WarriorsApprentice (15 page)

She put her hands over Huon’s where they gripped her
shoulders and squeezed. “What’s going on, Huon?”

Huon improvised and decided to go with a half truth. “You
know Ty had an accident. It was a little worse than he told you. He was holding
a glass of water when he fell and he cut himself quite badly. He bled a lot.
He’s still a bit weak, and I…I’m worried that he might overdo it.”

Judie bit her lip. “Then he shouldn’t have done anything at
all. He should have told me.”

Huon dislodged her hands and they began to walk again. “Ty’s
a proud man and I guess he, um, he just wanted to please you too much to wait.”

Huon walked upstairs, hoping he’d disguised the disquiet
that burned like acid in his stomach.

He walked her to her room and waited while she went, with
modesty he didn’t find strange under the circumstances, into the bathroom to
change. Then he ushered her into bed, put a glass of water on the bedside
table, turned off the light and tiptoed out. She was asleep before he got to
the bedroom door.

On the way out of the apartment, he picked up Judie’s bag,
extracted her keys and a notebook and slipped out, gently closing the door
behind him. If he found out what he had to tonight, he might never see her
again. He could not allow himself to think that he might miss her.

The stairs creaked under his foot as he moved downward. The
telltale sound made him stop and shift his weight to the balls of his feet,
moving cautiously.

Once he arrived on the landing outside the floor Judie had told
them housed the work spaces, he flattened himself against the wall and waited.
No sound of movement penetrated the thick wood, but he didn’t delude himself.
Judie had told them Hopewood worked odd hours. He could be reading through some
volume of arcane research, his head drooping over it.

The choice of whether to act or not had been taken from Huon
a long time ago, when Hopewood had decided to wipe out a community full of
innocent Dvalinn, not once but three times. If Huon and Tybor didn’t stop him
now, he’d do it again and again, to such devastating effect that their
population might never recover and their people would pass from the earth. If
Hopewood waited behind that door, so be it. Huon was going in anyway.

The handle turned under his hand but the door remained
locked as he’d expected. A quick maneuver with Judie’s keys and the door swung
inward. Silently, he was relieved to discover.

He took two tentative steps into the room. His Dvalinn eyes,
used to the dimness of the Underworld, quickly adjusted to the gloom to reveal
a large room holding a bare rectangular table in the middle with seating for
eight. Butted up against the walls were six desks, each with a computer, the
screens emitting a soft light. The desks held nothing else—no clutter, no
photos, no sign of individuality. Each desk had a chair, but the walls of the
room were bare and there was nowhere comfortable to sit, no sign that anyone
might be able to relax there. The Spartan appearance of the office for a man of
Hopewood’s great personal wealth puzzled him. Maybe the point was not to save
money but to stop personal attachments to objects and resultant rivalries. If
Hopewood planned to move quickly to launch his attacks, the less he had to pack
up, the more mobile they were, the better.

The very bareness of the room told Huon there were no
weapons to be found here. He stepped toward a single door off to the side. It
swung open instantly, revealing a bathroom. He stepped back out. Set into the
far wall were two doors. Behind one of them had to be Hopewood’s personal
quarters, his home while he remained in Venice. Behind the other was likely to
be his office and Judie’s work space, the place Huon needed to go.

All Huon had to do was choose. There was nothing to guide
him. The two doors were equidistant from the side walls, symmetrical, neither
offering a clue to its purpose.

Guided by the glow of the computer screens Huon picked his
way across the room until he stood directly in front of the doors.

Frustration and annoyance frayed the edges of his temper. He
would have liked to pump Judie for information about the layout of Hopewood’s
domain, but even as drunk as she was she’d have noticed something odd about
that and Huon had no desire to ride out another blast of temper from Tybor. If
he wanted to find out where Hopewood was, he was going to have to do it the
hard way.

He flattened his ear to the wood of the right-hand door and
listened. Nothing. He sidled over to the other door and repeated his actions.
Again, nothing but silence. He clenched his fists, wishing he could pound them
against the wood to relieve his impatience. His forehead rested on the cool,
dark wood and he was about to take a guess and try the lock when he heard a
sound that stilled him in his tracks.

Something buzzed inside the room. Huon held his breath and
waited for the sound to repeat. It came again, louder and clearer and suddenly
identifiable. Snoring. Inside that room someone, almost certainly Brian
Hopewood, slept. With a quick word of gratitude to whichever deity had arranged
for Hopewood to have sinus problems, Huon headed for the other door. Again he
brought out Judie’s keys, holding his breath in the hope that she had access to
all areas of the facility except Hopewood’s private quarters. The lock yielded
and he breathed a sigh of relief and entered the room.

