Is that not what you are doing now? How does it harm you?

Just as Bree thought she might scream in anxious frustration, Kevin's voice interrupted. "Bree, I think you need to hurry this up."

"Can you just hold out another two minutes? I'm into something really important here," she replied, eyes still closed and focused on Gelsenim.

"It's not me, it's Daniel. I think you need to drop the contact."

She opened her eyes, and saw that Daniel was panting and sweaty. His eyes were closed, and he looked like he was in pain. Quickly, she re-focused on the read, and she did so, she realized her energy was still entwined with his. And so was Gelsenim's. As a result, that darkness was building. Holy s.h.i.t! She'd forgotten that demon contact made it worse, and here she was, exposing him to extended demon contact while she argued with Gelsenim. She started trying to untangle the energies as Daniel grated out, "Stop. Bree, I need you to stop it."

Perhaps he will break now, Gelsenim said with bright interest.

Just when I think you're not a total b.a.s.t.a.r.d, you have to go and remind me, Bree sent as she frantically worked to unravel the energies. She was rattled and losing focus and it was taking longer than it should have.

"Get out! Get out!" Daniel shouted suddenly, his voice shockingly loud. Bree fiercely concentrated, but before she could finish, she felt Daniel's hands grip her upper arms, hard. Her eyes shot open reflexively, and she lost her concentration. He was looming over her and he looked desperate and furious at the same time. Her Reader sense was still wide open, and she felt the sudden rush of energy coming out of Daniel, through his hands and into her body.

"Get out now," he whispered raggedly.

Daniel's command slammed into her with palpable force, and Bree lost control of her mind. She tore away from him energetically before the attunement was broken, something you were never supposed to do, something she never would have chosen to do. It felt like something was being ripped inside of her. She heard Gelsenim howling wordlessly in protest. Daniel pushed her away from him, hard enough that she stumbled and fell. He raised his hands in fists before him, and commanded, "Gelsenim, depart!"

The warmth of the demon's presence drained out of her as his voice in her mind said, My host, beware of him, he is divided! The cloud of orange and red that was the demon's essence moved out of her and vanished. As she sat on the floor, leaning back half stunned on her hands, Bree could still feel the grip Daniel had on her mind. He had put a binding on her, something he'd promised never to do. She looked up at him as he slowly lowered his hands. He was still breathing hard, and there was an empty look to his eyes. There was a moment of silence, then a ripple of energy moved through the air as Kevin dropped the wards.

"What on earth just happened?" Sophie asked, anxiety making her voice squeak as she hurried towards Bree and knelt on the floor next to her. Kevin went to Daniel and put a concerned hand on his shoulder, saying, "Hey, what's wrong?"

"Don't touch me," Daniel said hollowly, shrugging him off and stepping back. He was looking at Bree now, still with that terrifying lack of expression. What if he had 'broken,' as Gelsenim said he might? What might he do to her, now that he had her bound to his will? She felt light headed with fear.

"Daniel, let me go," she pleaded, voice coming out hoa.r.s.ely through her dry throat. His eyes met hers, and she felt power building inside her, his power, a great wave of pressure so intense she thought she might burst from it. She instinctively reached up and covered her head with her hands, trying to hold it together.

Then, quite suddenly, it was simply gone. Daniel whirled around and paced to the end of the room. His whole body was stiff, his expression shuttered. Kevin followed him and was talking in a low voice, but Bree couldn't hear what he was saying.

"Bree, honey, are you all right? Bruce, read her, will you? Something clearly went wrong there at the end."

Bruce crouched down next to Bree and said gently, "Is that okay with you Bree?"

Bree nodded wordlessly, and pulled down on the top of her shirt so he could put his hand directly on her chest. It took a conscious act of trust to do it. She'd been invaded enough for one day. After a couple of moments of silence, during which Daniel continued to stand silently, Kevin to talk softly, and Sophie to look ill with worry, Bruce removed his hand. "Well, your energy isn't down that much, which is pretty amazing, but it's all ragged and stirred up. It's kind of like..." He paused, clearly reluctant to go on.

"What? It's kind of like what?" Sophie prompted.

"It's kind of like after Seth died. Like you'd been torn in half."

"Oh, I should never have let you talk us into this!" Sophie exclaimed in distress. "What has that demon done to you?"

