WarriorsApprentice Page 15

  “You’ll run if I tell you to,” Tybor insisted. “We cannot afford to let the police arrest us.”

  “I’m in this thing with you too deep to back out,” she said. “We’re a team.”

  “My people don’t do team,” Tybor snapped.

  “But you and Huon, you’re a team,” she insisted.

  “We worked on the same mission because it was the only way to get the job done,” Tybor replied.

  “No, it’s more than that. It’s the way you look at each other, then look away. It’s what you said last night when you could feel—”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tybor cut her off. “You don’t know us. Don’t make the mistake of thinking because we look like humans, we are like you. We do what we have to do for the survival of our people, but we are loners, and we don’t do commitment or social bonding.”

  “You’re wrong,” Judie protested. “I can see what there is between you and Huon.”

  “There is nothing between us other than this mission. Nothing! Just as there is nothing between you and me and Huon.” He took a step back from her. “Dvalinn don’t believe in love. Don’t think our physical affinity means anything. Don’t let it direct your actions. Don’t make plans for a future that involves Huon or me.”

  “I’m not making any plans,” Judie muttered. “I’m going to get some clothes. You can do whatever you want to.”

  She trudged, heavy-footed, to purchase the basic items she needed. While she shopped, awareness of Tybor’s brooding gaze prickled constantly at the back of her neck.

  When she returned to his side, shopping bags dangling from her wrists, he grunted, whether in approval or impatience she couldn’t tell, and led her onto the downward escalator.

  “Where are we going now?” she asked.

  “To a chemist and a hardware store,” he said over his shoulder as he strode down the street. “We need to have plenty of supplies in case we’re attacked.”

  With a hopping step, Judie hurried to keep up with him. “You’re going to attack the police?”

  “If I have to.” Tybor’s voice was grim.

  “Where are you going to get a gun?” she asked.

  His pace didn’t slow. “Our people don’t use guns. Ever. And even if that was negotiable, there is no way we have time to develop expertise with them. And,” he stopped briefly and looked down his nose at her, “this is Europe. It isn’t easy to get a gun here and since we have to travel, the risk of getting caught with one is too great. The components of our energy balls however, when separate, will not arouse any suspicion.” He began to walk again. “Do you want a gun?” he asked. “Are you an expert?”

  “Me?” she squeaked. “No. I’ve never touched a gun in my life.”

  “Then the entire conversation is pointless. No guns,” he reiterated.

  “Well, can I have some of these energy balls?” She scurried after him. “I need something to help you fight.”

  An exasperated sigh escaped Tybor’s lips. “Weren’t you listening? I told you, no—“

  “No commitment. I heard you. But you can’t just desert me here,” she argued. “Where you go, I go.” When he opened his mouth to argue, she cut him off. “I know you have to go back to where you come from, but until you do you’re stuck with me. I need time to work out what I’m going to do.”

  “I should have,” he paused and Judie got the feeling he’d changed what he was about to say, “knocked you out and left you in Venice. If we’d made sure your fingerprints weren’t on the shovel handle…”

  “I rescued you, in case you’ve forgotten,” Judie said, her hands on her hips, feet square, glaring at Tybor.

  They were blocking the sidewalk but she didn’t care. People moved around them, polite and silent.

  “And you didn’t have the choice to leave me in Venice. Who got you to the train station? Who got whom out of the city within half an hour?”

  “Damn pushy women,” Tybor grunted, then scrubbed his hands across his forehead. “All right, you’re in this as much as we are, at least for now.”

  “And my weapon?” she demanded. “I want some of those explodey things.”

  “No fireballs.” Tybor held up one hand to silence her protest. “They’re hard to use, difficult to master and they require intensive training before you can be at all effective. Don’t believe me? Ask Huon what I put him through in training. Weeks and weeks of training.” He sighed and the corners of his mouth tilted up. “But you did get us out of a tight situation and we are grateful.” The smile grew wider. “Maybe we’ll just make sure you have a good supply of coal shovels.”

