And, despite the anger and confusion still raging through his body, the big vampire felt a surge of relief to find an equally familiar figure standing there, bracketed by a pair of the modified Storm Wolves that served as his personal guard.
"Mordecai of the Lone Gunmen," he said in English, naming the powerful psylord. "What brings you to Ireland? The green hills? Or the bracing sea air?"
The arrogantly handsome psionic chuckled as subtle gestures sent the two Storm Wolves winking out of sight.
"Neither, actually," he said, striding forward. "It's the probability node you vampires are making in this very spot that threatens to split the reality stream into a dozen tendrils!" He came to a halt in front of the kneeling vampire just as the restraints on Lash's wrists suddenly disappeared. "Do I even want to know what you're doing here, in broad daylight, confronting a bunch of modified humans in advanced tactical gear?"
Glancing back at the two who were restraining him and finding them frozen satisfactorily in place, Lash came to his feet in a smooth rush. He then returned Mordecai's questioning gaze with a grim one of his own.
"I won't bore you with the details," he began, rubbing his wrists where the restraints had bitten into his flesh. Looks to either side yielded his team also frozen in place, as were the rest of the humans.
"Suffices to say, the Night Council took umbrage with our temporary alliance to stop the Brotherhood threat in North America."
Mordecai frowned.
"But you were involved at the behest of a Lilith," he pointed out. "That supersedes the Council, if I remember your laws correctly."
Lash frowned even as he nodded.
"Your memory hasn't failed you, my friend," he said. "The Lilith Aizea herself commanded me directly to assist you in stopping the Brotherhood plot to replace the human leaders of the most advanced countries in the world. And her word should've been law." His expression tightened. "Instead, someone on the Council declared her command, and their subsequent adherence to it, invalid and named my entire clan blood traitors for conspiring with the enemy."
It was Mordecai's turn to frown.
"Even though we did them the favor of basically dismantling the Brotherhood's North American network single handedly and putting their plans back nearly three decades?"
Lash shrugged.
"To this corrupt council member, a psionic is a psionic," he replied. "And they've sufficient power and leverage on the rest of the Council to sway them to their way of thinking."
"And Ventru's representative on that council?"
"Dead!" Lash grimly reported. "Murdered by the Council's personal thugs, the Hand of the Council."
Mordecai's frown deepened even as he let his eyes slide off the grim vampire to the nearest human, the man who had fired at Lash.
"What about these clowns? Who, and what are they?" he asked even as a tendril of psyken scooped up the bullet so he could take a better look at it, letting the rifled round hover at eye level a good half meter away. A look that quickly made him grimace.
"And using irradiated munitions no less!"
In reply, Lash also gave the humans frozen in place a long look before grimacing himself.
"I don't know," he admitted, looking back over at Mordecai. "We encountered them for the first time trying to rescue my mentor and Qos Viran Supreme Commander, Lord Magnar, who was being held hostage on his own estate." He folded muscular arms over his thick chest. "They, however, seem to know a great deal about us, recognizing my neural armor and EM generator as originating with the Lone Gunmen. They also confessed to some knowledge of this current pogrom against my clan."
"Is that so?" Mordecai's face went from curious to strongly intent at Lash's report of the humans' knowledge of Lone Gunmen tech. Because it meant a possible breach in the Shield, the great conspiracy supported and defended by the Lone Gunmen in their efforts to keep psionic kind safe from their human cousins. Not only that, but the EM dampener was tech the psionics of this timeline hadn't yet developed. No one was aware of it, outside of a small knot of psionics in Mordecai's confidence and Lash.
The bullet disappeared with the telltale wink of a teleport, which, thanks to Mordecai's psionic cortex being inverted, was the only way the vampire could tell his powers were at work. Any other psionic would've sent shockwaves through his nervous system using their powers that close to him, a psionic's basic brain output dangerous to the sensitized nervous system of a vampire.
The inversion also rendered Mordecai and the Storm Wolves, all of which were inverted, completely safe to vampire kind. And, coincidentally, almost invisible to vampire senses, as keen as they were. Lash didn't mind the latter as long as the former kept his people out of harm's way.
