Stargate SG-1: Sacrifice Moon (13 page)

Before the end, they all scream.

He looks up, gasping, and sees the silver-white gleam of the temple, itsflowing columns, its motionlessfigures standing and watching.
So far... too far... he cannot run. Not now

The hunters are coursing fast behind him. They make no sound,
and that is worse, somehow, than if they bayed like hounds for his
blood. He risks a glimpse over his shoulder and sees that they are
drawing closer, black shadows flickering white as they pass into the
open, the moonstones black at their throats like death-clouded eyes.
He has retained a weapon, stolen from an old man who was too weak
to survive anyway, but he knows that if he turns to face them he will
die, and fear drives him on, always on.

He rounds a blind corner, and she is there.

His goddess. Silver white mistress, tall and ethereal, crowned with
night and stars. She is majesty and beauty and the stark face of his
ending, and he collapses to his knees, staring, spreading his hands in
worship. The knife falls free, lost.

Artemis walks toward him, her white clouds of robes drifting in the cold wind, and the alabaster of her skin is like that of the dead,
drained of life and blood, but still beautiful, so beautiful.

She puts her cold fingers under his chin and tilts his head up, and
he is ashamed to soil her perfection with his sweat, his trembling, his
mortality.

She smiles.

"I accept your sacrifice, " she says, and there is silver music in her
voice, nothing human in it, nothing mortal. "You who once served
one dear to me. "

Her eyes flash white, pure white with black centers, and then the
pack of hunters is on him, and no amount of worship or prayer can
save him.

Everyone screams, in the end. His is drawn from him as a blade
is driven deep into the vulnerable center of him, and his symbiote is
cut and slashed and dismembered. They hold its mutilated, twitching body before him, laughing silently behind their jackal smiles, and
their eyes are black and wide and avid.

Then they begin to take him apart, alive.

His last vision is of the goddess of the hunt, smiling, drinking his
dying like smooth dark wine.

"Teal'c!"

Jack bolted upright, aware he'd said it out loud but not aware of
much else, initially; his heart was thudding as if he'd run a marathon,
flat out, and under the thick BDU fabric his whole body was dripping
with sweat.

The dream was fading, but the images, the sickening sense of
inevitability...

He turned his head and saw Teal'c moving toward him. The big
Jaffa crouched next to him, frowning.

"All is well, O'Neill," he said. "There is no cause for alarm." Even
so, he looked spooked. Distressed.

"Yeah. Yeah, okay." Jack took off his hat and rubbed his hands
over close-cropped hair, then ran his sleeve over his face to wipe off
the worst of the sweat. Felt like he was choking, tried to pull at the
neck of his shirt and bumped fingers into cold metal.

The collar hadn't been a dream. He tugged at it, but it was as firmly fastened as ever.

Teal'c was still watching him with concern.

"Just a nightmare. Sorry. Shit. You didn't dream, did you?"

"Jaffa do not dream."

"Right." Jack looked at him for a second, but Teal'c's eyes were
unreadable. "So you didn't see yourself out there, running in the
moonlight."

Teal'c changed the subject. "There has been no movement. The
dawn is coming soon."

"Good." The word tasted like ashes in his mouth. He tried to
remember the dream but it slid away, fish in the night river. He
remembered running, and moonlight, and dying. Not much else.
Screw it. Just a dream. No shock that a place like this would bring
up nightmares, considering their nearest neighbors seemed to be dismembered corpses.

Jack tugged his cap back on, seated it carefully with one hand at
the back, and gestured for Teal'c to help him up. His ankle had taken
the opportunity to swell until his whole foot was numb; that was both
a blessing, from a pain point of view, and a curse, from the point
of trying not to fall on his ass. He hobbled around experimentally,
bracing himself against the wall, until he felt some of the numbness
subside and a deep-seated hot ache return.

Ah. Better.

Carter was sacked out in the far comer, huddled up in a small ball
but still clutching her MPS. Daniel was on the floor, on his side, facing the wavering glow of the brazier. He hadn't taken off his glasses.
They were knocked cockeyed on his face.

"All quiet?" Jack asked Teal'c, who'd gone back to his post by the
door. The Jaffa nodded. "You didn't sleep at all?"