  In any other circumstance she’d have smiled back but Tybor’s statement made her feel ill. No matter what Tybor and Huon had done or why, she had killed a man. She heard again the sickening thud of the shovel connecting with Brian’s head. Nausea mixed with fear and horror weakened her knees, but she wasn’t running away.

  A deep chill settled on her while she waited for Tybor to buy the mixture of chemicals and household cleaning products he needed. By the time they stopped at a delicatessen she felt achy and feverish, her legs shaking so much she almost stumbled up the stairs to their rooms.

  Huon met them at the door, eager to ask about the trip, but Tybor cut him off with a gesture of his hand. “Later.”

  Huon blinked and asked, “Did you get food? Let’s eat.”

  “You two do whatever you want,” Judie said flatly. The nausea she’d been fighting boiled over and she rushed for the bathroom, bags still in her hand.

  The door had barely slammed behind her when she doubled over the toilet, retching and heaving. When the spasms had passed, she lay on the cool tile floor and gave in to the knowledge that in all the rush of escape, in the fever of sexual excitement, she’d managed to keep buried. All the men she worked with were dead, and she had murdered the man she worked for. Her stomach heaved again, but there was nothing more to bring up. With legs that felt a hundred years old, she pulled herself to her feet, took off her clothes and staggered into the shower.

  She let the water flow over her for a long, long time, but at the end of it she didn’t feel any cleaner, didn’t feel like any of the grime that stuck to her had truly been washed away.

  She pulled a large T-shirt out of her shopping bag and put it on, opened the door and, without saying a word to either man, climbed into one of the single bunks, pulled the sheets up around her head and tried to sleep.

  Although every muscle in her body ached with tiredness, her brain swirled and she felt shaky and disconnected from the world, as if a translucent curtain had fallen in front of her. All her strange confidence had fled and she was left facing the fact that she was a murderess, wanted by the police and dependent on two strangers who were not even human. Long, long hours passed before she finally fell into a fitful sleep.

  * * * * *

  “Tybor?” Huon spoke quietly.

  From the bunk on the other side of the room, the sound of Judie’s breathing, which honesty would have compelled him to call a snore, rasped in a regular rhythm.

  “What?” Tybor replied.

  “What’s wrong with Judie?”

  Tybor paused until another soft exhalation of Judie’s breath sounded in the room.

  “She’s asleep,” Huon said. “I wouldn’t have asked if she weren’t.”

  “She had some misconceptions about what was happening here. I set her straight,” Tybor murmured, his voice a low rumble.

  “Oh.” Huon’s sigh was as quiet as a breath. “Why did that upset her?”

  “How do I know? She’s human. They’re strange.” Tybor grunted. “She asked for some fireballs of her own so she could fight alongside us if the police came after us.”

  “She’s amazing,” Huon said.

  A long moment of silence stretched out. Then Tybor spoke, his tone grim and determined. “Adrenaline helped her do things she never thought she would, but once it drained away, she crashed. You and I are traine
d to cope with that. She’s not.”

  “We should help her,” Huon said.

  “No. She has to get through this on her own. As soon as we get to the portal spot, we’ll be gone. I don’t want her to depend on us for anything.”

  “But we’re here now. We should—”

  “She’s asleep. That’s the best thing for her,” Tybor said firmly.

  Huon smiled to himself. “I really like her, Tybor.”

  “You’re as bad as she is. Dvalinn do not believe in love or emotional commitments.” A note of something that sounded impossibly like panic colored his voice. “She thought I… That you… She imagined a shitload of crap. I don’t need you to do it too.”

  Huon lay on his back in the darkened room and looked toward the ceiling he couldn’t see. He wondered who exactly Tybor was trying to convince. Images of a hard, brown body bending over his, smoothing on lotion, of the same body stretched out over his, cock to hardened cock. Tybor’s dedication to his training, to keeping him alive, pushing him further and further, then admitting with grudging respect how far he had come.

