Sword and Shadow (24 page)

She noticed that he’d hung back. She made a quick headcount. Five of them, plus the sergeant. She might actually be in danger of breaking a sweat. “Stay behind me,” she murmured over her shoulder at the waif.

She lunged forward, blindingly fast, and speared the lead watchman through the thigh. He went down screaming, his blade ringing against the stones underfoot. A second executed a high strike, which she didn’t even bother to parry. She slipped under it and straight-armed him in the face with the palm of her hand. The impact lifted him off his feet and threw him into another’s arms. As they struggled to separate themselves, she skipped forward, parried an awkward blow from the fourth, and swiftly riposted. He gave a cry and staggered backward, blood pouring from the rent in his forehead and effectively blind.

By this time the other two had disengaged and joined the last remaining watchman besides the sergeant in an attempt to circle her.

She couldn’t let them do it—once they did, they’d have the kid, and use him as leverage against her.

She snapped out her hand, activating the rune on the ring on her left hand. A bolt of lightning stabbed from her extended fingers, blasting the one she’d already struck into the wall behind him. He sank slowly, oblivious, as she met the last two’s coordinated attack.

They were good. But she was better. She slapped one’s sword aside, fouling his companion’s strike, and fired a swift front snap kick into his crotch. She followed it up with a quick round-house to the jaw as he folded.

This had the intended result of throwing him to the ground in front of his companion. As he jumped back to avoid tripping over him, she lunged forward, using the supine watchman’s back as a springboard.

She vaulted up and over, performing a mid-air somersault and landing directly between him and the sergeant.

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feet by the impact and he lay several feet away, gasping like a fish thrown ashore.

She finished off the ham-strung watchman with a sharp rap to the side of his head with the pommel of her sword. “C’mon, kid,” she said to the urchin. “This is a very unhealthy place to be right now.”

She took his hand and cast a transit tube to nowhere in particular.

She just wanted to get out of this alley. Something told her things were finally coming to a head and the city itself might well be a very unhealthy place to be for at least the next few days. If not longer.

But she owed Raven at least an attempt at rescue. Damn him. If he had’ve had the sense to go after Val rather than trying to find out what was going on, they’d all be out of harm’s way right now. But no, he had to be the goddamn hero.

Sometimes even heroes fall.
She knew that for a fact. More than a few had fallen to her. She wasn’t proud of it. It was just a fact.
Hero
was often just another word for
fool
.

As if sensing Val’s need, the horse ran harder, its breaths coming in huge gusts as it drove itself forward. She could hear shouts and the sounds of pursuit in the distance, drawing closer as the beast began to tire. She leaned close to its ear and whispered, as if it could understand.

“You must run,” she told it. “I’m sorry, but you’re my only hope.”

A shriek jerked her head around and she saw a dark shape leap from the bluff lining the road and a rider go down in a heap on the road.

Another flew through the air and a second rider fell. The third and fourth pursuer reined in their mounts, drawing swords and approaching the figures warily.

Then, like a pale streak amidst a flow of black garments, another figure launched itself from the bluff and carried the third rider to the ground. An arm rose and fell once and the rider did not move again.

Raven?

But somehow she knew it wasn’t him. The movements weren’t as smooth as she remembered—there was a certain grace that was missing.

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Despite this, it only took another couple of seconds before the last rider lay on the dusty road.

Out of the shadows lining the road, a couple figures coalesced, grabbing the horse’s reins before it could rear in panic. She looked down and felt a surge of relief as she recognized Bridget and another of her pack.

“It is good to see you, Valerie,” the pack mistress said, giving her a doggy grin. “We were afraid you were dead.”

“If they’d have caught me, I most likely would have been,” Val replied.

“Is there a stream around? I’m sure this horse could use a drink.”

“I will tend to him,” said the other hybrid, taking the reins from Bridget.