At first glance nothing out of the ordinary caught his eye.
Just a wooden desk and a single, high-backed, padded leather swivel chair on
the far side of the desk—a much plainer one, little improvement over a kitchen
chair, on this side. Obviously Hopewood didn’t care about anyone’s comfort but
his own.

He moved to the desk and rifled through it, sliding drawers
open and searching through papers. There was no computer and Huon hoped that
meant Hopewood kept information on paper. Judie had said there was a map,
Hopewood’s future targets marked on it.

In the fourth drawer he found it, printed on thick paper and
folded. Huon spread it out on the desktop and leaned over it, tracing the
strange curves of the surface world, not really understanding it but knowing
that once he and Tybor deciphered it they would have the information they
needed. He shoved it in his pocket and kept searching.

His hand fell on a thick file and he pulled it from the
drawer and opened it. As the words penetrated his brain, he had to fight not to
gasp. Hopewood had listed the weapons he’d previously used in his raids and
described the effects, giving sickening details about the deaths of masses of
Dvalinn. Huon’s hands shook so much he had to put them on the desk to steady
them. He read about the three massacres Hopewood had conducted.

Huon flipped backward, the detail too harrowing to read. The
previous pages recorded Hopewood’s plans to employ an expert to take the weapons
design to a new and more efficient level and to set up a workshop here in the
Venice offices.

The workshop held the key to Hopewood’s defeat but so far
Huon had seen no sign of it. He knew it had to be here somewhere—Judie’s
presence in the building confirmed it. At this time of the year, in flood-prone
Venice, Hopewood would be taking an enormous risk if he located it on the
bottom floor, and Huon already knew from his quick exploration while Judie
slept that it wasn’t on the third floor. The bulk of that area was empty.

The image of the dusty spaces above him flashed into his
mind and he stilled. A quick look around him alerted him to a discrepancy. The
space occupied by the office area and this room did not match the dimensions of
the building. Hopewood’s own rooms were at the rear, but that left a strip
about fifteen feet wide, running the full length of the building, unaccounted
for.

Stepping silently out of the room, he mentally measured the
space again and checked for doors. Aside from those he’d already noted and a
window let into a side wall, there were no other openings. His original
impression confirmed, he stepped back into Hopewood’s office.

The walls of the outer office consisted of flat slabs of
smooth, new, white plaster, but this room looked older, decorated with ornate
paneling, dark wood decorated with carved bunches of grapes, thick and rounded
and placed at regular intervals. Huon moved forward to inspect them. Each grape
in each bunch seemed to have been carved separately. Huon peered at them.

The idea of a secret entrance seemed absurd, but this was
Venice and Brian Hopewood had plenty to hide. For a moment, Huon wondered why
Judie wouldn’t have mentioned it if her workshop could only be reached through
a secret passageway, but perhaps she was so inured to what she thought was
Hopewood’s insanity that she merely considered this one more of his quirks. Or
maybe she thought this kind of thing was a normal aspect of Venetian buildings.

He didn’t have the time to ask. His nimble fingers ran over
the carvings and he peered intently at each raised part of the design. One of
the bunches of grapes moved slightly and Huon leaned in close. There were
hinges, cleverly disguised but hinges nonetheless. Which meant that the other
side of these panels could be made to swing free, like a door, giving him
access to what lay behind. He poked and prodded and twisted until he heard a
click and the panel slid back, revealing a long, narrow room, lit by the blue
glow of standby lights on electronic devices stacked from floor to ceiling. The
nausea he’d felt earlier rushed back and he had to swallow hard to keep from
being sick. These were the weapons Judie had created from Hopewood’s designs.

Six large packs, each with a cylindrical container built
into it, lay stacked on the benches. Even without ever having seen them before,
Huon knew what they were. Lewis had done his job before he’d disappeared. Black
death’s heads painted on the canisters warned humans of toxicity. This was the
gas Hopewood planned to use to wipe out Huon’s people and contaminate their
underground world forever.

He wanted to rush across the room, gather it all up and
destroy it, but he had to wait, to be sure he killed every Gatekeeper as well.
Tomorrow he and Tybor would infiltrate the premises once more and do whatever
it took to wipe out this arsenal.

