Authors: Saje Williams
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Raven didn’t flinch. “Let her breathe and we’ll talk about it.”
Shea appeared to consider it, taking far longer than Raven liked, then simply dropped Val. She collapsed to the floor, gulping for air and almost sobbing in between gasps.
Three shots rang out from the stairwell behind him. Shea’s body jerked as the bullets struck but he showed no reaction other than to reach over and slam the door closed, effectively cutting off any more fire from that direction.
He jabbed a finger down at Val. “Don’t even
think
of trying to squirm away, blondie. You’re my insurance. If this bloodsucker doesn’t do what I tell him, I’m just going to kill you. Slowly, too. And I’ll make you hurt in ways you’ve never imagined in even your worst nightmares.”
“You kill her and you won’t have any insurance left,” Raven pointed out. The man was a psychopath. An indestructible immortal psychopath.
Is there anything more frightening in the metaverse?
he wondered. He couldn’t think of anything. The Cen were bad enough, but this version of Deryk Shea
looked
like a human being.
Shea’s lip twitched into a thin smile. “Doesn’t matter. You’re a sap. I can grab some infant and threaten to pop its head and you’d be just as likely to go along with whatever I want. You’re damn near a god and you’re willing to sacrifice yourself for
these
worms?” He nudged Val’s leg with his foot. “It’s enough to make me sick.”
“Or dead,” Val said suddenly, her voice emerging as little more than a rasp. She reached upward with one hand and Raven saw a vein pulse in the side of her head. It was the only outward sign she was doing anything at all.
Every version of Deryk Shea of which Raven had ever heard had the same power—nearly complete immunity to both physical damage and any super- or preter-natural powers. Magic slid past him in much the same way it did many vampires in most instances, and his mind was shielded from any of the mental psychic disciplines. As far as Raven knew, Val’s powers, no matter how strong they’d grown, wouldn’t touch him, either.
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Val too had read the dossier on Deryk Shea. He was one of the most important figures on Earth Prime, even today. Considered indestructible, even with respect to weapons that would kill other immortals, Deryk Shea was closer to a force of nature than to a human being.
But from her reading, Val knew it wasn’t that Shea was absolutely impervious to damage, just that he healed so quickly there were few things that could do enough catastrophic damage from which he didn’t have time to recover. A point-blank nuclear bomb might well be one of those things.
She didn’t have a miniature nuke, but she had something she thought might work nearly as well. Something he could neither evade nor resist. No one could. His vaunted immunity to the powers of others wouldn’t even come into play because what she was doing wouldn’t be focused on him. He’d just be in the way.
She conjured six planes of force, one on each side of him, one above his head, and one under his feet. It took every ounce of concentration she possessed to do it—this was not anything she’d ever even attempted.
As far as she knew, no telekinetic had
ever
done anything like it. There were those who could manipulate a myriad of small objects at the same time, even down to a molecular level, but the creation of something as solid and stable as these force planes was a feat so far virtually unknown in the annals of psionic accomplishments.
Shea stumbled and glanced down at her, frowning, as the plane under his feet disturbed his balance. Comprehension beginning to dawn on his face, he started to reach for her, only to find himself impeded by something he couldn’t see, an invisible wall between himself and the rest of the world.
She uttered three painful words. “Say goodbye, asshole.”
She brought the planes together, coordinating the movement and size of each plane with the others. Shea’s doppelganger had the chance to utter one chilling scream that sounded as though it was coming from a long distance away, before he became nothing more than a bloody smear in the air. She dissolved the planes. The bloody mass that hit the floor wasn’t even remotely recognizable as the remnants of a living creature.
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She turned to look at Raven and felt the world contract around her.
Inky blackness swallowed her whole and she knew nothing more.
“Fuck me,” Raven breathed, as he skirted the expanding pool of blood and the
thing
laying between them. Now he knew what Bryon meant by
‘scary powerful.’ He’d never seen anything like what he’d just witnessed and fervently hoped he never saw anything like it again.