"It wasn't Gelsenim," Bree whispered. She could hardly make herself say the words. It felt like a betrayal, but if Daniel was truly dangerous, if he had broken down in some way, she had to tell the truth. "It was Daniel."

"What did Daniel do?" Bruce asked in a hard voice. Bree hadn't had a chance to shut down her Reader sense yet, and she could identify the disappointment underlying the anger in Bruce. He and Daniel had quickly become friends in the last months.

"He bound me and forced me to break the attunement before it was unraveled. Then he banished Gelsenim."

"Are you still bound?" Sophie asked fearfully.

"No, he let me go." Then it hit her. That was true, he had consciously released the binding. And if Daniel had let her go, maybe he hadn't somehow 'broken' and become the half human, half demon monster Gelsenim had hinted at. She looked over at where he stood facing Kevin, and heard him say, voice rising, "You think I wanted to do it? You think I would do it if I didn't have any other choice?"

Bree focused her Reader sense deliberately on him. It hurt, and she was careful not to try for any kind of attunement. She just opened herself up to reading tells as much as she was able. The abrupt way he moved his hands, the set of his shoulders, the tension in his neck and jaw, and that particular tone of voice added up to that very close to the edge emotional state she'd seen in him before, months ago. As much as that scared her, as much as she knew he was close to losing control of his temper, she was rea.s.sured a little by the evidence that he still read like Daniel. An unstable, unpredictable Daniel, but not some kind of evil, sociopathic Daniel.

As she was focused on her read, Bruce approached Daniel, saying, "Do I understand correctly that you just put a binding on Bree and forced her to break Reader attunement? Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?"

Kevin raised his hands in a placating gesture. "Let's all just slow down here. We're all spooked and upset."

"d.a.m.n right I'm upset," Bruce continued. He was not raising his voice, but he moved closer to Daniel in that way men had when they wanted to establish dominance. He was taller than Daniel and nearly twice as broad.

"Oh great, a male testosterone match," Sophie murmured in Bree's ear. "We'd better put some water on the fire or we're going to be in a real mess. Can you stand?" She got up and put out a hand to Bree.

Bree took it and allowed herself to be hauled to her feet. She felt a little dizzy, like her body wasn't put together properly.

"I tried not to hurt her," Daniel was saying as the two women got up and joined the group around Daniel. "The attunement was almost finished unraveling..."

"Oh, you tried not to hurt her? You grabbed her and threw her across the room!" Bruce was a closer to shouting as Bree had ever heard him.

Sophie put a hand on her husband's arm. "Honey, Kevin's right. We all need to take a minute and calm down."

Daniel ignored her, focusing on Bruce, talking fast. "Look, something went very wrong with the read. Having the demon in on it did something to me. I held it together as long as I could, but then I..." He turned suddenly and stalked away, hand clutching at his hair, in the grip of some emotion.

Kevin said to Bruce, voice very low, "You need to back off. He feels c.r.a.ppy enough about what happened, and trust me, you do not want him to lose his temper right now."

That seemed to give Bruce pause. He looked at Sophie, who looked at Bree. "He's right," she whispered. Bree saw the growing look of unease on all their faces. It was easy for them all to forget how high power Daniel was, how potentially dangerous he was as a Demon Master who just might be starting into demon burn. He'd gained all their trust in a short time, had the kind of natural charisma and leadership skills that made them all want to fall in line behind him. But it appeared he was, in reality, a slender branch on which to place all their weight.

She watched Daniel's back as he stood facing away from all of them, hand still at his head. His back rose and fell with breathing that was still rapid with anger, frustration or some other upset. Bree felt a sharp stab of discomfort as she automatically went to read his tells. She took a moment to consciously shut off her Reader sense. She could feel that it was damaged in some way, and she knew she should stop using it to give it a chance to heal. She refused to believe that it wouldn't heal, even though a part of her mind gibbered her fear that this time might be different.

They all stood in careful stillness, waiting for Daniel to get a grip on himself. Slowly, his hand lowered to his sides, and his breathing slowed. He finally turned around and walked back to the group. This time, he looked directly at Bree, and Bree found her gaze flinching away.