With the bullet safely ensconced for later study out of sight, the psylord stepped to the human with the gun to peer intently into his covered face.
"Knock, knock," he said softly. Then almost immediately took a step back, a look of dismay momentarily washing across his face before he schooled it back to nonchalant.
Not so quick, however, that the vampire failed to miss it.
"I'm guessing you tried looking into his mind for an answer or two," he said, earning himself a quick confirming nod from the big psionic.
"Yup. Tried being the operative word here." Mordecai folded his arms. "I tried the most basic probe and everything immediately collapsed!" He looked over at Lash. "Your friend here has been, by virtue of a booby-trapped mind, reduced to a drooling vegetable. If he had knowledge of how they're involved in the pogrom against your clan, and why he knows what he knows, it's been erased in a flood of bio-chemical soup."
The psylord snorted abruptly.
"Whoever he works with, or for, protected that information with a deliberate mind bomb," he said, his expression thoughtful. "As if they knew he ran the chance of being telepathically probed at some point." He looked over at the other humans bunched around the surviving members of Lash's team. "I've little doubt they have all been similarly protected!" His thoughtful look deepened. "Although, if they cared about their assets, they should've given them the discipline to shield their minds instead of flipping a kill switch."
"That ... is disturbing news," Lash admitted. "An unknown player with unknown capabilities, possessing an unknown level of awareness of things they shouldn't know, and not really caring about who they lose, as long as they achieve their ultimate goals."
"Tell me about it," Mordecai said, his thoughtful expression deepening. "The Shield is fairly thrumming from our discovery. And the probability node your capture created, has only faded slightly with my intervention."
"So these humans, in revealing themselves, have become a threat to our reality?" Lash wanted to know. And got another quick confirming nod.
"On several levels," Mordecai added.
Lash slowly shook his head. His fears, uttered into the silence of his own disbelieving mind, had just become massively magnified. Not only were the Children of the Night at risk, but all of Humanity's children! Just because of some ill-gotten alliance between these mystery humans and the traitor on the council!
Then something occurred to him.
"Not to detract from our efforts to find an answer here, Mordecai. But how did you freeze everybody? Including the bullet?"
"Oh, that?" Mordecai took a quick look around. "Something I had been testing as an extension of my clairvoyance. I call it 'stop time'." A faint smile turned up his lips. "Like it?"
Lash's frown deepened.
"You ... stopped time," he repeated, not quite willing to believe his ears.
Mordecai chuckled.
"Not quite," he conceded. "The flow of Time is very difficult to stop as it moves through our entire reality, not just on the side of the road in the hills above Galway. No, I use a clairvoyant awareness of the multiple layers that make Reality and Time work and, for lack of a better term, make a bubble between them, pulling whatever is inside temporarily out of the flow of regular Time. Only those that I've given a certain temporal resonance to, can operate normally inside the bubble. Like you, me, and the Storm Wolves."
The big psionic paused there to take a quick look around, his eyes narrowed.
"Unfortunately, just like a bubble, it isn't very sturdy. Already I can feel the sides being squeezed from all directions by the layers I've pulled aside to form it. The Storm Wolves are outside, stabilizing it as best they can. But even with that help, it'll only last for a few more moments. Then everything will snap back into place as if nothing happened!"
Another faint smile touched his lips.
"Except you won't be whistling dixie out an unwelcome hole in your forehead!"
Abruptly Mordecai snapped his fingers as a realization of some sort came to him.
"Time!" he declared, turning back to the human that was now supposedly a vegetable. "Of course!"
"You've discovered something?" Lash asked as Mordecai stepped close to the human and extended his hands to either side of his head.
"More like remembered my own damn rules for making this place," the psionic replied before falling silent for a long moment. He then nodded.
"Just as I thought," he said without taking his eyes off the human. "Yes, the man's mind has collapsed and his brains are turning into so much mush, thanks to the mind bomb." He finally looked over at Lash.