Once she’d actually dismounted, it was pretty obvious that the horse was a gelding by the way he was wetting the earth beneath him. She patted his hindquarters as he was led away. “That’s okay, buddy. The whole thing damn near scared the piss out of me, too.”

She turned to Bridget. “Where’s Raven?”

“He sent us ahead,” the wolf replied. “The city was receiving cannon fire from an unknown ship and he stayed to deal with that, but he sent the rest of us to rescue you. It seems you were in little need, though.”

“The only way I was able to escape was because Goban decided to move me for some reason. His lackeys weren’t nearly as careful with me as he’d probably intended. All the better for me.”

She felt slightly piqued that Raven hadn’t come to the rescue himself, and then chided herself for being a fool. He’d done exactly what she would have in the same circumstances. She was actually somewhat surprised by it—maybe he had more of a sense of duty than she’d realized. It was the right choice for an agent to make.

She frowned. “He didn’t stay alone, did he?”

“Morrigan stayed with him.”

That
didn’t please Val much. She didn’t trust Morrigan in general, but she wondered if something was going on between them after all.

Despite Raven’s original denials, she couldn’t help feeling a little suspicious. Had Morrigan had some influence on his choice not to come?

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“I wouldn’t worry about that,” came Bryon’s voice—or what sounded a bit like Bryon’s voice—from behind her. She jumped and turned on him, giving him her best glare.

He stood there, pale eyes regarding her calmly, seemingly unaffected by her pointed gaze. It only took a second to realize that he was undead.

When Goban had thrown him overboard she’d given him up for dead, and, in truth, he probably would have died. But Raven hadn’t abandoned him to that fate. Even though he’d failed to protect her, just making the attempt had been enough for him.

“You’re psychic,” she said, through narrowed eyes. “More than Raven, anyway.”

“Your average tree stump is more psychic than Raven,” Bryon returned. “You look terrible.”

“Just what a lady likes to hear.”

There was a time when Bryon would’ve blushed at that statement, but now it seemed he was beyond such responses. Or maybe vampires didn’t blush. He did possess a self-assuredness she didn’t remember from the last time she’d seen him. Where once she’d seen a boy in a young man’s body, now she just saw a man.

He chuckled wryly. “It’s good we thought to bring you extra clothes.

We figured you might need them.”

Smart too. “How are things in the city—other than the ship blowing holes in it, that is?”

“Rough. Raven’s been scouring the place searching for you, and finally got a break just tonight. The ship came in with the evening tide and opened fire just as we were heading for a meeting with the mayor in a last-ditch effort to get him to sign on with the revolt.

“Everything happened at once,” he said. “Raven made a spur of the moment decision, and it seems to me it was the right one.”

“Me, too,” she answered thoughtfully. “And you say there’s nothing between him and Morrigan?”

Bryon shrugged. “They’ve learned a lot of respect for one another, but if you’re suggesting she’s managed to entice him into her bed, you’re wrong. He’s never seemed interested to me.”

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“How about you?” Val asked, and was rewarded with a sudden shift of his gaze.

“That’s not fair,” he said. “I’m still pretty new at shielding. No fair reading my mind.”

“I’m not. It’s not one of my strong suits,” she said. “We’d better get moving before Goban shows up. He’s not going to be as easily surprised as his lackeys were.”

Bryon nodded and gave a low whistle. As if by magic, this patch of road was suddenly overrun with cat and wolf hybrids. He gave the panthers instructions to cover the back trail, watch for any more pursuers, and suggested the wolves scout ahead in case there was any chance of ambush. He wasn’t taking any chances.

The kid
had
learned a few things while she’d been gone.

Good for him.

The idea of him being infatuated with Morrigan gave her a momentary chuckle, however. She kept it silent, but his sidelong glare made it clear that he sensed not only her amusement, but the reason for it.

“Let’s get moving,” he said aloud as the pack member returned with her horse. “I’ll bet Raven can’t
wait
to see you again.”