In spite of that, Daniel spoke to her. "Bree, I'm sorry for what I did. It was mostly on instinct, a kind of self-defense response. That doesn't excuse it, I know." His voice was fairly even, but she could tell he was still very upset. She made herself look up at him, but by then, he was addressing the whole group. "When Bree started the attunement part of the deep read, I could really feel Gelsenim's presence. At first, it was just the usual disturbing feeling of being touched by someone possessed. But then it changed. When Bree touched that dark thing, that energy complex we're trying to figure out, something happened."

He rubbed at his neck and closed his eyes for a minute, concentrating, then opened them, and continued. "First, it was like a shock. I don't know, maybe like an electric shock. Then some kind of resonance started to build up, but in a bad way. Like if you struck a bell, then you struck another bell that was out of harmony with the first one. And I was in between, being shaken apart. I think, I feel like, like...I almost broke. I mean seriously, like something in my mind was going to be broken apart, and then all my control, everything that holds the pieces in place, would be blown to bits. I don't know how to explain it, but I knew if I didn't stop it, I might go off like a bomb. I just had this vision of a power wave that would take you all out. h.e.l.l, I don't even know if I was right, if I was just imagining it, but I didn't have time to think about it."

Bree thought about all that Gelsenim had told her about Daniel being 'divided' and the risk of him being 'broken,' and she knew it fit with what Daniel was describing. Though she had wondered on some level if Gelsenim had been telling her the truth, that doubt started fading.

"I think maybe you were right," she told Daniel. "Gelsenim said he recognized that dark thing. He said there was a risk it could 'break' you, and then you'd become something like a Demon Master who's lost it, though he insisted it wasn't exactly like that. I don't think it's a coincidence that you're both using the same words to describe what you were feeling, that you might break."

"It would make me like a demon burned Demon Master, but worse." Daniel was regarding her with a stiffly controlled expression, but his whole body was practically vibrating with tension.

"He didn't say worse, exactly," Bree hedged. She was still angry with him for binding her, still afraid he might lose it if what she said upset him enough. And she knew she was stepping into very deep waters with him, the deepest. They were talking about his darkest fears here, that he was doomed to go off the rails, and at that point, he'd probably be one of the most dangerous people on the planet. She was terrified enough that she would eventually lose it herself, given what appeared to be some unusual kind of Demon Master talent that was showing up in her. But if she lost it, she wouldn't be that much of a threat to anyone. A Demon Master and Binder at Daniel's level of power would need to be put down ASAP if he became unstable. But who would be able to do it?

The collision of feelings inside her, fear, anger, pity and yes, she had to admit it, love, on top of the stresses of the last hour made it very difficult for her to find the right path here, to know what to say and how to say it. Seeing Daniel standing rigid across from her, looking like he was waiting to hear his death sentence, put pity and love on top, and somehow, that calmed her a little.

"He said the dark energy can be triggered by demon contact. It sounds like it is, in a way, an unusual sort of taint, something that attaches to something already inside you. He said it makes you "divided," whatever that means. He said if you don't 'become one,' with that energy, you will eventually break. That's when you become something like a burned Demon Master. He made it sound like that would change you in a very bad way, but he didn't exactly say it would be worse than being a burned Demon Master."

"So if I don't figure out how to 'become one,' I'm basically f.u.c.ked? Did Gelsenim give any clues at all how I'm supposed to accomplish this?"

"I tried to ask him, but I didn't have time to get a very clear answer. He was actually doing his best to explain it to me. He tried to show me some pictures, said he used to see this same thing with the Seldenai."

"I thought that dark energy thing was what made you drop your shields and allow demon possession," Sophie put in tentatively. "If you 'become one' with that, how does it keep you safe from being demon burned? Wouldn't that just make you more likely to seek out contact with demons? And isn't that what you're supposed to avoid to keep from being demon burned?"

"Maybe it's some kind of paradox, like a riddle," Kevin said. "There's got to be a way to fix it. Bree, you said Gelsenim told you it could be fixed by 'becoming one.' Is there anything else, anything at all you got out of him on that?"

She crossed her arms and tried to stiffen her knees, which were shaking in after reaction. "He seemed surprised I didn't know what 'becoming one' meant, like it was obvious. He did say that it doesn't mean getting rid of the dark energy. He said Daniel should not be divided from it. It was pretty clear that being divided is the problem."

"Any clues to how long he has before this becomes a problem?" Bruce asked. He was sounding less angry now.

