Authors: Saje Williams
Chapter Ten
The woman gasped for a steady breath, finally, and groaned as she sat up, pressing her back against the bulkhead. “I’m after the weapons.”
“What weapons?” Goban asked, frowning for a moment before revelation struck. “We don’t have them.”
Raven threw him a look full of dark fire. “She didn’t need to know that.”
Goban winced, looking abashed. “Yeah, you’re right. Maybe you should question her.”
“Maybe so,” the vampire grunted. He strode over, crouched in front of her. “What did you want with the weapons?”
“To return them to those who’d purchased them,” she said, shifting slightly. “I think you broke something.”
“Too bad. What does it matter to
you
who has them?”
“We made a deal. We honor our obligations.”
“Who’s
we?
”
“I’m not going to tell you that,” she replied, shaking her head. “Even if you beat me to death.”
Raven’s smile was thin enough to shave ice. “Not necessary.” He reached up, grabbed a specific spell in his ’web, and hurled it into her as she sat unsuspecting. At the last second her eyes snapped wide and she cried out, but by then it was too late. “That should keep you from getting any ideas.”
“What did you do to her?” Val asked, moving up next to him and staring down at the suddenly stricken woman with an oddly concerned look in her eye.
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“I warlocked her,” he replied, turning away. “Put her in the hold, Goban. Let her stew there a while, see if she feels more cooperative once she’s had a chance to think things over.”
The watchman nodded, looking a little puzzled. His use of the word
‘warlock” in that context had thrown the man. “What did you do?”
“I blocked her magic,” the vampire replied. “I think she has a fractured rib or two as well, which should keep her from doing anything too energetic.” He glanced over his shoulder at Val. “Coming?” Without waiting for a reply, he strode from the cabin, not bothering to see if she followed. If she did, they’d continue the conversation the attack had interrupted. If she didn’t, well, there would be another opportunity soon enough.
He wasn’t sure he really gave a damn right now. His mind was churning with other things—like who or what the woman represented.
He found himself wishing he could ask questions of the leaders of the rebellion. How had they contacted these people, and what deal had they made?
The question burned inside him as fiercely as lust had burned within him when Val had pressed her lips against his.
He shoved away the comparison angrily and strode across the gently shifting deck, stepping out onto the bow and staring down at the dark water pooling below.
Val stared after him, mouth hanging open for a moment, then met the woman’s eyes as Goban helped her to her feet. “You never told us your name.”
Her full lips stretched into the first real smile Val had seen out of her.
“It’s Cassie—short for Cassiopeia.” She allowed the watchman to assist her to the door and halted, turning to gaze back at Val for a short moment before speaking. Her face was a mask of pain. “If you think you can awaken love within him, think again. He’s a dead thing—his heart a shriveled mass. He’s walked in the shadows too long to allow that light to shine on him.”
Goban half-carried her out onto the deck, snarling something into her ear Val couldn’t catch.
What does she know?
Val thought to herself, 68
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stepping out onto the deck once they’d gone, her gaze scanning the deck until she spotted the single dark shape on the bow, coat flapping against his legs like the wings of a dying bat.
She approached Raven slowly—she might not have been able to sense his mood empathically, but he fairly radiated tension simply by the way he stood, like he was carved out of wood and placed there by the shipwrights who’d built this vessel.
Has his heart withered?
She remembered the feel of his hands on her arms as he’d pushed her away after she’d kissed him. There had been passion there; he’d felt something when she’d kissed him, whether he wanted to admit it to himself or not.
He didn’t turn to look at her as she walked up on him. “When I was first turned, I was afraid of becoming a monster. The one who turned me seemed callous, uncaring, though honorable in his own way. The vampire he made me to fight was a madwoman, a dark queen in truth.
But before I’d been a year dead I made a deal with a devil, and made vampires at his whim.
“I became a monster’s monster. I secretly hunted those I created at his command, and destroyed them. I took their lives and then killed them. I’m not even sure I regretted a bit of it. I was Raven, the hunter of the night, death to the undead. I was the vampire bogeyman. I was the thing that the fearsome feared.”