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Chapter Twenty-eight

It actually didn’t take long for Morrigan to find where the urchin called home—namely, an abandoned section of the city sewers that had been routed out and forgotten for the past several years. The orphans who lived down their supported themselves by begging and petty theft, and had created quite the little enterprise, in her estimation.

She didn’t stick around to chat. She told him to make sure he and his friends stayed out of sight and jumped back to the docks so she could keep an eye on the ship. She’d harbored a fear that they’d have set sail again, but was glad to find the thing still sitting there in the bay, spewing its black fog in enough volume to obscure everything but the top of its masts.

At least she knew Raven was safe, for the moment. If the doppelganger wanted something in particular from him, he wouldn’t try to kill him. But she had to wonder how in the hell they’d managed to capture a vamp, and
that
vamp in particular. She’d have guessed it would have been a lot like trying to bottle a ghost.

He’d be particularly vulnerable once dawn came. By her reckoning it was about two in the morning. A little more than four hours to go. Had she been the type, she’d have prayed that Bryon and the hybrids returned with Val before things grew any worse.

Unfortunately, they’d be slowed by the fact that there wasn’t a mage among them. Bryon had the capability, but he’d just begun to explore the limits of his vampiric powers—adding magic on top of that would’ve been grossly unfair.

She wasn’t yet sure of the hybrids, though it was rumored that the Cen deliberately excised mage talent from their breeding lines. Suffice to 218

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say it would take a while for them to get back, and in the meantime the best she could do was keep a watch on the ship and hope nothing changed in the next couple of hours.

Just as this thought struck, she found herself switching to magesight without consciously making the decision. The ship was caught in the center of a slowly rotating web of silver light and what looked like a shimmering curtain had fallen around it.

Her fists clenched at her sides and she cursed aloud as she took a unintentional step forward, nearly striding off the end of the pier before catching herself.

The sight of it turned her belly to ice. They were ’gating the whole damned ship. Impressive magic indeed.

She clawed a spell out of her web, blood humming with the sensation of building power as it crawled across her fingers and extended tendrils halfway up her arm. It was one of her most powerful, a fifteen-strand sigil she’d built for just this sort of situation.

She didn’t know if it would work the way she’d intended when she’d put it together, but she sure as hell hoped it did. Otherwise Raven could be lost forever. And she wouldn’t wish that fate on an enemy, much less someone she’d come to think of as a friend. She didn’t have enough to be able to afford to squander one.

As the ship began to fade like some immense Cheshire Cat, she sent the spell flashing across the bay into the contracting wheel of light formed as it collapsed. The spell expanded in short bursts, thrusting its own rotating arms up into the collapsing disk of silver fire, which flared and flickered as spell met spell and reached an impasse.

It worked! Morrigan’s spell held the portal open. But the question remained—for how long?

She hoped it would be long enough.

Val nearly fell off the horse as they broke through the tree-line and approached the city. She was exhausted, and the scraps of food proffered by the wolves had done little to assuage her deep hunger. They’d been www.samhainpublishing.com 219

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reluctant to give her more, figuring it would most likely make her sick if she ate too much.

They were right, but it wasn’t easy to convince her stomach of that fact. It wanted more. Bryon appeared by her side, grasping her mount’s reins. “We’ll wait here. The cats will reconnoiter.”

She nodded, and sagged in the saddle. They’d paused long enough before setting out to adjust the stirrups to fit her, but it had been long enough since she’d ridden that, in her weakened state, her muscles were already tensing up, promising even greater soreness and stiffness to come.

“They’ll scout out the city and find out if it’s safe enough to return, then they’ll split, sending half of the squad out to lead us in and the other half in search of Morrigan and Raven. Bridget and the wolves will remain with us.”

She didn’t have the energy to speak. She simply nodded once more.

He smiled up at her and turned to scan the city walls.

“I can’t believe you’re such a sentimental fool,” Deryk Shea’s doppelganger said to Raven, as they stood together on the deck. The ’gate energy had dissipated from the ship but, amazingly enough, he could still see the glowing doorway standing several yards off the stern as the ship sailed through dark waters toward a chillingly familiar looking port.