They had to strike when all the Gatekeepers were present,
because only by wiping them all out could they be sure they had succeeded in
keeping their people safe. The knowledge that Judie had designed some of these
weapons burned at the edges of his mind, mixing with the memory of sexual
release and the softness of her touch. For the first time in his life, someone had
looked at him with desire, had come to him willingly, had wanted him and shown
no disgust. The thought of killing Judie Scanlon sickened him, but he would do
what he had to.

Armed with the information he needed, he let himself out of
Hopewood’s rooms, and out of the building.

Chapter Four

Huon lay on his back in his room in the suite, basking in
the early-morning sun shining through the unshuttered window. After reporting
to Tybor last night when he’d gotten back from Hopewood’s
palazzo
, he’d
stretched out on the bed and slept.

The sound of opening and shutting doors in the small kitchen
attached to their suite drew his attention, then Tybor called out, “I’m going
out to get food. When we go in we’ll strike hard. I don’t want you fainting
from hunger on me.”

“You’re the one with the bulk to keep up,” Huon said. “And
you’re wounded. If anyone faints it ain’t gonna be me, old man.” He got to his
feet, pulled on his shoes and sauntered into the kitchen. “You rest up. I’ll
get the food.” He swept a handful of euro off the table and into his pocket.

“You’re not as…” Tybor began and Huon rolled his eyes. Tybor
blew out a breath and started again. “Pay attention out there.”

“You lose your memory when you got hurt?” Huon asked. “
You
look like a Dvalinn. I got picked for this mission because
I
don’t. Even
if Hopewood and his Gatekeepers are examining every person on the street who
remotely fits Dvalinn characteristics, they won’t give me a second glance and
you know it.”

“But if Hopewood can identify us another way, you’re as much
at risk as I am,” Tybor said.

“If I get attacked, I fight,” Huon replied. “And unlike you,
I’m not wounded. I’ll get food and anything else we need. You rest.” He
grinned. “Conserve your strength.”

Tybor grunted and opened the door a crack, peered out, then
leaned into the corridor. After a moment he stepped back and gestured Huon
through.

Huon walked out, whistling loudly and cheerfully,
deliberately trying to annoy Tybor. The man’s protectiveness was never going to
change, but at least Huon could dish out some irritation of his own. A petty
revenge, but sweet enough in its way.

On the street, out of Tybor’s earshot, he lapsed into
silence, walking carefully, senses alert, looking for anyone who took a second
look, anyone whom he saw too often, anyone who made his hair stand on end.

He strode into a grocery store, shopped quickly and
efficiently and returned to the suite. Shutting the door, he leaned against it,
a shudder of relief skittering across his skin. When he heard Tybor coming from
the other room, he straightened and forced his shoulders downward and twisted
his mouth into what he hoped was a relaxed smile.

He dumped the goods on the table. “Want to eat now?”

“Yeah,” Tybor said, pawing through the contents of one of
the bags. “Then I need to do some stretches.”

Huon looked him over. His color was better and his eyes no
longer looked heavy, but the white of the bandage around his arm stood out and
deep grooves bracketed his mouth. Tension tautened his entire body and he
reminded Huon of a bow string pulled back and ready to release.

“If you’re not up to it, I can—”

“I’m fine,” Tybor snapped. “You’re not going alone.”

“Because alone it’s a suicide mission, isn’t it?” Huon asked
quietly. “You’ve known all along but it took me a while to figure it out.” He
gave a humorless snort of laughter. “Without you here, I’d go up against those
guys and I’d be dead.”

“Anyone who tried alone would be dead, including me,” Tybor
said. “And I believe, no matter what, you’d have taken Hopewood out with you.”

They ate, Huon eating his way mechanically through the
delicacies. His dry mouth made chewing difficult and the food tasteless. He
said nothing, grateful that Tybor’s concentration on the task to come meant he
too remained silent, gathering his focus.

At last Tybor stood. “It’s time.”

“The weekly meeting is about to start,” Huon agreed. “All
the surviving Gatekeepers will attend.”

“Judie waits upstairs in her own apartment during the
meetings, according to the notes you found last night.” Tybor’s voice was
solemn. “If she comes down to investigate any noise, we’ll kill her there. If
not, I’ll go upstairs afterward.” He paused and looked at Huon. “It has to be
done.” His eyes closed for a moment. “Leave her to me. I have so much blood on
my hands, a little more will make no difference,” he said with the weary
resignation of a veteran of too many battles.