He uttered a bitter laugh, his voice wafting over the deck of the ship as if abandoning any concern for keeping his secret. “I don’t even know how many I destroyed. I lost count. One thing an uneducated vampire does is propagate…making more vampires comes as naturally to us as breathing does to the living. We feed and spread the virus.
“I was only fifteen when I was turned. I was a kid. I played a game that featured vampires as the protagonists—I thought I knew what it would be like. But I didn’t. Not really. I didn’t know what it would be like to watch the years roll on, to see the world changing as I remained the same.
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“These hands…” He raised them as if in illustration, so pale they seemed to be glowing as he held them aloft. “…should be stained scarlet.
But they’re not.
“I thought I was in love once. Briefly. She was a lycanthrope, the child of a powerful mob family who’d repudiated everything her family stood for. She saw me for what I was, finally, and walked away without looking back. She knew a damned thing when she saw one.”
Even as fitful as her sensitive psi talents were, she could still sense him there like a black hole in her awareness, radiating pain she could not feel. She could hear it in his voice and it left bleeding wounds in her psyche nonetheless. “If you were truly damned, it wouldn’t tear you up like this.” She spoke softly, knowing he’d hear her.
“The woman told you her name,” he said out of the blue. “I heard her.” He whirled, leaping the distance between them and landing silently in front of her. “I wish she was right,” he said. “I wish my heart was a withered thing, unable to feel. But it’s not. She’s wrong. But she’s right about one thing—I’ve walked in the shadows a long time. Maybe too long.”
“There’s no such thing as
too long,
” Val whispered, reaching out, grabbing him by the back of his head and pulling his face to hers. Their lips met, tentatively at first, but with growing heat as she felt a tingle run through her. Her legs threatened to buckle, but his arm, strong as stone, wrapped across her back and held her to him.
She fell back a moment later, gasping for air. “Whew. No one ever warned me what kissing a vampire would be like.”
He gave her a thin smile, eyes dancing with something approaching humor. “When you don’t need to breathe, it makes a difference.”
“No kidding.” She sighed heavily, leaning against the iron strength of his embrace. “But that’s not all, is it? When you’re kissing me, that’s
all
you’re doing. Every bit of what you are goes into it.”
He gave her an odd look, then shrugged. “I suppose that’s true. What of it?”
“Do you realize how rare that is?”
“No, I didn’t. Why—how rare is it?”
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She had to laugh. She couldn’t help herself. “One of my senseis had a theory about something he called ‘the hundred percent rule.’ We mere mortals have to expend some of our energy on things like breathing, and keeping our hearts beating. Subconsciously, perhaps, but it still subtracts something from the whole. No matter what we do, we can only put so much into it because of all the other things we must expend energy on. When I’m kissing you, I have to think about breathing, and keeping my legs from collapsing under me, and, at some level, how we’re going to succeed at this mission. But not you. When you’re kissing me, everything you are is about kissing me. That’s just amazing.”
He shrugged. “I’m still not sure this is wise.”
“Wisdom be damned.” She met his eyes squarely. “Sometimes being human is about thinking with your heart, not your head. And, since your heart isn’t really a withered up thing in your chest, try to listen to it from time to time.”
“Hmm. I’ll consider it. In the meantime, maybe we’d best get back to thinking about the mission. I need to get rid of those weapons. Do you know how to sail, by any chance?”
“Not part of my training,” she replied. “Why?”
He nodded toward the vessel sitting some yards off the starboard side. “If you did, we could take that ship and have a little privacy.”
“Probably not a good idea. Admittedly, I don’t know a lot about it, but I’d guess we’re going to be heading into some heavy weather soon.”
He nodded. “Could be. I can handle that…at least at night. We’re still a few weeks from the North Sea, but we’re also coming up on the time of year when the storms start getting worse.”
“I have a really weird question.”
“Only one? Shoot.”
“Where the hell are we? I mean in relation to the places I know on Earth Prime. Everything’s different here.”
“No kidding? I hadn’t noticed.”
She punched him lightly in the chest. It was a bit like hitting a marble statue. “Ow.”
“Don’t do that.” He lifted a brow sardonically.