“It’s only a dog, for Christ’s sake.”

He motioned toward Cerberus, who sat several feet away, ears back and head hanging low, seemingly unconcerned about the weapons trained on him by several of Shea’s soldiers. “This is why your kind will
always
fail, and will never have the strength to truly defeat the Cen.”

Raven didn’t reply, instead forcing a rapport between himself and the reluctant dog.
When I give you the signal, I want you to run,
he told the animal silently.
Dive overboard and swim for shore. As long as they’re still
threatening you, I can’t risk trying to free myself.

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“It’s only a fucking dog,” the doppelganger snarled, obviously irritated because the vampire seemed to be ignoring him. “Kill it,” he told his soldiers.

Now!

As if it been rehearsed ahead of time, Raven and the dog moved in unison. Cerberus pivoted on his haunches, snatching one of the soldiers’

wrists with his teeth and pushing sideways and upward. A row of bullets stitched their way up the torso of a second soldier, who fell back, his own weapon clattering to the deck. Cerberus dashed for the railing, the weight of his massive body sending a third soldier stumbling in a completely different direction.

Raven slammed his fist into the side of Shea’s neck, temporarily stunning the immortal. He followed up with a kick to the back of his knee and a leaping snap-kick to the bridge of his nose. Shea’s head snapped back and blood flew.

Had he been a mortal, the blow would have killed him. It would’ve stunned any ordinary immortal. But it did little more than annoy the impervious Shea. He grunted, reaching out and grabbing Raven’s outstretched foot while the vampire was still airborne. Rather than trying to release it and retaliating with a blow of his own, the doppelganger simply spun and twisted, swinging Raven into the forward mast.

He followed that with three smashing blows of his fists and Raven toppled to the deck, not unconscious, but certainly dazed. He’d not expected the immortal’s speed, strength, and ferocity. A couple more blows were enough to send him into the vampiric equivalent of unconsciousness, and a wave of blackness overtook him even as he struggled to defend himself from Shea’s fists.

The last thing he heard was the roar of the doppelganger, cursing his men for allowing the dog to escape.

“We’re running out of time,” Morrigan told Tuck, when the tiger and his squad found her on the pier.

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He shrugged. “Not so much,” he told her, then explained that Val had freed herself before they’d arrived. “They’re waiting just inside the forest to the west of the city.”

She nodded. “I’ll take care of them. I want you to collect Claw and the rest of the weasels from the hideout,” she told him. “We’re going to need everyone for this expedition. Hurry. We don’t have a lot of time before daylight.”

He didn’t question her orders. He simply motioned for his squad to follow and vanished into the darkness of the battered city.

Once they’d gone, she wove a quick transit tube from a couple of mana threads and made the jump to where Bryon and Val waited. The vampire gazed at her suspiciously as she stepped out of the empty air, but, then again, he was positively radiating tension. Unusual in a vampire, but he
was
a young one, after all. “It’s good to see you,” she told Val, who smiled wearily. “But I’ve got some bad news.”

“What? Is Raven all right?”

“As far as I know. But he’s been captured by a doppelganger of Deryk Shea. That’s who was on that ship,” she added for Bryon’s benefit.

“Apparently they want someone killed and figure he’s their best possible assassin.”

“Well, then, let’s go get him,” Val said.

Morrigan shook her head. “I
wish
it were that easy. They took him through a worldgate. I’ve managed to hold it open so we can follow, but it’s not going to be a walk in the park. You’ve only got a couple of hours before you’re going to be useless…” She jabbed a finger at the vampire.

“…and you look like you’re about to fall off that horse, Val. Dammit. I really needed you two at your best for this.”

“We’ll manage,” Bryon told her. “I doubt we’ll be able to jump in and rescue Raven immediately. We might have to dig in and stay undercover like we’ve been here. That’ll give her a little time to rest up.”

