Shadow Hunters (20 page)

“No. I told them the story we agreed on. But they don’t trust me. Jake in particular doesn’t trust me after I was wiling to turn him over to Valerian. I warned you about that.”

The lambent eyes narrowed. “Go on.”

“I’l need a few days to persuade them. In the meantime, if you give me some of the Sundrop, you won’t need to risk discovery by meeting with me. I’l meet you here again in a few days. By then I’l—”

His shoulders trembled and she felt his laughter, dry and frightening, rush through her.

“Foolish little girl,” he said. “You think those barriers wil stop me, a trained templar?

It was a brave try, and better than I expected from someone who is not a protoss.

But it was in vain.”

She swalowed hard and clenched her fists. God, she wanted the stuff. And he knew it.

“If you betray us,” he said calmly, “you wil not have it again, and the lack of it wil kil you.”

“I’ve quit tougher drugs.”

“No, you have not. Your stims, as you cal them, are paltry things compared to the Sundrop.”

“If it’s so bad, why don’t you quit it yourself?” Rosemary chalenged franticaly.

“Why should we? It is a gift from the Xava’tor. The withdrawal, while painful, does not damage us. And the ecstasy is—wel. You know.” He closed his eyes and tilted his head in a manner that Rosemary was starting to understand conveyed a smile.

“What shal I do with you, Rosemary Dahl?” he mused. “I’ve no real wish to kil you, but our Xava’tor must be satisfied. I cannot return to him and say that I have failed him. So what do we do?”

“Give me another chance,” she said. She’d tried to lie. She’d tried to do the right thing and been caught out at it. What were Jacob Jefferson Ramsey and Zamara the preserver to her anyway, in the end? Al they had done was make her into someone on the run. She owed them nothing. Maybe this Benefactor could get her off Aiur. At the very least, Alzadar could give her enough Sundrop so that she wouldn’t give a rat’s ass at being stuck here for the rest of her life.

A spasm of pain shook her, and worse than the pain was the wanting of the pleasure.

“Yes,” said Alzadar, satisfied. She knew he’d read her thoughts. “There is stil time yet.” He opened a sack he had slung over his back and withdrew a smal pot.

Rosemary’s heart leaped, and as he removed the lid on the pot and the familiar scent wafted out, tears formed in her eyes.

He extended the jar to her. As she reached eagerly for it he drew back, laughing, teasing, cruel.

“Tel me again what you wil do.”

She hated him in that moment. Hated herself worse.

“I’l bring him, I promise.” The note of pleading in her voice disgusted her.

“Tel me how.”

She’d been fixated on the little pot of salve, but now her blue eyes flashed to his. The violence and loathing in her thoughts was powerful, but Alzadar seemed completely unperturbed. Her anger sputtered and subsided beneath that icy gaze.

“It wil be easy enough to get him alone. I wil bring him out here. You can take him then, and do whatever the hel it is your Xava’tor wants done to him and Zamara, I don’t care. Just take me back with you and give me access to the Sundrop.”

He nodded, satisfied. This time when he extended his hand, he didn’t take it back.

Rosemary snatched the little jar, scooped out a fingerful of the stuff, smeared it on her throat, and exhaled in relief.

They were waiting for her when she came back. She forced herself to appear calm.

“I miss a meeting?” she asked lightly, reaching for a waterskin and drinking thirstily.

She wondered if they could detect the sweet smel of the Sundrop. Alzadar assured her that the scent dissipated beyond protoss sensing after only a moment on the skin, but she wasn’t sure. If even one of them made the slightest effort to read her thoughts, they’d know it al.

“No,” Jake said. “Not realy. We were going to go do some scouting and some foraging, and you weren’t around. I … got worried.”

She smiled at him. “Don’t worry, I know better than to go too far. Just sometimes—

you want a little privacy. To think about things.”

Rosemary felt Ladranix’s searching gaze upon her. “What things?”

Rosemary shrugged. “You spend three days hiding from your enemies, you start thinking about things. Humans do, anyway. I don’t know about protoss.”

Ladranix nodded. “Yes … we do as wel. We have thought much.”