  Then he thought of Judie’s soft body and her fierce courage, her quickness and her strength. He thought of the incredible three-way sexual encounter on the train and he felt his heart kick. Tybor and the rest of the Dvalinn might be unable to love, but Huon was afraid that in this, as in everything else in his lonely, isolated life, he was different.

  And that difference made him yearn for closeness with both Tybor and Judie. Judie perhaps would understand, might even reciprocate, but Huon knew, with a certainty that suffused his entire being, what he wanted, what he needed. The triangle was the strongest geometric form. The three angles, three sides, balanced out the forces and held together with stability beyond the individual strength of the components. Without Tybor to balance out their triangle, Huon knew they would never reach the heights of which they were capable. The forces of destruction that surrounded them would beat them down and destroy them.

  * * * * *

  The first rays of dawn gave Tybor the excuse he needed to get out of bed, away from the sleepless night. The boy worried him. Although he had proven himself time and time again as a warrior, proven his strength and his courage, there remained an edge of softness, some sense that Huon’s physical differences translated into emotional differences as well. His concern for Judie confirmed that.

  Tybor knew the way of his people. Sex was an outlet, a biological need, a drive that demanded to be fulfilled. Once satisfied, his people moved on. No guilt, no bond, no sorrow and no weakening of the hard shell they needed to survive their dark lives.

  Their romp with Judie posed no problem. Sex, no matter how enjoyable or intense, could do no harm. But Huon showed signs of a developing an emotional dependence. How easy would it be for the admiration he so openly expressed for Judie to turn to something else? The best way to curtail this unprecedented bout of emotion was to let Huon indulge in as much sex as possible with Judie—hard, fast and kinky—until he had her, and that word “love”, out of his system.

  He didn’t need to be so careful himself. Unlike Huon, Tybor had experienced sex before, lots of sex. Maybe not in a long time and maybe not with a human who had proven herself to be brave and daring and very capable, but there was no danger of him falling into some disgustingly sticky emotional mess. He had no soft feelings to control.

  Huon gave a soft, snoring grunt and Tybor turned. Huon might object to being called boy, but with the soft skin of his pale face relaxed in sleep, his mouth slightly open, his full lips a rosy pink, his long lashes shadowing his cheek, he looked young and vulnerable.

  A strange ache tunneled its way through Tybor’s chest. He clenched his teeth and ignored it, angered by the insidious way sentimentality infected the very atmosphere.

  He cleared his throat and ordered, “Wake up. Both of you.” Then he stomped into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

  When he came back, Judie sat at the small table.

  Huon turned from the door, carrying a tray that had been left outside by the landlady.

  “We’ve got coffee, rolls, butter and cheese.” He smiled at Judie. “You must be hungry. You didn’t eat last night.”

  The warmth in Huon’s voice made Tybor grimace. “Eat now,” he snapped, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “I have no patience with your ridiculous human feelings. If the police are looking for you, you do what is necessary to survive. Anything else is self-indulgence.”

  “Self-indulgence?” Judie gasped.

  At the same time, Huon shouted, “Tybor!”

  “I found my co-workers dead, I killed my own boss and I’m on the run,” she growled. “Of course I’m upset. If that strikes you as unreasonable, maybe Brian was right and you are some kind of monster.”

  Her shoulders heaved and Tybor shuddered. One of the least appealing characteristics of humans was their emotional excess and tears were the worst of it. He sneered when Huon leaped up and put his arms around Judie, turning to Tybor, defensiveness in his jutting chin and knitted brows. Huon’s voice when he spoke to the human woman was soft and reassuring and made Tybor feel nauseated.

  “We’re not monsters,” Huon said emphatically. “Not in any sense of the word humans mean. Hopewood called us demons but if demons exist, our people do not know of them.”

  “What are your people?” Judie asked.

  Huon shook his head. “We are of the same class, order and family as humans. We may even be the same species, just a different subset.”

  “Really?” Judie’s brows lifted. “The same species?”