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“I’m serious.”
“Right now we’re off the coast of China.”
“No. You’re kidding.”
He shook his head. “I know it’s weird. But the tribes of man didn’t migrate the same way on this world… We’re hitting the North Pole via the coast of what would be Russia.”
“How are we going to get this thing through the ice once we get up there?”
He smiled enigmatically. “Leave that to me.”
“Like I have a choice?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Raven!” The voice jerked his head around and his eyes narrowed as Bryon came strolling up the deck toward them, radiating something Val couldn’t quite place. It felt a little like fear, but also carried with it an undercurrent of—was it hope?
She wasn’t certain.
He was nearly vibrating with it, she noted. Raven met her eyes for a quick second before releasing her waist and moving to intercept. “What can I do for you, Bryon?”
“You can answer some questions.” The words came out in a rush. “I need to know.”
“Need to know what?”
“Are you the Redeemer?”
“What? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You bear the signs. ‘And he shall shun the light of day, and his power shall fall upon the night like a web of life.’”
“Coincidence,” the vampire grunted. “I don’t believe in prophesy.”
Val wanted to interject something here, but thought it better to keep her mouth shut. She had no choice but to believe in prophesy—she’d met her share of precogs, and knew all too well how accurate some of their visions could be. The fact that Bryon had suddenly connected Raven to the third aspect of their Three-Fold God gave her pause, but she was fairly certain she didn’t want to get involved in
this
particular discussion.
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“’He shall come from another world, and have been called both hero and monster by his own people.’”
Now this is just getting creepy,
she thought, as a chill ran down her spine. What if Raven
was
the Redeemer of prophesy? What did that mean, exactly? She set a mental note to herself to discuss the whole thing with Bryon at a later date. She needed to know more about all this before coming to any conclusions about it.
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Chapter Eleven
Two nights later Raven stepped out of a transit tube onto the unfamiliar deck of the Church’s warship, cloaking himself in shadow as he did. He could sense living beings moving about the ship, one nearly close enough to touch. He drifted closer, recognizing the man as a Knight of the Church, one of the magically enhanced warriors that served as part of a Deacon’s honor guard.
The man strode past him, completely unaware of his presence. Raven breathed a silent sigh of relief, only then realizing how concerned he’d been that their enhancements would allow them to detect him. He shouldn’t have worried. His vampiric nature had granted him partial immunity to magical attack, and his own particular gift had given him the ability to pass undetected even amongst his own kind.
He heard the rapid approach of footsteps as another knight burst through a hatch and emerged on deck, naked steel gleaming in his hand.
“Deacon Shalz has detected an intruder!” he cried out.
Then again…
Raven slipped past them as they criss-crossed the deck, looking into every shadowed alcove.
He must have warded the ship and
sensed my arrival via transit tube,
Raven realized, feeling slightly foolish.
He should have jumped in above the ship and dropped to the deck rather than arrogantly assuming he could simply stroll into their midst unnoticed.
Either way he thought it unlikely he’d have to fight his way out. Once he’d found the weapons, he could take care of them and vanish without the Churchmen ever knowing who or what walked among them.
His first step, of course, was locating the weapons. Ordinarily he’d just send out a couple of spells programmed to seek them out, but he 74
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knew now that activating any sort of magic on this ship would be a mistake, so he was reduced to doing it the hard way.
The hatch leading into the hold was obvious enough, but the catch was finding a way to open it and slip inside without alerting the knights.
That,
he thought with a wry grin,
requires a distraction.
He made his way to the bow and drew one of his pistols. He removed the magazine and popped free a single bullet, which he then pried open with his thumbnail. He poured the powder into his cupped hand and looked around. The trick at this point was in leading them
away
from where he was trying to go—the cargo hatch lay in the middle forward section of the main deck. A fire on the bow would lead them past his access point, but would also risk drawing the attention of those currently ensconced in the rear cabins.
Clenching his fist around the gunpowder, he raced to the stern, blowing by the two knights as they stumbled around trying to find something they had no chance of locating in the first place. He vaulted to the poop deck and, from there, hurled himself upward into the rigging where he scampered like a monkey to the furled mizzen sail. Then he poured out the powder in a long line along the furl.