Rosemary let her gaze flit back to Jake long enough to meet his gaze, alowed it to linger, then looked away quickly. His eyes widened slightly and even in the dim light she could see that his cheeks darkened. It was almost too easy.

“Zamara had been reconsidering,” Jake said. “She originaly thought we’d get what we needed from the chambers and then see what she could do to open the warp gate. She’s considering reversing the order.”

What? They’d been that close to escaping? “I thought Zamara needed whatever was in the chambers in order to open the gate!”

Jake looked uncomfortable. “She wasn’t very clear on any of that, not even with me.

But we’ve got to defeat the Forged first, regardless, to get either goal achieved.” He smiled at her. “But thanks to you, we know what we’re getting into now.”

She forced a smile, forced herself to look relieved. “Yeah. Glad I and my unique talents could be of some help.”

“The Tal’darim would have been shielding themselves from detection,” Ladranix said.

“If, as I fear, they are prepared to be hostile toward us—we would have been slaughtered. Now, we wil not be caught off guard.”

She went on the scouting mission with them. She helped refil the water bottles and find food to supplement her and Jake’s rations. She looked serious when she was supposed to, smiled when it was expected of her, and al the while moved forward on her new plan.

When day came, she slept closer to Jake than usual. And when night came, before it had a chance to be filed with planning and recons and other things that would eventualy come to nothing, Rosemary stood next to Jake and said, quietly, “Walk with me?”

“Um … yeah, sure. Everything okay?” he asked as he fel into step with her.

Rosemary hesitated. “Mostly,” she said. “I … need to talk to you. Far enough away so the others can’t hear.” She wished she could blush at wil, but contented herself with quickly averting her gaze.

“They won’t read your thoughts,” he said, stil not quite understanding what was going on.

“They’l read yours,” she said, and gave him a quick grin. It faded almost as quickly and she repeated, “Please. I know there’s a ton of stuff we’re supposed to be doing, but …”

She let her voice trail off. She wasn’t looking at him but she was pretty sure he’d swalowed. Certainly he cleared his throat. “Let me tel Ladranix,” he said.

“Okay,” she agreed. No harm in that. By the time Ladranix and the others realized what was going on it would be too late for them to do anything about it. Jake would be captive or dead and she’d be luxuriating in the most exquisite high she’d ever known, one that would enable her to forget what she’d done. Jake hurried away, then returned, smiling.

“Lead on,” he said. They both were familiar with the surrounding area at this point, even out of the remains of the city, and once they’d double-checked for zerg he folowed her wilingly, completely clueless. He didn’t press her for conversation, and she imagined he was glad for the chance to be quiet as wel. At last, they were almost there. She slowed. The meeting place was not much farther, only half a kilometer or so away. She wanted Jake completely unaware, so she came to a stop.

They stood there for a moment, the moon dim upon them. Now, she thought.
Say the
words, do what you need to do, and lure him in with a promise.

“Jake?” She turned her face up to his and stepped closer to him. Now and then she wished she were taler, given her line of work, but her diminutive height always, always worked to her advantage when she had to play helpless.

Jake stepped back, every line of his body relaying his uncertainty. “Rosemary—

what’s going on? What’s wrong? Why did you need to take me so far from the camp to talk to me?”

She laughed, and this time she didn’t have to feign its shakiness. The mild discomfort was starting to turn into pain. “I—wel, what I have to tel you—protoss may like to share everything in the Khala, but this is just for you and me.”

“Of course,” he said. He reached as if to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, then stopped himself. Rosemary folowed his hand with her gaze, then took it in hers. She curled her fingers around his, entwined them. He didn’t protest, but he was obviously utterly confused.

“Rosemary?”

“I hated that name,” she said, and that was the truth. “That’s why I went by R. M.”

He grinned, relaxing slightly. “When I first read your mind and learned it, the only thing I could think of was how incongruous a name it was for—wel, a traitor and an assassin.”

That was not the line of thought she wanted from him now, and she squeezed his hand. “Yeah. But Jake—you know I’m not that person anymore. Wel, not entirely; you can’t change who you are overnight. But … so much has happened. It seems like a lifetime ago that I was that woman.”

