Firestorm (11 page)

***

Despite the drugs and ointments, Raina's illness continued to worsen. She became nauseated; she couldn't keep any food or liquid down, and soon became dehydrated and feverish. Teague was forced to insert an intravenous line just to keep fluids in her but, despite all his efforts, Raina didn't get better. He began to despair for her life.

Though she refused to let him touch her, every time she fell into a delirium, he sponged her down. Day and night, Teague worked over Raina. He barely ate or slept, yet nothing he did seemed to help. She'd be lucid but weak for hours, then all but unconscious and consumed with fever. Then she would finally waken once again before the cycle began anew.

"You will make yourself ill, too, if you continue this way," Rand stated flatly one evening two days later, as they prepared for bed in the sleeping chamber, Raina once more in a stupor. "I say again. There is little more you can do for the femina. She will either live or die, and meanwhile we sit here, vulnerable and losing valuable time."

"Don't you think I know that?" Teague growled. He swiped a trickle of sweat from his brow. The heat had grown oppressive as the day had waned. Dark, heavy clouds had built on the horizon, threatening rain. He fervently wished it would rain, if for nothing else than to replenish their dwindling water supplies.

"Yes, I know you know that," the Volan replied. "But I also think, in the process of fighting to save her, you've lost sight of our true purpose here."

Teague shot him a seething glance. "That again." He brushed a damp lock of hair from his bare shoulder. "Well, I haven't forgotten, despite what you may think. But I cannot leave Raina while she still lives. She sacrificed herself to save us. Or have you conveniently forgotten that?"

"No, I haven't forgotten," Rand calmly said. "But you have to make a decision, my friend."

"Easy enough for you to say," Teague snarled, at the end of his patience. "You can sit there in your little box, totally helpless and useless save for your mind, and force the most odious of decisions on me. Yet in the end, you'll come out of this as untouched as you came into it."

Rand was silent for a long moment. "Do you think I'm grateful for the fate that keeps me trapped in this box? Think that it frees me of moral obligations and responsibilities? Well, you are wrong, my friend. I hate this existence! I yearn for a body, a real life. But I cannot have one. Yet though I'm spared the gut-wrenching choices that only you who possess form and substance have to make, I won't turn from what I know to be right. I offer what I can, what I feel to be truth. And I'll continue to do so, whether you like it or not!"

"He's . . . he's right, Tremayne," a weak and weary voice whispered.

Teague wheeled and looked down at the bunk. Raina stared up at him, bleary-eyed but awake once more.

"I-I thought you were . . . asleep. I didn't mean for you to hear . . ." Frustrated and at a loss for words, Teague's voice faded.

"I know." Raina managed a tremulous smile. "But the Volan is right this time. We came here to complete a mission. The longer you linger here caring for me, the more you endanger not only yourselves, but the success of the mission as well. You must go, Teague. You must leave me."

"No." Teague strode over and sank to one knee beside her bunk. "I won't. I can't."

"Why?" she whispered. "Why do you persist in this, when you know in your heart that the Volan and I are right?"

Teague hesitated, puzzlement furrowing his brow. "Why? I don't know. Perhaps because you were willing to risk your life for me. Perhaps because we're of the same planet. Or perhaps, just perhaps, because you've suffered enough at the hands of men."

She went rigid. The old pride and panic—that anyone should guess her shameful secret—flooded her. "You know nothing—nothing—of what I've suffered. And it doesn't matter anyway. It's my burden to bear, not yours."

The monk leaned back with a sigh. "No, I don't know
what happened to you, but I sense it was horrible. Your
hatred of men well, it had to arise from some terrible betrayal. And I won't be party to adding to that
betrayal." A concerned considering look flared in his
eyes. "Did some man rape you, Raina? Is that what


happened?"

Horror, then fury, shuddered through her. How could he know? How dared he even ask? "And why should it matter, one way or another?" she snapped. "What happened to me is my own affair." Her mouth tightened and a grim look burned in her eyes. "I don't pry into your sordid, secret past, do I?"

