounds, and she saw a cluster of low white buildings that gleamed in the mountain sunlight. As she neared the gate in the encircling wall, a wave of terror and misery came toward her, hitting her mind the way an ocean wave crashes on the shore. She had not been expecting it. Cindy gasped and stepped back, raising her hands defensively, even though the attack was not physical.
Cindy pressed her hands to the sides of her heads, took a deep breath, and lowered her telepathic awareness. She could not just turn it off completely, it was too much a part of how her mind worked, but she could bring it down to a level just above normal Human awareness. There. That was better. Now she felt just a mild uneasiness. The blonde gazed up at the Fiedler Institute with new wariness as she started marching through the gate again.
As she entered the grounds, an odor of sour milk made her wrinkle her nose. It was unmistakable. Cindy still saw no around until a man in khaki shorts and short-sleeved khaki rounded a corner. He was carrying a Winchester and he swung it around and fired as soon as he caught sight of her. Without her telepathy giving warning, Cindy was caught flat-footed. The heavy slug punched home high on her rib cage, just beneath her right breast, knocking her down. Hundreds of hours of practice took over and she hit the ground, rolled over, and drew her own weapon in under a half second. The air-powered pistol coughed, and the man twitched and yelped in sudden pain. The anesthetic darts smarted worse than a bee sting, enough to get anyone's attention for the instant it took for the drug to get into the bloodstream. The Winchester clattered to the asphalt as the man swayed and fell face down on top of it. Getting to one knee, Cindy rose with the dartgun still in her grip, rubbing her bruised side with her other hand.
Damn, that hurt. The Trom-metal armor was great but it didn't mean she could laugh at high-powered rifle bullets. She could have gotten a cracked rib from that impact. She walked over to where the man sprawled and yanked the rifle out from under him. He would be out for maybe an hour, depending on his resistance, but she wanted to get that gun away for when he woke up.
"Stop her! Bring her to me!" called out a cultured baritine voice. Cindy snapped her head around and saw three men approaching. This was awful. She was so used to having her telepathy to keep her aware of her surroundings that she was way too vulnerable now. She threw the Winchester as far away as she could, and raised the dart gun up by her cheek. Two men were walking grudgingly toward her, both pudgy and middle-aged, one wearing a gaudy Hawaiian shirt. They were unlikely-looking henchman. Standing behind them was a tall thin man who she immediately pegged as the ringleader. He was wearing a black suit, with a dark grey shirt and white necktie, and he had on white formal gloves. From the distance, all she told was that he had a long bony face and longish dark hair.
The two men were getting close and she decided not to fool around with them. She extended her right arm full-length, bracing it with her left forearm and tagged each of them with a dart. In the open like this, the soft noise of the expelled CO2 was not audible from more than a few feet away and the men did not act as if they had been shot by a gun. They give a start, seemed to get drowsy and sagged to the ground. To onlookers, it was a little eerie. Cindy sniffed. The sour milk odor was strong enough now to be uncomfortable. She looked over at the third man and saw the Green Mist.
III.
It surrounded the man, a thick swirling cloud of a bright Kelly green. He was visible in it, grinning, holding up his hands in a strange gesture. The mist expanded, streamers of it spreading out like tentacles.
With her free hand, Cindy dug in the top left pocket of her field jacket for the oxygen membrane. She did not want to breathe whatever that was, but the pervasive odor suggesting she had already been doing so. She saw a dozen people emerging from doorways. Most of them were in their sixties and out of shape but well dressed, watching her with odd disinterest.
From inside the emerald cloud, the man shouted in his deep voice, "She is trying to kill her! She wants to kill you. Bring her to me." And the people crowded together and began stepping reluctantly toward her. They moved slowly, their faces blank, but they were coming for her just the same. Cindy watched them uneasily. What was wrong with them? Not only had she muted her telepathic powers but her head was starting to feel as if it was muffled in cotton.
The man in the Green Mist yelled, "Here comes the bull! The black bull!"
While the crowd screamed and ran for cover, Cindy saw to her horror an immense black bull with gleaming white horns, charging around the corner of a white brick building and thundering right at her. The blonde telepath did not have time to bring her powers back up to normal and get control over the bull's mind, which would not be easy in any case. Nor did she have much faith in the anesthetic darts bringing down an animal that size. She plunged her free hand to the small of her back and plucked a thick disc the size radius of a silver dollar. When it detached from its contact, the resonance cap became armed. Cindy threw it hard and it detonated right in the bull's face with a sharp deep cracking noise. She reached behind her for the other resonance cap on her belt but stopped. The animal was gone. Not dazed or killed by the blast, but simply vanished.
It was getting hard to think clearly for some reason, but she understood that the animal had been some sort of illusion.
Striding closer, the man in the formal suit waved dismissingly to the crowd. "All of you, back to your chores. You! the blonde girl! Come with me. The Green Mist has use for you."
And Cindy meekly obeyed.
IV.
To her own faint surprise, she followed the man as he walked past an administration building and down a walkway to where a row of cottages. Each had a tiny front yard. The Green Mist opened the front door and waited for her to pass through, then closed it behind them. They were in a neat but bland living room done with shades of brown and tan. He went over to sit in a large armchair and said, "Stand in front of me."
Cindy could not imagine why she was cooperating. It was like when she had the flu and took ten minutes to get up and go for a drink of water, everything seemed so foggy.