"No."

"I'm up now. You take a rest period." When Teal'c didn't move,
Jack limped over and nudged him. "Hey. That's an order."

Teal'c nodded, rose from his crouch like some perfectly balanced
machine, and moved to the spot Jack had abandoned against the wall.
He sat down in a lotus position, put his palms upward on his knees,
and closed his eyes.

"I kinda meant sleep," Jack said, but there was no point in push ing the issue. He negotiated his way to a sitting position - too old for
crouching, definitely, not to mention the ankle - and laid the weight
of his MP5 across his lap. The world outside was dark and quiet. No
movement. No moonlight. He was glad of that, even though it would
have made things easier to see.

On the other side of the room, Captain Carter made a soft whimpering sound. He glanced over at her, but she shifted position, moving dream-slow, and subsided. A few minutes later, it was Daniel's
turn... not so much a whimper as a cry, half-formed. His whole body
twitched. Not like Daniel had any shortage of bad dream material to
work with, Jack thought. Nowhere near as much as Jack had himself,
of course; years of black ops and POW stints were the proverbial
winning hand in that area. Well, maybe Teal'c could beat him. No
question that Teal'c must have seen and suffered a lot under Apophis;
no question that he'd performed atrocities, even if he hadn't been
through them himself. Jack wasn't so sure that it was any easier from
the side of the aggressor. A lot of his late-night regrets had to do with
pulling triggers, rather than getting shot.

He wondered if Teal'c would ever talk about that, and thought he
probably wouldn't. The Jaffa didn't seem to be big with the sharing.

Carter whimpered again, then made a louder sound, kind of an
eager moan. Jack glanced over at her again and saw that her head was
back, light falling over her face, and she was smiling.

At least one of them was having a good dream.

Running. Always running.

She vaults soundlessly over a fallen stone column, lands with
perfect balance and continues the chase. She can hear the panicked
heartbeat of her prey, loud as thunder in her ears. He is clumsy, and
she is elegantly quick. Her skin flashes white in the moonlight as she
moves from shadow into the open.

She sees another hunter break cover to run with her hunting in
concert. His grace and strength match her own, and they run, run,
pacing and panting, following the prey that clumsily dodges ahead,
looking for shelter.

There is no shelter; no mercy, nothing but the inevitability of moonlight. She laughs soundlessly, full offierce and aching joy, red red joy, and feels the echo of itfrom the one who runs with her. His hair is lank
and sweated to his face in darkpoints, and he has lost the trappings of
who he once was, but she knows him - knew him - as someone else.

His eyes are all blackpupil, blown open with fierce desire, and she
feels the same rising tide of need and frantic hunger

They run, chasing the prey.

Just as the prey turns to fight them, just before she tastes blood, she
sees that the prey wears Jack O'Neill r face and has a clear moment
of sanity that shakes her to the core, and she thinks No this can't be
happening no I have to stop now but then it is gone, and there is only
red, and joy, and the screaming.

Something outside.

Jack came instantly on alert but didn't make an outward move or
sound; whatever it was, it was moving slowly, with a faint, rhythmic
scrape. It stayed in the deepest shadows, next to the still-intact far
wall, and it wasn't until he used his peripheral vision that he spotted
what was making the noise.

Human. Crawling.

"Teal'c," Jack said. The Jaffa's eyes snapped open, and he practically levitated up to join Jack at the door. Jack jerked his chin in the
direction of the sound. "Cover me."

"You are injured, O'Neill."

Before Jack could tell him to stick it, Teal'c was out the door and
moving fluidly across the open ground, staff weapon held ready to
fire. Jack got the MP5 to his shoulder and waited tensely, well aware
that accurate fire under these conditions was going to be just about
impossible, then breathed out a sigh of relief when Teal'c put his staff
back to safe position and crouched down in the shadows.

"T?" Jack keyed the radio in his vest and kept his eyes on the Jaffa
as he did.

"It is a man," Teal'c said. "I will bring him inside."

"Wait... is he sick?"

"No, O'Neill. He is injured."

"Okay. Go."