Shaking off the last vestiges of the powder, he reached down to his belt and extracted a thin silver tube about the circumference of a pencil and as long as his pinkie. He thumbed one end, activating a five-centimeter laser beam from the other that he then used to touch off the powder.
He scrambled along the rigging as the flames spread behind him, dropping back down to the deck as near to the cargo hatch as he could get. He waited for the inevitable cry, which didn’t take long. There were few things more deadly at sea than a fire.
The knights, seeing the blaze flaring along the furled sail, took up the warning. In seconds, the deck was swarming with panicked sailors.
He took advantage of the distraction to roll open the booby hatch and drop into the hold. The darkness within didn’t faze him in the least; his vampiric senses allowed him to see in the gloom as well as a mortal might under an overcast sky.
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He saw a number of chests strewn about the cabin and it took him a few minutes to locate the right one. Once he had, it was a simple matter to draw upon a nearby mana strand and seal the chest away. He gathered up the newly created dimension pocket, tied it to him with another thread, and grabbed a third to facilitate an escape.
He cast one end out, aiming it toward his own vessel, and willed the near end to open just as he heard someone drop through the hatch behind him. He didn’t even bother to look. He knew that as soon as he started casting they’d be on him, and he didn’t really have any interest in sticking around to play.
He leaped through the transit tube, landing hard on the pitching deck of his target vessel, whirling in place to grab the end from which he’d just emerged before anyone could follow. He sealed and tossed it away, watching it evaporate into mist as its energy dissipated into the night sky.
Only then did he breathe a sigh of relief. That had been a lot closer than he’d wanted. Had it been a Deacon who’d dropped into the hold, he might’ve had a real fight on his hands before he could make it out. Being highly resistant to magic didn’t make one immune to it. He’d tensed up at the last second, expecting to feel a bolt of lightning or fire raking his back as he’d leaped away.
He’d emerged onto the
Rakehell’s
main deck to find it empty except for a certain furry hulk who’d been making himself scarce for the past several days. Cerberus
really
didn’t like ocean travel, and spent most of his time in the hold guarding Raven’s crate. Most the crew had never even caught a glimpse of him—his powerful psychic gifts enabling him to cloud their minds whenever he chose. A good part of the time he slipped by so craftily Raven himself forgot he was aboard the ship at all.
They’d been fortunate enough to find a sheltered alcove in which to anchor within a couple miles of the Church vessel, well within Raven’s striking range. The others didn’t have any idea how close they’d come to the other ship and that was just the way Raven and Val had wanted it.
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setting sail too early the next morning and, hopefully, the church ship would be well on its way before the
Rakehell
lifted anchor.
Unless they decide to try and track down the cause of this night’s
misfortune,
a niggling little voice whispered in his head. He winced. That would be bad, especially during the day when he had no means to help defend the ship.
Some of his fears must have shown on his face as he climbed up onto the poop deck and sat down, coiling his legs beneath him—Cerberus vaulted up beside him and nuzzled his hand until he scratched the beast behind the ears. “I know you’ll help protect the ship, buddy. But these guys are pretty tough. I’m not sure there’s any way they could be fought off without magic.”
A sudden creak drew his eyes to the ladder as Bryon pulled himself up into view. “Some people say talking to animals is a sign of madness.”
“And if they answer back?” Raven asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.
“That’s a sign of something else entirely.”
Raven sighed and shook his head. “I’m not the person you’re looking for, Bryon. Don’t you think I’d know it if I were?”
“Not according to our Scripture. The Book of the Redeemer was banned by the Church over a century ago—the idea that its power would be supplanted by another concept of the Deity didn’t sit well with the hierarchy. I’ve spent my whole life studying the prophesies, and I’m not deluding myself―or you―when I say that you seem to fit the role.”
“I’m not sure how that’s even possible. Doesn’t the whole concept of a three-fold deity suggest a single god with three different faces?”
“That’s the reading the Church would prefer, but that’s not the way the Book of the Redeemer reads. You—excuse me, the Redeemer—is supposed to vanquish the two other Gods in epic battle. That’s rather difficult to do if you’re all part of the same deity, wouldn’t you say?”