He scooped her up and threw open the door to the stairwell.
The wolves emerged, took one look at the unidentifiable mess on the floor, and gulped in unison. Bridget, who seemed to be limping, a rough gouge torn across her thigh, shot Raven a quizzical glance. “What happened?”
“She killed him,” Raven answered, still a little shocked by what he’d seen. “Not even Deryk Shea could survive what she did to him.”
Apparently far more pragmatic than he was, the alpha wolf simply nodded. “I could sense greatness in her when we met.”
“Greatness?” Raven sighed. “Being able to turn someone into a mass of—whatever the hell you’d call
that—
isn’t greatness. What you
do
with such a power will dictate how great you are.”
“I know that,” Bridget replied in a low growl. “She did what she had to do. Sometimes knowing when to do the unthinkable is a sign of greatness as well.”
Raven had to concede her point there. He nodded. “Where are the others?”
“I think Morrigan and the mustalids went upstairs,” Bridget said.
“Val was certain you were down there.” She jerked her muzzle toward the stairwell door.
“She was right. Just a few minutes too late.” He didn’t explain further. “We need to secure the building. His people probably aren’t going to accept he’s dead. No telling what they’ll do without orders from him.”
“Understood,” Bridget said with a nod. “Max, Daphne—guard the front. Shelby, haul your tail upstairs and let Morrigan know that the target is in hand and the enemy is down.”
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“How long?” Raven leaned over the back of the chair, staring at the computer screen and the single text box on the monitor screen.
The bushy-tailed ermine gave him the evil eye and shrugged her thin shoulders. “It could take ten seconds or ten hours,” she replied irritably.
“Depends on how security conscious he was. It looks as though it might be a fifteen digit code—based upon the size of the text box—but I can’t say for sure. If he was lazy, it shouldn’t take long at all. Now will you go away so I can do my job?”
“C’mon, Raven,” Morrigan said from across the room. “Leave her alone. She’s doing the best she can.”
“I know,” he said with a sigh. “And I guess I should be glad this world’s technology is barely up to early twenty-first century stuff back on Earth Prime. But I really want to know what he was up to. The few surviving soldiers we’ve captured aren’t talking, the stupid bastards.
Maybe they think he’ll rise from the dead and kill them for actually pretending to be decent human beings after all. Breaking into the computers are our only way to find out what he wanted from me, and what else he was working on.”
“That’s assuming he even put anything down in there,” she replied with a wry grin. “How’s Val?”
“Still passed out. She seems fine, otherwise. My guess is that that little trick she pulled took a lot out of her. She’s obviously malnourished, and no matter how powerful she gets, she still needs to fuel up.” He couldn’t quite wrap his mind around what she’d done, and found it comforting to think of it as a ‘little trick’ when it was anything but.
“I know a little healing magic,” Morrigan told him. “You want me to try to give her a little boost?”
Raven shook his head. “Let her sleep. I can’t imagine what it took out of her.”
Morrigan shrugged. “Your call.”
A loud shout from somewhere down the hall alerted them to something happening outside. They rushed to the window and spotted a www.samhainpublishing.com 241
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large flying craft of some sort—not a helicopter or a plane, as far as they could tell—descending swiftly and landing on the street in front of the building.
Roughly a dozen heavily armed and armored individuals emerged from the craft’s belly, fanning out into a semi-circle around the nose, facing forward with their weapons at the ready. A moment later a single figure came down the ramp and paused at the base, gazing up through the window as if returning their gaze.
He shouted something they couldn’t make out, sending the soldiers into a forward march, moving into a spearhead formation. “Huh. This could be bad,” Raven murmured. “They look like pros.”
Morrigan was nodding. “Yeah. They’re not wearing the uniform the doppleganger’s guards—I’m guessing mercenaries.”