Bree winced inwardly. Man, did she not want to say what she had to say next. But she was sure that keeping it secret would only make things more dangerous. "He seemed to think it could happen at any time. In fact, he thought it might be starting there at the end. So probably you were right to force a break in the connection," she admitted reluctantly.

There was a very awkward, very loaded silence.

"I think you should all leave," Daniel finally said.

"Look, maybe if we all calm down, get something to eat, replenish our energy, we can figure this out together," Kevin suggested.

"Not now, Kevin. Maybe later today, maybe tomorrow. Right now I need to meditate, try to get my energy calmed down."

"Kevin is right about eating, though," Sophie put in practically. "Eat a little something first, then meditate, then eat a lot, that's my advice. We'll get out of your hair." She made shooing motions to the others, then led the way downstairs.

"We'll get this figured out," Kevin murmured as he went past Daniel, patting him briefly on the shoulder. Bruce nodded at him, a conciliating gesture. That left Bree last. She paused in front of him, unsure what to do or say.

"Please, just leave," he said with a barely suppressed mixture of shame and despair. He wouldn't look at her. Abruptly, she gave up and headed down after the others. She really had nothing more to offer right now, no way to break through to him, break past his obvious misery, and she wasn't sure she wanted to anyway, wasn't sure it would be safe, wasn't sure it would ever be safe again.

CHAPTER NINE.

Bree collapsed on her couch and took a nap when she got home. She woke up feeling less emotionally overwhelmed, but restless and depressed. She dragged a feather on a string around for Hanroi for awhile, tried and failed to read a book, considered going outside to do some weeding in the garden in spite of the light rain outside, then gave up on that idea as the rain worsened. She finally turned on the TV, looking for the news, figuring she was already in such a bad mood, she might as well find out how many people had gotten hurt in the riot last night. After some fruitless channel surfing, she finally hit on a talking heads political show. She caught the tail end of a clip of what looked like it might have been the flash mob last night. The host of the show was addressing a question to a smallish, slender man in a conservative suit. He looked to be in his fifties, had dark hair parted on the side, prominent ears, and a somber look on his face. "The response to these outbreaks has been completely inadequate. We are seeing them up and down the West Coast, and there were two in New York and one in Charleston last week. What we're looking at here is the break down of law and order in our country. Our young people are out of control. They have no sense of morality, no sense of values."

"And what do you see as the solution, Senator Morton?"

"We need a return to law and order, to civility and good old fashioned family values," the Senator responded, leaning forward earnestly. "There's been an evolving sense of permissiveness, of moral ambiguity in the liberal concept of political correctness that's left our people, especially our young people, without a sense of right and wrong."

The program host displayed an edged, challenging smile as he replied, "Senator, how do you propose to address such a problem, if that is indeed the correct characterization of the problem, in the political arena?"

"Good legislation has a place in the solution," the Senator insisted, brown eyes intent. "But the first order of business is restoring public order. This kind of civil unrest has a way of spreading. Local law enforcement must be allowed to use whatever means necessary to disperse these so-called 'flash mobs.' And there have to be tougher penalties in the court system for this kind of thing. I see this as pointing to a need for an overhaul of the legal system. We've gone too far down the path of coddling criminals in the name of their civil rights. Why do you think young people engage in this kind of behavior? They don't expect to pay any real consequences. Keep in mind that people are getting killed in these riots as well as seriously injured."

As she listened to the Senator talking, Bree found herself turning on her Reader sense. She winced at the pain it caused her, but she had an instinct that what she was hearing was important. She usually avoided reading political figures, it was too depressing. They so seldom were actually sincere in what they were saying, they had to be far too cautious for that. Also, reading someone on TV was less reliable than doing so in person. She couldn't get any feel for their energy, and the subtleties of change in coloring on the face caused by changes in blood flow wasn't typically visible on television. But she found a quick read of Senator Morton was enough to give her a deep sense of disquiet. This man had a coldness to him, something very calculating and without emotion. He gave her the creeps to such a degree that she wondered if he were possessed.

Then it hit her. This was it, this was what the Keltoi wanted from aiding and abetting a demon war. If social unrest became bad enough, it furthered certain political agendas. When people didn't feel safe, they voted to make a change to whoever promised them safety. This Senator Morton was probably only one of a group of politicians looking to capitalize on the situation. Not to mention the 'law and order' angle. She had a vision of all the abuses to civil rights that could engender. How much easier to control people when they were afraid and didn't have their usual legal protections? She tried to tell herself she was being paranoid, but she had a gut feeling she was right.