"Or it would have, if he has been resonated with the bubble!"
"Are you saying you can restore his mind?" Lash asked, incredulous.
"Not restore it, no. But, since I control Time in here, I can rewind the destruction back to the very point the mind bomb was triggered, then freeze it." A confident look appeared on the handsome face. "Kinda wish I had thought of it before putting in the probe, which was resonated and created the real time collapse to begin with!"
The big psionic's hands moved over the man's head for a moment.
"There, reversed and frozen," he said, dropping his hands before an intent expression appeared on his face. Then he was holding up a Lone Gunmen-style data vault.
"And everything he knows, we now have!" he declared, handing the vault to Lash before reaching out and patting the human on the top of his helmet. "Nice try, pal."
Lash stared at the vault for a long moment before jerking a hard nod of satisfaction.
"This, and the data vault we discovered in Magnar's body, make our sacrifices in battle worthwhile!" he said with no little conviction.
"You have another data vault?" Mordecai asked. In answer, Lash fished out the one he had found in what used to be Magnar's thigh.
Taking it from Lash's proffered hand, the Lone Gunman looked at it for a moment before handing it back.
"The data reader I gave you with my parting gift should access both of those," he indicated. "The one you just gave me, however, is filled with vampire glyphs and some kind of encryption that I'm unfamiliar with. While I've little doubt I could crack it in short order, I'll leave that to you, as this is your party."
Lash nodded as he looked at both vaults for a brief moment before putting them both into a pocket. An action which seemed to act as a trigger of some sort.
Almost as soon as the vaults disappeared into Lash's pocket, Mordecai's head snapped up to take a quick look around them, his expression intent once more.
"Hmm. Whatever is on those vaults, handing them back to you has almost erased the probability node!" he reported before dropping his eyes back to the bemused vampire. "Which means I no longer have a reason to be here."
"Wait!" Knowing the psylord was about to wink out, Lash held up a hand. "Before you go, would you mind?" he asked, tapping the collar that would fill his bloodstream with deadly nanites at the least provocation.
"Ooo, that's a nasty piece of business," Mordecai indicated after a quick scan. Then the collar's weight around Lash's neck was gone. A quick look at his team yielded they too had been freed.
"I'll just take those with me for a better look, yes?" the big psionic said with a smile. "Maybe they'll offer me a clue as to the identities of our friends here, and why they are designing vampire and psionic-specific weapons. Speaking of which ..."
Mordecai paused to look at the other humans with a sweeping glance.
"There!" he said with satisfaction. "Now all of their booby-trapped minds have been triggered! They shouldn't give you any more trouble."
Lash couldn't help twitching as their two transports, just visible out of the corner of his eye, winked out of sight.
"Those are back at the airport," Mordecai explained at Lash's querulous look before an oval door in space opened beside him. "Which is where this bore portal leads. I've tied it off so it'll remain stable for two minutes after I drop the bubble so I can disappear and you can claim ..."
"I created it with borrowed psionic tech," Lash finished for him with a nod. "Very nice." He then stepped forward, his hand extended. "Thanks, Mordecai, for saving my vampire ass. Again."
Taking it with a smile, the big psionic gave it a squeeze before letting go.
"But of course, Lash," he said. "We've spilled the same blood in the same mud. You'd do it for me, if you had the chance." The smile became a bit more serious. "Just try to stop making probability nodes, yes? I kinda like our reality the way it currently is."
"With an adjustment here and there," Lash indicated.
"With an adjustment here and there," Mordecai amended with a chuckle before holding out Lash's Shanzi pistol. "Here you go. We wouldn't want to give our new friends too much of an advantage by reverse engineering this."
No," Lash replied, looking at the future-born machine pistol for a moment before restoring it to the holster in the small of his back. "We certainly wouldn't."
"Indeed." Then Mordecai was flashing him a quick smile. "Good hunting. Favor to Ventru."
"Favor to Ventru," Lash replied and, with a wave, the psylord and his time-stop bubble disappeared. And, in the next instant, the humans silently dropped to the ground to lie unmoving.