Bryon leaned closer, whispering in an almost conspiratorial tone. “Some of the passages actually suggest that the first two books were fakes—not prophesy at all, but, instead, dictated by two beings who wanted us to
believe
they were gods.”
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Leaving that intriguing bit of information hanging in the air, Bryon turned and climbed back onto the ladder. “Something to think about,” he said. “Goodnight, Raven.”
Raven leaned back and stared up at the stars, considering. He was beginning to see in this whole thing a familiar theme manifesting itself.
The immortals on his own Earth had also once pretended to be gods. It wasn’t inconceivable that two of
them
had found a home here and set themselves up a nice little racket by manipulating the locals.
Of course, that begged the question—what was
his
role in all of this?
And despite his statements to the contrary, he knew full well that some mortals possessed precognitive abilities. One thing was certain—this wasn’t something he could chew on himself and expect to figure out. Nor was talking to the dog going to do him any good. He needed to break down and discuss his suspicions with Val.
He gave Cerberus a final scritch and sought her out in her cabin.
She looked particularly alluring in her thin nightgown, he decided, as she opened the door to her cabin and let him in, rubbing sleep from her eyes. Her blonde hair was a muddled mass spilling over her shoulders, and her pale face pink on one side from where it had been pressed against her pillow.
Even so, her sharp prettiness was like a hammer blow to his sensibilities. “It is done,” he told her.
She nodded sleepily, then, as she came more to her senses, turned a questioning gaze on him. “What did you do with them?”
“I’ve put them somewhere safe,” he replied. “We can figure out what to do with them later.”
She didn’t look particularly pleased with this answer—she’d obviously expected him to destroy them outright, since sending them back to Starhaven wasn’t currently feasible. He watched as she crossed the small cabin to the trunk in one corner, lifting the lid and popping something into her mouth. He smiled, realizing what it had been.
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Since modern oral care methods were impractical on some of the worlds their agents visited, the agencies had developed small, easily hidden lozenges that cleaned the mouth and freshened the breath. The fact that she’d sacrificed her dwindling supplies led him to believe she expected this visit to involve more than shop talk.
Not that he was opposed to the idea of kissing her again, but he was not yet ready for anything more daring. Being dead, and over two hundred years old, he was no longer driven by hormones—though he could feel attraction, and even lust, he had no sex drive per se. His feelings for her were growing, but he’d learned the hard way that, for many, sex didn’t necessarily equal love. He had no interest in lust for its own sake, and had reason to be wary of love. He wanted nothing more than to take his time, to learn what it was, exactly, that was developing between them.
He’d had his heart figuratively torn out of his chest once before—he had no interest in repeating the experience.
As they cuddled on the low divan against one bulkhead, he went over his plans for the next day. He immersed himself in the act of kissing her, and feeling her warm flesh flowing like water over his icy skin, but, the moment things grew too heated, he found a way to throw a distraction into the mix. No sex. Not yet.
Though, he admitted to himself, at least, his resolve was weakening with every day he spent with her.
As it turned out, Val didn’t have to stall to postpone their leave-taking. One of the crewmen, spotting a small herd of deer in the woods off the small cove, had talked the Captain into allowing them a few hours to acquire some game—their on-board stores were still fully stocked, but once they reached the Arctic Sea, they’d no longer be able to hunt for supplemental provisions.
Six men disappeared over the side into the small rowboat they’d already lowered, and rowed smartly to shore.
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Val knew little about hunting, but surmised that the venture would take at least four to six hours. Now that Raven had caught up to the Church ship, they were in no particular hurry. As long as they managed to avoid the nasty winter storms that would be coming along within the next few weeks.
Raven didn’t seem too troubled about them, but Val took note of the Captain’s concern. He’d weighed the men’s request for fresh meat against the calendar and had apparently decided that they could afford a short delay.
Which was fine with Val. Raven hadn’t offered any particularly viable excuse for her to give to the Captain to delay their departure time.
Sometimes fate intervened, however, and she was quite happy that this turned out to be one of those times.
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