She got up and reached for the phone, got most of the way to dialing Dion's number when she stopped herself. If she talked to Dion, he might have questions about what had happened on the beach with Daniel last night. She needed to be prepared for that. And besides, Dion was so much more politically savvy than her, she doubted it would take him long to come to the same conclusions she had.

She put down the phone with a feeling of frustration. She hated that she was keeping something from Dion. The thought she'd been pushing away all afternoon intruded on her as she huddled in the chair by the phone. Maybe she shouldn't keep the secret any more. Maybe what Gelsenim had told her about Daniel meant she shouldn't be protecting Daniel, let alone working with him so closely. She had thought him uniquely capable of solving the puzzle of demons, of making real progress towards eliminating, once and for all, demon possessions. That was why she'd been helping him. Now she thought he might also be uniquely vulnerable to being hurt by them. It made her physically ill to think of him being neutered or, more likely, killed by the Ecclesias.

But what if that truly was the right course? That would mean it's over, a part of her mind whispered. Any hope you had of things working out with him would be over. She sprang restlessly out of the chair and turned off the TV, then stood looking out the window, emotions in a horrible tangle. Then the phone rang.

She startled at the sound, which only went to show how wound up she was. She considered not answering. She was in such a black mood right now, she didn't trust herself to be civil to whoever was calling. On the other hand, anything that interrupted her current chain of thought would be welcome. Before she could think it through any further, she checked and saw it was an unknown number. So not Dion or Javier. "h.e.l.lo?" she answered.

"Is this Bree?" A man's voice was on the line, someone she didn't know, though the voice sounded vaguely familiar.

"This is she," she answered cautiously.

"Bree, hi, it's Leander. Leander Rayne. We met at Bruce and Sophie's party."

"Oh yeah, hi. How are you?" Bree answered nervously. She was caught off guard by the call. She'd gotten the feeling at the party that Leander might be interested in her, but had changed his mind after talking to Daniel.

"I'm good. Listen, I was calling to see if you might want to go out for coffee sometime this week. To be honest, being new in town, I haven't met many people yet, and I really enjoyed talking to you at the party, so I thought what the heck?"

Bree's mind raced. It had been so long since she'd dated, she wondered if she was reading the situation correctly. Going out for coffee sounded like it might be friend oriented rather than dating oriented. Wouldn't he have invited her to dinner if he wanted to ask her out on a date? On the other hand, maybe coffee was a sort of pre-date date. Meeting to see if they might be interested in each other. "Um, sure, when did you have in mind?" she found herself answering.

"I work freelance, so I'm pretty flexible. Maybe Wednesday?"

"Wednesday is a long day for me at work," Bree answered. Seized by a sudden impulse, she said, "Hey, maybe this is crazy, but how this afternoon? Or tonight? My week is pretty packed, but I have time today. And to be honest, I could use the distraction."

"Oh dear, that sounds dire," Leander's humor tinged voice came over the line.

Bree wanted to kick herself for that little revelation as well as for her invitation to meet today. She had no intention of sharing her dilemma about Daniel with this virtual stranger. And how desperate did it sound to suggest they meet today?

"I just had a weird night last night," she temporized. Maybe she could tell him a little about what went down with the riot. Being powered, he'd understand her being called in. And besides, she really was still upset about what had happened.

"Sounds like there's a story there. And I'm up for meeting today. Where would you like to meet?"

"Where are you?" she countered. She didn't want to invite him to one of her favorite neighborhood spots. He was too much of an unknown. What if he turned out to be a jerk? She wouldn't want him showing up at her favorite cafe forever after.

"I'm downtown. I live in Pioneer Square."

"That's cool. I don't get downtown enough. How about we meet near your place?"

"There's a coffee shop a couple of blocks away, called Rolly's, on Second, near Cherry. Do you know that intersection?"

"Yeah, I know where you mean."

"I'm afraid parking can be a pain," Leander put in hesitantly.

"Well, at least it's Sunday, so it's free," Bree replied. "So, what time?"

"I don't know. Before dinner or after?"

"If I'm going to indulge in real caffeine, I'd vote before. Is an hour too soon? Four o'clock?"

"No, that's great. It's fun to be spontaneous like this."

"Okay then, I'll see you in an hour."