“Possibly,” Raven answered dubiously. Raven had had some experience with mercenaries in the past. If this bunch were mercenaries, they were certainly well-equipped. It was a rare merc who knew how to reinvest his money wisely, and very few would spend it on any better equipment than they needed at the moment. Whoever ran this particular show was a rare bird indeed. “We’d better go down and find out what the hell they want before they decide to march in here and let their guns do the talking.”
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Chapter Thirty
The commander shucked his helmet as they strode toward him, telling his troops to stand down. Their faces, hidden behind the opaque shields of their black helmets, were unreadable, but Raven thought he could detect a certain disgruntled tension in their stance as their leader watched their approach in perfect silence.
He was a black man of about forty, Raven thought, not particularly tall, but broad of shoulder and thick of wrist. He looked vaguely familiar but he couldn’t place the reason why.
Raven took care to move like a mortal man, though he knew a discerning eye would be able to recognize that his nature wasn’t as mundane as he was pretending. They crunched across the glass and came to a halt some ten feet away from the honor guard.
He looked Raven up and down and uttered a non-committal grunt, then turned his dark eyes, glittering like chips of obsidian, on Morrigan.
“Who are you? Where’s Deryk Shea?”
“Shea’s looking like a slab of raw bacon about now,” replied Morrigan with a snort.
Raven winced.
Oh, that was tactful.
Then again, tact wasn’t exactly in the immortal’s lexicon. “He’s dead,” he said simply.
A dark brow shot upward as the man’s gaze shifted to Raven. “You do it?”
The vampire shook his head slowly. He wasn’t about to give anything away, or place the blame on Val, until he knew where this man stood.
“Someone else.”
“What d’ya know? I’d have said the bastard
couldn’t
be killed. Ain’t life just full of surprises?” He stepped forward, striding between two of www.samhainpublishing.com 243
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his soldiers, and stuck out a hand. “Name’s Scorpio. I run this crew.
Shea had contracted with me to kick some alien ass, but I guess that contract ain’t worth shit paper anymore.”
Reluctantly, Raven took his hand. The black man gave it a couple pumps and let go, brow furrowing. “Mighty cold hand you got there, brother.”
“So I’ve been told.”
Scorpio seemed to shrug it off and turned to Morrigan. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, if you don’t mind me saying…”
Morrigan grinned in reply and took his hand. “Name’s Morrigan. Nice to meet you, Scorpio. So, what can you tell me about these
aliens
Shea wanted you to fight?”
His eyes twinkled with amusement. “You don’t mince words, do you.
Not a damned thing. I gotta say—if you don’t have the answers, we could all be screwed.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. We’ve got someone trying to hack her way into his systems. What we’re looking for might be in there. Nice craft, by the way. Where’d you get it?”
“Had it built,” Scorpio answered with a grin. His gaze flicked past them and he reached for his sidearm. “Holy shit! What is
that?
”
Raven took a look over his shoulder and sighed. Of course Cerberus would pick this exact moment to make an appearance. The dog had a talent for that. “That’s my dog.”
“That’s no dog,” Scorpio growled. “That’s a—hell, I don’t know
what
it is. I’ve had my share of dogs, and none of ’em looked like
that.
”
“Cerberus comes from a very rare breed,” Raven told him.
Yeah…a
breed composed of exactly two animals. Cerberus and his brother.
That’s what you get for letting Loki dog-sit,
he told himself. Or at least he
thought
it was internal dialogue. He hadn’t heard that argumentative inner voice in months, something for which he was quite thankful. The voice had made him start questioning his sanity.
Well, it’s not as though
my stress levels haven’t been off the charts.
Cerberus nudged his hip with his massive bulk and Raven reached down and dug his fingers into the animal’s ruff.
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Scorpio frowned, looking from him to the dog. “You three ain’t from around here, are you? You’re out-worlders.” It was an observation, not a criticism, delivered in a tone surprisingly devoid of emotional context. It left Raven wondering what he thought of out-worlders. Wondering what the doppelganger Shea had told him.