Morrigan wanted to argue, but he was right. They didn’t have time to debate about it anyway. “Tuck’s getting Claw and the weasel-folk. Where are the other cats and wolves?”

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“Right here,” said Bridget, stepping out of the shadows. “We’ve been doing a quick recon around the area to make sure there weren’t any unfriendlies in range.”

“Good idea in general. Now it doesn’t matter. We’re leaving.” She wove another two-thread transit tube and took them all to the docks.

Bryon ogled at the shimmering ’gate hovering in the midst of the bay.

“Is that—“

“That’s the worldgate,” she answered before he could finish. “And, yes, we’re going to go through it. If we do, I can’t say how long it’ll be before I can bring you home—“

“As if that matters,” he muttered. “We need to save Raven. That’s more important than anything else right now. I owe him.”

“Okay. Just wanted to make sure we were on the same page. Once Tuck and the rest of them get here, we’re going to steal a couple of boats and head for that ’gate. I’m warning you though, Bryon, this world is very unlikely to be anything like yours. Don’t freak out if things are strange.”

“I’m not going to ‘freak out,’” he replied, a little irritably.

With an instant leap into a high tech world ahead of him, Morrigan wasn’t sure he’d handle it as well as
he
thought he would. But they’d all do what they had to.

She frowned at Val, who was currently being supported by Bridget.

The wolf looked concerned, and Morrigan couldn’t blame her. Val was clearly on her last legs. She needed rest, and food, and both in abundance.

Another forty or so figures melted out of the darkness and she breathed a silent sigh of relief. The others had arrived. “C’mon,” she said.

“Let’s get some boats.”

The passage through the worldgate was fairly unremarkable, and Morrigan was surprised to find no one waiting on the other side. She’d expected they’d have to fight their way to shore, and the lack of any sort of blockade didn’t sit right with her at all. Not that she
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with Val nearly unconscious and less than an hour to get Bryon to some sort of shelter.

She left the spell to dissipate on its own, which it should in a matter of hours. If she collapsed it now, it would just signal to Shea and his cronies that something had changed. She wanted them kept in the dark as long as possible.

They docked the boats at a convenient marina and disembarked.

Once everyone was on the pier, she scuttled both boats. No one said anything about it. That was good. It meant that everyone understood without her telling them that they didn’t want
anyone
to realize they were here.

She knew this city. Or, at least, one very much like it. It looked a lot like Tacoma in the early twenty-second century back on
her
Earth—the one the immortals referred to as Earth Prime. This world was a little behind technology-wise, which wasn’t too much of a shock. This Deryk Shea wasn’t as likely to encourage innovation except when it came to weapons and the like. And, from what she’d heard, he pretty much ran the place, the self-proclaimed Emperor of Earth.

She didn’t want to consider the things he would’ve had to do to pull
that
off. It was already pretty obvious that the population here was considerably smaller than that of Earth Prime, even before the Cen War.

She spent a moment idly wondering why, but cut off the thought before it fully formed in her head. Interesting as it might be, it was a waste of time to contemplate. Their first mission had to be to find someplace to hole up for the day.

Thankfully, it didn’t take long. There was a row of abandoned warehouses less than a mile from the marina, and they found a nice office space with all the comforts of home. A little dusty from disuse, perhaps, but that would be easy enough to fix.

As dawn arrived, Bryon was safely tucked away in a windowless office. Morrigan quickly inspected Val and, satisfied that she wasn’t in any immediate danger, put her to bed on a musty sofa in a lounge area.

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was alone except for Tuck and Bridget. Until Val and Bryon awoke, they’d act as her lieutenants. Or so they’d decided. Fact was, she had nothing planned until nightfall, and she was certain they’d need some rest too. Once she’d gotten this through their thick heads, she sent them off—Tuck into the warehouse with the rest of his people and Bridget into yet another small office—and had collapsed into a mouse-eaten leather chair and threw her feet up on a expansive maple desk in the largest of the available offices.