Jack shuffled back from the door as Teal'c ducked inside, carrying
a limp body as easily as if it was a blanket. Daniel sat up, glasses still askew. Carter went from peaceful sleep to an instantly alert position,
fluid and graceful; her MP5 swung into firing position.

"Easy," Jack barked. "Stand down, Captain."

Her eyes cleared, and she let the weapon drop back out of line.
"Sorry, sir. What's happening?"

"We're about to find out." Jack flicked on his penlight; the harsh
white light made them all wince, first because of the glare, second
because of the red glaze of blood that glittered on the body Teal'c laid
down next to the camp stove.

The stranger didn't look familiar. Jack looked at Daniel silently,
but the other man shook his head; not one of Alsiros's party, then. If
the numbers held true from one tribute party to the next, there would
be at least thirty running around they hadn't yet met.

Carter moved forward, MP5 slung over her shoulder, and folded
back the black draperies of the man's outer robe. Under it, he was
wearing a pale yellow tunic, ripped and soaked with blood. Jack felt
his face tighten, and some fragment of a nightmare came back to
him.

Running, always running. He looked suddenly at the man's feet.
His sandals were gone, and his feet were battered and bloody, scraped
raw.

"Carter?" he asked. She shook her blonde head silently and used
her knife to slice open the tunic to the man's waist, folded it back to
reveal a bloody mess. She pushed on his shoulder to roll him up on
his side and then eased him back down.

"He's going, sir. There are stab wounds all over him, including his
back. He's just about bled out."

The victim opened his eyes at the sound of her voice, saw the knife
in her hand, and panicked. He reached out and grabbed Carter's wrist
in both hands, trying to hold the knife away from him. She tried to
jerk back, but he had the strength of terror. Blood oozed from the corner of his milk-pale mouth, and panic shone silver in his eyes.

"Carter!" Jack said sharply. "Drop it."

She looked up at him, and for a bare instant he thought he saw a
flash of something strange in her eyes, but then she let go, and the
knife bounced away on the stone floor. Daniel wrangled it, holding it
at his side, watching.

The victim didn't relax. He was a middle-aged man, gray in his
curling hair; in normal life he might have looked plump and happy,
but this wasn't anything like normal life. Or a normal death.

"Who did this to you?" Jack asked him, and reached down to raise
his head and shoulders. The man was drowning in his own blood.
"Can you hear me? Who did this?"

The lips moved, and he whispered, "Wolves... Dark... Company..." He choked on another arterial-bright gush of blood. Carter
was right, the man was done for. Jack held him up anyway, took his
hand and held tight as the man gripped hard, searching Jack's face
frantically for something. Rescue, probably. Safety.

Those eyes focused somewhere below Jack's chin, on the cold
weight of metal around his neck. The man let go of Jack's hand to
reach up and brush fingertips across the stone on the collar, then
looked over at Carter, crouched across on the other side. He pointed
at her collar with trembling insistence.

For a second, Jack couldn't see why, and then it clicked.

The dying man's collar stone was pure milky-white, like the moon.
Carter's had a flaw in it of some kind, a streak of black on the right
side occluding part of the disc.

The man lying between them rattled in one last breath, or tried to,
and his body went into death spasms. Jack held his hand tightly until
it went limp, then folded it carefully over the bloody chest. On the
other side, Carter did the same.

"Jack?" Daniel cleared his throat. "What should we do... "

"Best we can do is leave him here and move out," Jack said.
"Carter? Use an extra blanket, wrap him up and tie it off. Everybody,
watch your backs."

She nodded and turned away to pull one of their thin thermal insulation blankets out of the field pack. Daniel, without being asked,
helped her spread it out on the floor and rolled the body onto it, then
took over the task of tying it into a makeshift mummy wrapping. He'd
probably had practice, back on Abydos, Jack thought. He seemed to
take it as a solemn duty, fastening the knots carefully and smoothing
them in place.

"O'Neill," Teal'c said quietly. He was standing in the doorway;
Jack hadn't even seen him leave, but here he was, back again. "I have followed the trail of his blood. He crawled for several streets.
I believe he was attacked earlier in the night. Captain Carter and I
heard a scream."