He was sharp, but that didn’t come as much of a surprise. This wasn’t some would-be third world dictator. This guy was professional-grade mercenary—cream of the crop. Raven had met a few in his time, and only the best bothered with decent equipment, much less than cutting edge stuff Scorpio seemed to favor.
“We’re out-worlders,” Morrigan agreed. “You have a problem with that?”
“Not at all,” Scorpio shot back. “Just wanted to know the score. You look human enough to me. That’s all I give a damn about.”
“Appearances can be deceiving,” Morrigan said, with a twisted grin and a sidelong glance at Raven.
“Knock it off,” he told her, not at all amused.
She snickered and shot him a wink that was anything but discreet.
Sometimes her sense of humor wasn’t in the least bit funny.
Scorpio followed the exchange with a curious look, but didn’t comment. He had more important things on his mind. “You find out where these aliens are Shea wanted us to fight, and we’ll work out a deal.
I don’t want my world overrun by giant bugs any more than the next guy.”
Raven nodded. “Is there any reason to believe that you might not be fighting the aliens here?” he asked.
“Funny you should say that.” Scorpio scratched at the stubble covering his head and frowned deeply. “He had some of his technicians install some kind of device into all my ships…said it could jump them between worlds if we needed to confront the aliens somewhere else.”
“I think that’s exactly what he had in mind. I don’t think
this
world’s in danger. I think he was going to use your troops to help repel invaders on another world, then to take control of it as well as this one.
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“Deryk Shea was, if nothing else, an ambitious man.” At least,
this
Deryk Shea had been. The original, back on Earth Prime, was ambitious as well, but in a totally different way.
He turned to look back at the building. “Morrigan? Would you mind escorting Scorpio and his troops around for a while? I think Val is awake.”
She nodded, not bothering to ask how he knew. He couldn’t have answered her if she did. He didn’t know himself. She seemed inordinately pleased with the idea of spending time with Scorpio, though he couldn’t complain about it. Maybe the possibility of some skin time with someone else would stop her from propositioning him and Val every time the impulse struck her.
Val was standing in front of a full length mirror dressed in nothing but her underwear when he ghosted into the room. She didn’t notice him at first and he stood there, watching her, his gaze tracing her spare frame. He could count her ribs, and her shoulder blades, once well-padded with muscle, were like dinner plates shoved under her skin.
He’d done everything he could to push thoughts of her into the background—to worry about his job and finding out where she’d been taken—but it was at this moment that he came to realize exactly how much he’d missed her. Somehow this mortal woman had taken up residence in a place he’d thought abandoned forever.
She looked terrible and yet, as he watched her inspect herself, he also thought she was the most beautiful thing in the world.
What did
they do to you?
She spun, hands leaping up to a defensive posture as she reflexively fell into a fighting stance. Then, just as quickly, she relaxed. “Raven.”
Her voice was soft, and a little huskier than he remembered. Her face was somber as she stared at him unblinkingly.
He tried on a tender smile. “God, I’ve missed you.”
She cocked her head. “Have you? Why did you send everyone else to rescue me?”
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This caused a thin spike of guilt he pushed aside. “I wanted to. Hell, I thought that if anyone could understand why I stayed behind, it would be you.”
She sighed heavily. “I
do
understand, Raven. How are we ever going to make a go out of this if both of are too married to our jobs to manage a relationship? In the scope of things my life is going to be little more than a brief spark against your eternity. How can you stand it?”
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” he replied. “We could petition the High Court―”
“And ask them to make me immortal?” She interrupted with a bitter laugh. “After this debacle of a mission? I’ll be lucky if I’m not thrown out of TAU completely. I totally screwed this one up. I couldn’t have done a worse job if I’d been trying to. I let natives get advanced weapons—hell, I practically
gave
them away—and I allied myself with a weapons smugger.
I violated every regulation in the book.”
“For all the right reasons,” he pointed out.
“Right, wrong. What the hell difference does
that
make? Your boss might care about stuff like that, but Athena isn’t going to see it that way.”