“If we spared her…” Huon said, hoping even now to convince
Tybor.

“No,” Tybor said. “We take no risks.” He gathered up the
components of the fireballs and prepared himself for battle and Huon followed
suit.

Everything else, they left where it was. Either they would
complete their mission and go home or they would die. They would not come back
to these rooms.

* * * * *

Tybor welcomed the adrenaline that prepared him for the
battle ahead. At Hopewood’s building, Huon made use of the keys he’d stolen
from Judie. By now she must have noticed they were missing, but if she’d
reported their loss, Hopewood hadn’t had time to change the lock. He would have
had time to change the keypad code, though, and Tybor braced himself for the
blare of an alarm as he punched in the digits. When the green light came on he
let go of his held breath.

Judie had, for whatever reason, given them time to prepare
themselves.

In the hallway, Huon and Tybor took off their shirts,
leaving themselves naked from the waist up, prepared to fight or die as Dvalinn
warriors.

After a final check and each holding a fistful of chemicals
ready to be squeezed into life, they mounted the stairs two at a time.

The door to Hopewood’s outer office slammed open under the
force of Huon’s kick. He launched the first energy ball before the sound of the
door smacking against the wall died away. It hurtled toward Hopewood, who was seated
at the head of the table. Chairs clattered and tumbled backward as the five men
flanking him scrambled to their feet. One of the Gatekeepers instantly hurled
himself sideways, putting himself between Hopewood and Huon as he threw the
first fireball. The Gatekeeper screamed as the ball exploded and burned. An
acrid stench filled the air and the man twitched once and lay still.

Another Gatekeeper pulled out a gun and fired. Huon ducked,
his slender body curving into a concave arch, and the bullet sailed past,
embedding itself in the wall behind him. He dipped and rose with an energy ball
in his hand and launched it with deadly accuracy at the gunman.

Leaving Huon to his battle, Tybor launched his own
fireballs. He took out the man on Hopewood’s right and prepared to launch
another ball at Hopewood, left exposed by the death of his protector. As the
ball left Tybor’s hand, Hopewood leapt backward, and the fireball exploded harmlessly
against the closed door of his office.

“Tybor.” Huon’s shout drew his attention. One of the two
remaining Gatekeepers snatched a long, curved sword from under the table. Tybor
ducked and the blade whistled over his head. Before the man had a chance to
attack again, Huon hurled a fireball at him. Then he leapt into the air, turned
and threw yet another ball, and the last human in the room fell.

“Sorry,” Huon shouted. “I didn’t check under the table.”

“You redeemed yourself,” Tybor panted. “You took out four of
them. Hopewood is in his office.”

“He can’t go anywhere from there. There are no windows.”
Another energy ball appeared in Huon’s hand. “We wait him out.”

“What if he uses the poison?” Tybor asked.

“If he does he’ll kill himself too. I didn’t see any gas
masks in there,” Huon replied.

“Did you…” Before Tybor could complete his sentence, his
mouth went dry and a gray mist blurred his vision. He shook his head. He
couldn’t succumb to weakness now. Fuck! Huon had taken out four of the five men
and Tybor was about to faint like a damn weakling. He looked across at Huon and
saw him stagger and put a hand to his head. A sick feeling rose in Tybor’s
stomach.

The door to Hopewood’s office slid open and the man stood in
the gap, holding a matte black rectangular box about six inches square and two
inches deep, a small blue light blinking on the top, ominous and deadly. Tybor
reached into his pocket, wrapped his fist around the fireball chemicals and
pulled them out. He tried to close his hand, to squeeze, but his fingers
refused to obey.

“You cannot fight against this, demon,” Hopewood said,
holding up the box. “I will destroy you and all your kind.”

“I am not a demon. I am Dvalinn.”

“Call yourself whatever you like,” Hopewood sneered. “You
are evil and you will die at my hand.”

“The Dvalinn are not evil.” Huon’s voice sounded frail
although his chest rose and fell as if he were trying to gather enough air to
shout. “Like humans we want to live our lives, raise our families. We never
harmed you.”

“You lie, just like all of your kind.” The sweeping gesture
of Hopewood’s hand encompassed the charred remains of his Gatekeepers.
“Everything you do is evil and good men lie dead because of it.”