Teague went very still. "No, you don't."

"Then let it be, Tremayne. The issue here isn't me, it's the mission."

"She's right, of course."

His anger rising, Teague turned toward Rand's pack. "Keep out of this, Volan. This is between Raina and me."

"Ah, so it's like that, is it? I'm permitted to speak only when I don't contradict you?"

Teague took a threatening step toward Rand, his fists clenched before he realized the absurdity of his actions. What had he thought to do? Attack a box? He exhaled a deep breath and turned back to Raina. A tiny smile lifted the corners of her mouth.

"It doesn't matter what either of you says." He forced himself to continue in a more modulated tone, once again in control. "My mind is made. I'll do what I think is right in this matter."

Raina stared up at him. They locked gazes. As he watched, all the anger, all the wary defensiveness, all the antagonism faded from her eyes. Confusion crept in, and fear. Then she shuttered her gaze.

"Fine," she said at last. "Suit yourself. But know this as well: if the situations were reversed, I'd leave you if you threatened the mission. Remember that, Tremayne, in case that day ever comes."

Her terse admission startled him. He would give her his loyalty, but she would not give hers? Yet she'd risked her life for him. It made no sense, but Teague wisely decided not to delve further.

He smiled. "I'll remember, femina." He rose to his feet. "Now, go to sleep. You'll need all the rest you can get if you're soon to be back to your old vigor."

She glared up at him but said not another word. He checked her intravenous infusion one last time, then dimmed the light and walked over to his pallet on the floor. Lying down, Teague pillowed his head beneath his hands, pondering Raina's words and his strange response to her.

***

Thunder boomed overhead; rain pounded against the ship's metal shell. Teague jerked awake and lay in the dark, momentarily disoriented. Where was he? Back in his own bed in his cell in the Monastery of Exsul?

A thrashing and incoherent mumbling in the bunk above him wrenched him back to reality. Teague levered to one elbow and glanced toward Raina. She tossed and turned, consumed once more in the throes of a fever.

"Don't!" she cried. "Don't do it! I-I don't want you. Get away from me!"

For an instant, he imagined she was talking to him.

Gods, did she loathe him so deeply that it even permeated her dreams? Just because once he had inadvertently revealed his desire?

"Ah, gods," she breathed her hands lifting before her in a protective motion. "I don't want to life mate, Malam. Get away. Ah, get away from me!"

Teague froze. Malam? Did she speak of Malam Vorax? Surely not. It would be too much of a coincidence that both their lives had crossed paths with that depraved and evil,man's.

"No!" Raina screamed, arching from the bed. "Get off me. No! No! No!"

Teague shoved to his knees beside the bunk. "Raina? Femina?" He made a move to stroke back the hair from her sweat-drenched forehead, hesitated, then pulled away. She moaned and threw her head to and fro, but didn't open her eyes.

Wetting a cloth from the bowl of water he kept on the floor by her bed, Teague pressed it to her forehead. She was burning with fever. He jerked back. "Gods, Raina!"

He leaped to his feet, strode over to the light, and turned it up. Her intravenous line had run dry. It didn't matter; they were out of the special sterile fluid anyway. Teague quickly discontinued the line and gathered her up into his arms.

He hefted her close to him, clutching her sheet-swathed body against his bare chest. She was so hot. He must get her outside, into the rain, and cool her.

Triggering the door panel to open, Teague strode out into the corridor and through the cockpit. Raina began to writhe in his arms. Her hands crept up and around his neck, her nails clenching, scoring his flesh.

"Let me go," she whimpered. "Don't hurt me . . . please, don't hurt me . . ."

At her plaintive entreaty, memories flooded Teague, of a night etched in his soul, of the crude and perverted tortures Malam Vorax had ordered inflicted upon him. And now, to his utter dismay, he must relive it again, only this time through Raina's memories, memories so horribly vivid that they pierced even the roiling mists of her feverish mind.