The Green Mist tugged off his gloves, loosened his tie and opened the collar of his starched shirt. This close, it could be seen he was around fifty, thin to the point of seeming unhealthy with sunken cheeks and a prominent adam's-apple. "I see now what my kingdom has been missing," he announced. "The women at these seminars are all without exception hags. But not you. You are tasty indeed. I shall start a harem. Tell me your name."
"Cindy Brunner."
"Where are you from? What do you do in life?"
"Bearsville, New York," she answered placidly. "I am a knight of Tel Shai."
He jolted upright as if he had received a shock. "Tel Shai?" and he sank down again. "Tel Shai. That is a name I did not want to hear. Does anyone know you are here?"
"Yes. Sheriff Ogden and his deputy saw me walk this way."
"Hmm, well, they will not bother us for another day or so. And I must move on at any rate."
The Green Mist leaned forward, studying her. "A knight of Tel Shai. Do you know what Velkandu is?"
"Yes, gralic alchemy."
"Just so. And I am such an alchemist. I studied under Dr Vitarius himself, but well, we had a falling out. He has old-fashioned ideas, I am afraid. He is afraid to act out his fantasies and make his dreams come true. The wonderful power of Grendavil, making people more susceptible than hypnosis or brainwashing, scared him."
Cindy said nothing. Within her mind, a struggle was beginning. The words were sinking in, and although she was now heavily drugged, part of her brain understood what the Green Mist was saying. Grendavil. She had learned that word.
The Green Mist rubbed his bony jaw, leering at her. "Know me. I, Alex Weishaupt, am now your absolute master. Take off that gunbelt and put it on the carpet. Now, that jacket. Good. Take off your boots."
The blonde telepath slowly complied. He kept ordering her to strip, until the torso armor peeled off and then the bra and panties. Standing nude, she had the trim build of a gymnast. A fresh bruise showed on her ribcage where the rifle bullet had been deflected.
"Very nice," Weishaupt said gleefully, "Very nice indeed. You will travel with me. Next, I think we will go to Europe. Italy, perhaps." He rose to his feet and stood next to her. "I am your man. See me as the man you love."
Cindy watched him with clouded eyes. He stepped closer and pressed his palms on her breasts, stroking them slowly, barely enough to move them. She made no response, not drawing back, still looking up at him as trying to do a difficult puzzle in her head. "Put your arms around my neck," he ordered and she did so. He slid his hands across her shoulders and down to her bottom. Her face was already upraised, and when he bent his head to kiss her, her eyes remained open and expressionless.
Weishaupt lifted his head angrily. Her lips had not parted. It was like kissing a sleeping person. "I am the man you love. Look and see the man you love."
With that, Cindy pressed to embrace him and raised her head to brush her lips against his cheek. She sighed. It was good to have Jeremy back, he was to have been at the Order of Tel Shai for another three days... wait. He WAS at Tel Shai. The Teachers would not have sent him back early. This was not Jeremy Bane holding her. Cindy broke free, drew her arm back behind her and whipped an uppercut that caught Weishaupt right under his jaw. His mouth clacked shut with an impact that cracked a tooth and he fell over backwards. Cindy had Kumundu training and years of experience, and her small hard fist hit like a rock swung on a whip. The Green Mist sat up, got to one knee and as he rose, she set her stance and gave him a vicious right hook that spun him halfway around. He moaned and did not get up, hands moving aimlessly.
The blonde telepath let out a long angry rumble that sounded incongrous from such a small body. Toughened as it was, her right fist stung from the blows. Oh, he had deserved that! If he had gotten any farther, she would kill him right now. Watching the pain-dazed mastermind sink down into senselessness, Cindy sorted out her clothing and hurried back into it. As she shrugged on the field jacket, she remembered to take out the thin transparent oxygen membrane and stretch it over her mouth and nose, fastening it on by the tabs over her ears. The air smelled cleaner immediately. Her head cleared. At least, now she would not be breathing in any more of that Grendavil.
For a long moment, she stared down at the Green Mist. She could not remember ever being so angry. She was not seriously tempted to kill him now, that would just be going too far against who she was, but she would not have minded if something fatal happened to him. Cindy turned him over. He moaned and stirred but did not regain awareness. Searching him for weapons, she found two flat metal containers about the size of pint bottles strapped under his shirt. Rubber tubing ran up his arms from those bottles, emerging from his sleeves. This must be how he had created that cloud around him.
Standing up, Cindy went to the phone by the front door. She was not worried about anyone being able to analyze the Grendavil. Serums made by alchemy lost their potency quickly- the usual effective time was just a few hours- and could not be duplicated without knowledge of gralic sorcery. So she didn't have to be concerned that the secret of Grendavil would get into the hands of law enforcement or government agencies. By the time anyone confiscated the samples here and got them to a lab, they would have degraded into useless compounds.
Contacting the sheriff's department, she got patched through to Ogden and told him it was okay for him and his deputy to start walking up the hill. As she explained it, an unscrupulous chemical engineer had been using drugs to brainwash everyone at the Fiedler Institute, which was true enough as far as it went. As she hung up, she thought unhappily that now she would have to testify in court against this guy, something she hated.
Cindy sighed and walked over to gaze grimly down at Alex Weishaupt. Then, despite her anger, despite her hatred of him, one corner of her mouth turned up wryly. Because of her powers, even as a teenager she had always known when boys were going to make a pass. She was never caught off guard in high school by quick hands. Cindy finally smiled. The Green Mist had the dubious distinction of being the only bad guy to cop a feel off her.
(3/22/2013)