“If these are good men who have been killed, then they were
also deluded men.” Tybor’s voice too was weak. “We wanted to live in peace with
humans, but you hunt us down. If you come to destroy us, then we must fight
back. If killing you and your Gatekeepers protects my people, then that is what
we will do.”

The sound of Hopewood’s laughter sent a chill rippling down
Tybor’s spine. “But you didn’t kill me, did you?”

The hand holding the electronic device lifted, Hopewood’s
thumb pressed down. Numbness weighed upon Tybor’s limbs. His feet would not
move—all his strength could not lift them. The electrical pulse was like a
chain, tying him to the floor. From the corner of his eye he saw Huon buckle
and fall.

“This transmitter is set to broadcast at a frequency that
disables all demonkind.” Hopewood’s lips curved cruelly. “You are not like us,
no matter what lies you try to concoct. Humans are unaffected by the
resonance.”

Hopewood sidled around the room until he stood next to Huon.
His foot drew back and he kicked Huon hard in the side. Then he kicked again,
into his belly. Huon’s eyes rolled but no sound emerged from his open mouth.

Behind the outer door something squeaked and scraped and Hopewood
spun around. “There are more of you.” His fingers twitched on the control
button, then he turned slowly back. “No. Any demon within a hundred feet of
this device would be immobilized.” He walked back over to a chair and sat down,
staring at Huon. “You puzzle me.” One foot swung out again, connecting with
Huon’s side. Tybor heard the air rush from his lungs. “You don’t look like a
demon, yet you are affected by my device. If you had not shown such skill with
demon weapons and were not now lying helpless before me I would not have
believed you
were
a demon. But perhaps that was the idea, hmm?”

The foot retracted, lifted, then Hopewood slammed it into
Huon once more, hard enough to break bones. Sadistic pleasure turned Hopewood’s
eyes a cold gray. A hard lump of dread formed in Tybor’s chest.

“You’re really a very pretty boy,” Hopewood said. “Let’s see
how long it takes to break your resistance so I can ride your broken body back
to your foul nest.”

Another kick landed on Huon’s ribs. How could he stand the
pain and not be able to yell, to give voice to his agony? His eyes remained
open and he glared at Hopewood.

In a rush of motion, Hopewood stood and hurried into his
office. When he returned he held a knife in his hand. It glinted in the
artificial light of the office as Hopewood drew it across the muscle of Huon’s
chest. A thin red line bloomed along the path of the cut. Pain flared in Huon’s
eyes.

Hopewood leaned in. “It hurts, doesn’t it? When you can’t
stand it anymore, when I have flayed the skin from your muscles, when the point
of my blade grazes your liver, your ability to keep me out will fail. As you
die you will transport back to your city and I will use the same electronic
link that now holds you immobile to tie you to me so you will be forced take me
with you. You will die knowing you are responsible for the deaths of so many of
your Dvalinn kind.” He spat the last two words through curled lips. “I must be
prepared.” He placed the box on the table and stepped back into his office.

Two steps and Tybor could grab the device, turn it off and
free himself from this hideous lethargy, kill Hopewood…but he could not make
his muscles drive his legs forward. He dropped to his knees and tried to crawl
but he could only rock backward and forward. He slid to his side, to roll or
squirm like the lowliest earthworm, but Hopewood returned with a gas pack
strapped to his body.

“Oh, no, you aren’t going anywhere,” he said.

Tybor rolled his eyes and saw that Huon had inched his way a
foot or two closer to the table, leaving a trail of blood in his wake.

“A commendable effort but it would never have worked,”
Hopewood said. “I will punish you for it all the same.”

He made another sweep with the knife and blood flowed from a
cut on Huon’s forearm. Tybor strained against the electronic bonds. He had to
get free. If he died in the attempt, he accepted that, but he had to try to
protect Huon.

Huon’s powers of transportation had been stripped from him.
He could never transport Hopewood back to their city. For a wild moment, Tybor
believed if he were free he would offer to take Hopewood to the city himself if
it would spare Huon the torture. Looking at Hopewood’s face, hearing his high-pitched,
maniacal voice, Tybor had no doubt Hopewood would do all he could to prolong
Huon’s pain. The signs of sadism were there.

But a greater awareness forced itself on Tybor. If Huon
could speak, if he had the choice, he would endure the torture and he would
die, content in the knowledge that he had not betrayed his people. He would
never forgive Tybor if he intervened. With a sense of despair, Tybor knew he
could pay Huon no greater respect than to let him die a warrior and a martyr.