The main hatch slid open at his command. A gust of chill, damp air surged in. Rain clattered on the attached tarp and ship, hard little needles of frigid moisture.

Teague inhaled a fortifying breath and stepped outside. A few long strides and he stood in the rain. The wind, free of any further encumbrances, whirled around him, battering him, soaking him to the skin in but a few seconds. The thin sheet wrapped about Raina became drenched, clinging to her, molding to her every curve. She began to shiver.

"Cold, so cold," she moaned. "Don't put me in that cold dark, horrible hole. Please, Malam. Please . . ."

A shudder coursed through Teague. That horrible hole ... the torture caverns of Ksathra. The memories her words stirred! He didn't know if he could bear much more.

He cradled her head to his breast and stroked her tangled red mane. "Hush, sweet femina," he soothed, frantically searching for the right words to put an end to her fever-induced nightmares. He groped for something, anything, to say, uttering the first declaration that entered his mind.

"It's over now and you're safe. I won't let anything happen to you."

"Don't leave me."

She stirred restlessly against him. A soft breast and chill-hardened nipple brushed his chest. Teague choked back an anguished groan. By the five moons, first she stirred his heart with her terrible revelation, and then she reawakened his body—again. He didn't know how much more he could take.

The rain poured from the sky. The wind howled. The night suddenly grew black as the depths of perdition. Standing there on the sodden desert sand, Teague closed his eyes and fervently, desperately, began to recite a series of soul-easing litanies. A cool head . . . a heart calm and gentle . . .

Please, please, help me. Help me to be what I must be . . . His fervid prayers gradually transformed to despairing pleas. Give me strength where I have none. Please . . . before it's too late.

Yet still the peace wouldn't come. The frustration, the hunger, the searing need remained. Desolation swamped him. After all these cycles, he didn't even have the support of his monastic beliefs. What had happened? And why? Gods, what would become of him now?

With an agonized groan, Teague sank to his knees on the saturated land. Water sloshed up around him; sand splattered his breeches. The wind, swirling about with frigid blasts, chilled him to the marrow of his bones. But it was the looming blackness, fetid and suffocating, that commanded his panic-stricken attention.

He couldn't catch his breath. He was dying. Dying. From his smothering, relentless, all-consuming fear.

It had defeated him at last.

"Gods," he whispered. "I can't take anymore. I just . . . can't take . . . any more."

"Hush," Raina's voice, weak but suddenly coherent, rose above the crazed tumult of the storm. "I'm here. You're safe. I won't let anything happen to you."

Teague's eyes snapped open. He glanced down. Raina gazed up at him, her striking green eyes clear and lucid once more.

Embarrassment, then shame flooded Teague. He hadn't meant for her to see him in his fear and defeat. Already, Raina held a frightening power over him. He didn't dare surrender any more. Not if he wished to remain the man he had been.

He swallowed hard, then forced a wan smile. "Your fever—it seems to have abated." Awkwardly, on legs still rubbery from the aftermath of his terror, Teague climbed to his feet. But stand he did, to prevail against the terror one time more. There was triumph enough in that.

She shifted slightly in his arms and nodded. "Yes, so it has." Water spattered her face, trickled into her eyes. Raina released her grip about Teague's neck and wiped her face. With the action, she inadvertently nudged her sheet down, exposing a breast. As one, their gazes lowered to the ivory-hued mound of flesh.

Teague's glance lifted to hers. This time, if only for a fleeting moment in the midst of a storm, there was no fear, no anger, no outrage in Raina's eyes. Calm acceptance and trust burned there instead.

She would regret it, rage at him again on the morrow in her old inimitable way, but it didn't matter. Something had changed irrevocably between them this night. The realization, frightening as it was, nearly sent him back to his knees.

He reached up and, with one hand, awkwardly flipped the sheet over to cover her. "It grows cold out here," Teague rasped thickly. "It's past time we went back inside."

"Yes," was her simple, heartfelt reply.