  Though wide-eyed innocence and interest seemed to have taken the place of the wailing-fest, Tybor looked at the two of them clinging to each other and he felt edgy, his guts tied in knots that had no reason to be there, his temper raw and rasping.

  “Maybe we are and maybe we’re not. They tell me the offspring of different species are sterile, like mules. Maybe we should fuck and find out. We might create a new specimen you can put in the zoo for humans to laugh at. Or how about a game park where you could hunt it down and kill it? Humans enjoy that sort of thing, don’t they?”

  The hurt look on both the others’ faces told him how cruel he’d been. Tough. Huon had to get up to speed and Judie had to know there was too much bad feeling, too much history between their two peoples to ever forget.

  “We don’t have time for this crap. We have to work out what in the fuck to do next. Huon and I have to get to a portal point, and you…you have to make some decisions.” Tybor slammed the coffee cup onto the table, the brown liquid sloshing over the sides, and he began to pace. “If Huon could still transport, we’d be home by now.”

  “Well I can’t. Complaining about it won’t help,” Huon replied

  Judie’s eyes widened and Tybor knew what she was going to ask.

  “You can just transport yourselves? What other powers do you have?” she asked, confirming his premonition.

  “Compared to humans, extraordinary longevity, some of us are telepathic, all of us are able to move any object by telekinesis, we have the power to transport ourselves—well, I did until they removed it,” Huon answered.

  “Why would anyone remove your power to transport?” she asked.

  “To prevent Hopewood using the device you built for him to use Huon’s power to invade Dvalinn cities,” Tybor said grimly. “That’s what he did last time. He found a young Dvalinn, used your device to trap him and then forced him to take him back underground. He killed hundreds of our people. Of our men. Of our women. Of our children.”

  Without another word, Judie stood up and walked to the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

  * * * * *

  Judie sank onto her knees next to the shower stall. The chill from the tiles rose up until it penetrated her entire body. The device she’d created for Hopewood, the device she’d thought was a joke, had been used to commit a massacre.

  She had dismissed Brian Hopewood as a harmless eccentric
. Then she’d discovered his capacity for torture, but she hadn’t imagined the scale of his monstrosity. Any regret she had for her part in his death faded away. She had reacted to a situation in the only way she could. Now she had to live with the consequences, whatever they were.

  She pushed herself to her feet and stared at herself in the bathroom mirror. Apart from the lines of tension bracketing her mouth and an understandable pallor, the image reflected back at her looked the same as it always did—nothing special, nothing to suggest the extraordinary adventure that had overtaken her. Nothing that screamed out, “I am a murderer.”

  Since she’d stumbled on the confrontation between the two Dvalinn men and Brian, her life had lurched from crisis to crisis and her emotional state had lurched, swung, climbed and rocketed downward along with it. She had to get back some control, do something to stop herself from feeling like a lump of driftwood tossed and tumbled on waves that threatened to roll her under. She slumped down onto the closed toilet seat, propped her elbows on her thighs and dropped her head into her hands.

  “Think,” she whispered to herself. “What’s the use of being a certified genius if the first time I find myself in a difficult situation my brain goes on hold while I run on primitive responses and reactions?”

  “Judie?” Huon’s voice came through the door. “Are you talking to someone in there? Is everything all right?”

  “I’m fine,” she called.

  She heard Tybor’s lower rumble, but he seemed to be talking to Huon and not to her.

  She splashed water over her face. If Huon and Tybor were going to decide what to do, she’d better get back out there. The two men were so damn confident in their abilities. They would make all the decisions themselves if she let them, and expect her to go along with them without comment or amendment. She couldn’t change the past but she would have some say in her future. She flung the door open, strode over to the table and sat down.

  “Time we planned what to do next,” she said.

  “Last plan I heard, I was supposed to make my way back across the lagoon to San Michele, once I wiped out Hopewood and his Gatekeepers, and wait for someone to come to the portal to transport me home,” Huon said with a shrug. “You can see how that worked out.”