Raven had to admit she had a point there. He knew Athena well enough to know she’d be livid that he’d convinced Val to abandon the agency’s goals in pursuit of higher ones. She wasn’t very accepting of
‘necessary’ alterations to the plan. “There are other ways, you know.”
“Like what? Becoming a vampire? I love you, Raven, and I can accept that you’re one of the undead, but I’m not interested in joining you. I
like
being human.”
“You could always apply to change agencies,” he said.
“I’m sure you could get Sash to take me, but I don’t belong there and we both know it. I’m no mage.”
This was true. “There are rumors of other agencies forming. Or maybe we could talk to Jaz—killing the Shea doppelganger should give you some serious credit where she’s concerned. I mean—why
not
join Mirage if you’re given the chance?”
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“I can tell you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this and I appreciate it. But I just don’t know if you and I can
have
a future. If Athena wants to punish me, all she has to do is keep me on and send me as far away from you as she can. And I wouldn’t put it past her.”
“Neither would I,” Raven muttered. Though she’d never said so, or given any overt sign, he was pretty certain she had a few axes to grind against him as well.
Talk about a perfect opportunity to exact retribution.
“How about we make the most of the time we
know
we have and worry about the future when we get there?”
She met his gaze and, after a long moment, nodded slightly. “That’s the best suggestion you’ve made so far.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he replied. “I think the Mirage suggestion was a pretty good one too.”
“I know Jaz is one of your friends,” she said with a frown, “but the woman gives me the creeps.”
“She gives
everyone
the creeps. You get used to it.” Jasmine Tashae was not only one of the most powerful immortal magi in existence, she was also known to administer her own brand of justice to those she thought deserving. She defended and avenged innocents, and no one was safe from her wrath should they step over the line. “And maybe ‘friend’
isn’t quite the right word. I’ve known her since she was a kid. That doesn’t make us friends.”
The door burst open behind them and Raven turned to spot the Ermine standing in the doorway, the end of her tail visibly twitching. “I’ve broken his code! You’ll never believe what he was up to!”
“That’s what scares me,” Raven replied. “I won’t
want
to believe it.”
He turned to regard Val, who’d taken a step closer to him. “We need to find you some real clothes. That shift you were wearing does
nothing
for you.” He winked at her and she smiled in response. “I’m sure we’ll be able to find something.”
“Our conversation isn’t finished, Raven,” she informed him. “We’ve got a lot of things to talk over.”
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“Eat first,’ he told her. “There’s a cafeteria downstairs in the basement—yeah, I know it’s a weird place for one. This Deryk Shea was even more eccentric than
ours.
”
“Nice change of subject,” she grumbled at his retreating back as he followed the ermine out the door and closed it quietly behind him.
“Dammit, Raven,” she added. “Every time we start to talk about something serious, we get interrupted. I’m getting sick and tired of it.”
He heard her, of course. No ordinary door could foil his vampiric senses. He paused, fingers still wrapped around the knob, and considered returning to finish their conversation. But duty called, and he didn’t know how to balance professional and personal considerations.
The only time he’d ever had to make that choice before hadn’t turned out well. At this point he feared that this time wouldn’t turn out any better than the last.
Face it, Raven. Romance isn’t for you.
He ignored the voice as he followed the mustalid down the hall to Deryk Shea’s office. At least there was one problem in front of him he might be able to resolve.
Val stared at the closed door for a long minute, then sagged against the bureau before the mirror. She was exhausted, and famished, and knew that a long road still stretched out in front of her before she could actually rest. She wanted nothing more than to go home to Starhaven and clear her schedule for the next month.
But she knew without thinking about it that even Starhaven would be no refuge this time. She’d have a lot of decisions to answer for, and harbored no illusions that her answers would be well-received.
She pawed through the drawers and found a worn jumpsuit, apparently left by a previous occupant and, with a thankful whisper, discovered it would fit. She donned it and barefoot, padded out into the main corridor.