Again, the truth. The woman who’d gone by the moniker R. M. was someone who was in control. She’d kicked her addiction and knew her role and her place in the universe. The woman standing in front of Jake Ramsey, her hand in his, her gut clenching and her body shivering with addictive need, was not that creature.

“I know what you mean. So much
has
happened, hasn’t it? But it’s al right. I … I got to know you. When we were in the Khala—I touched you.” His voice was soft.

Perfect. “You’re touching me now.”

He nodded, looking very boyish and uncertain in the moonlight. A few more lines and he’d be hers. He’d—

—be kiled. Or tortured. They wanted Zamara, and they would have to go through Jake to get her. Unbidden, unwanted, Rosemary too thought of the moment when she had been so intimately joined with so many, when al that had been her had been seen and touched and known.

He lifted his other hand and brushed the bangs from her forehead. “I won’t say that I misjudged you, because we both know I didn’t. But—I sure as hel didn’t know everything.”

Something snapped inside her.

“I can’t do this.”

He blinked. “What?”

“I can’t do it. I can’t. Not to you, not now. Damn it, let’s go, just—”

She dropped his hand, whirled, and fled back the way they had come. A second later, he was folowing, grabbing her arm. “Rosemary, what is it, what—”

“Let go of me! We have to get back!”

With practiced ease she shook him off and kept running, as if some part of her truly believed that she could run away from her choices, her need, the siren song of the Sundrop as the pain intensified.

He grabbed at her again, confused and worried and angry because of it. “Damn it, what’s going on?”

She whirled and struck out at him. It was testimony to how badly the withdrawal was crippling her that the blow went wild.

“Don’t you understand?
I was going to give you to them!”

“You—”

She’d seen that look on the face of those she’d betrayed dozens of times, and never before had it rattled her. Seeing it on Jake’s face—again—suddenly devastated her.

“They caught me,” she said, and to her shame her voice was raw with pain. “They got me addicted to this stuff they smeared on my body—” Her hands went to her arms and clasped them hard, fighting to control the shivering. “They want Zamara. They said they’d give me more stuff if I—but I couldn’t do it to you. I couldn’t. I—”

Jake’s arms went around her, and his embrace shocked her, made her go stiff. In some part of her mind that wasn’t screaming in agony, she noted that his arms were surprisingly strong and sure. “Let me in, please,” he whispered in her ear.

She nodded, dumbly.

Help me, Jake—I don’t want to be this anymore.

I’ll help you, Rosemary. I promise. You don’t have to do this alone.

She felt him—them—racing through her thoughts, laying bare al her plotting, her pain, her shame, every unkind thought, every selfish whim, every moment when she lay vulnerable and exposed before the Tal’darim and their damned Sundrop and the awed mental whispers about their Benefactor. Her knees buckled as a fresh wave of pain hit her.

Her eyes roled back in her head. He caught her as she fel. Dimly she felt herself being swept up in his arms, her head being cradled against his shoulder, and then merciful blackness descended.

IN HIS PRIVATE QUARTERS—A LUXURY ON THE battlecruiser—Devon Starke closed his eyes and cleared his mind. It was both easier and harder now than it had been during his days as a ghost, but he would have it no other way. Valerian Mengsk had saved him, and if he had merely traded one form of servitude for another, Devon was fuly aware that in this version, he served as himself.

It had taken Valerian time—perhaps, the young emperor-to-be had feared, too much time—to assemble even this skeleton fleet that now traveled as fast as possible toward Aiur and archeologist Jacob Ramsey. The “fleet” consisted of a single battlecruiser, six Valkyries, and eight Wraiths. Their cargo was made up of marines, siege tanks, and dropships. Al this effort to capture one human male. Wel, that wasn’t quite true. Starke was uncertain if Ramsey could be caled “human” anymore.

Starke opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. Again and again, his thoughts drifted back to that remarkable moment in time where his mind—no, more than his mind; his essence, his … soul?—had connected so profoundly with so many others.

What the
hell
had Ramsey done?