Shades of Dark (13 page)

I tucked the card in my pants pocket and finished dressing, thinking of a cup of tea and a baked bright-apple from Dorsie’s galley. Or maybe a slice of cold
srorfralak
pie, if Verno and Ren hadn’t finished it off. The Takan vegetables, pungent when hot, were pleasantly sweet when cold.

I pulled the coverlet up over the bed linens, fluffed the pillows, and stepped into the main salon. A roiling wave of emotion hit me. Then pain. I staggered against the couch, my breath catching, my head spinning with sounds, images, smells.

Anger. Hatred. Death.

Sully.
Sully!

No answer.

I grabbed my laser pistol and holster from the wall peg by the door, smacked the palm pad, and bolted into the corridor.

I pounded down the stairway to the lower deck, toward the small shuttle-and-cargo bay, wrenching the holster’s belt around my hips as I went. I followed the blaze of emotions unerringly, as if it were a fix for a jumpgate beacon and I was the best damned nav system in the universe. I
knew
where Sully was, though it wasn’t conscious knowledge.

It was instinct, and something beyond instinct. Beyond rational thought and explanation.

I slapped the palm pad on the right of the bay’s wide double doors then stepped sideways, dropping my hand to the pistol before I moved forward again. My right shoulder slammed against the doors when they didn’t open. Locked.
Fuck!
Holster pistol. Hit palm pad again. Hit icon for voice commands. “Bergen, Chasidah. Emergency override.”

“Retinal scan required,” the
Karn
answered softly, in that unknown female voice that still irked the shit out of me.

I tilted my head back and stared at the recessed scanner. “Open the goddamed doors,” I spat out between clenched lips.

I lunged to the right as the doors opened. Never stand in an open doorway in the line of fire. This time when I pushed forward, I kept going, no locked door stopping me.

The bay’s overheads were dimmed, the main flood-light over the shuttle off. The shuttle itself was a dark void limned by workstation lights set into the bulkhead. Grunts, thuds, and curses filled my ears. The sound of flesh hitting flesh, the hard thump of something hitting a bulkhead. Then a crash. It sounded like a toolbox hitting the floor, breaking open, wrenches and bolt cutters scattering, but I couldn’t tell for sure. Heart pounding, I ran for the shuttle. The noises were coming from the other side. I held my laser, set on stun, tightly against me. With one flick of a finger it would be set to kill, but I didn’t know what was going on. Stun made it easier to ask questions later.

I
felt
Sully before I saw him—felt pain, felt anger. Our verbal link was closed. I couldn’t hear his thoughts. I could just feel him. And going on feel, I crouched down and skirted around the shuttle’s wide stern.

A blur of movement met my gaze through the slanted glare of the workstation lights. Three figures. Sully. Gregor. Aubry. Sully had Gregor by the throat, pinning him against the shuttle. Aubry was swinging a long wrench, aiming for Sully’s head.

“Drop it!” I took a firing stance, arms locked. “I’ll fry your fucking brains, Aubry. Drop it! Now!”

Aubry’s arms jerked, his movement faltering. He half-turned, half-tripped backward, but he didn’t let go of the wrench. I fired. He was only about ten feet from me. The charge hit him in the shoulder because he was still moving, teeth bared, eyes narrowed.

Those same eyes blanked and he dropped like a crate of unsecured cargo when gravity kicks on.

Gregor’s eyes were wide. Sully still had him pinned against the shuttle with one hand. I sprinted forward and only then saw the blood dripping down the side of Sully’s face and matting his hair.

“Chaz,” he said, his voice noticeably strained. “How nice to see you.”

“Sully? You okay?”

“I’ve been better.” He wiped some blood out of his eyes then pointed to his captive. “Couldn’t sleep. Went for a little walk. Look what I found.”

Gregor made a gurgling noise.

I glanced down at Aubry. Still out. Should be for at least another ten minutes. I stepped over him, keeping my gun trained on Gregor. “What do you need me to do?” I asked Sully.

“I should probably ask you to fry his fucking brains, but I won’t. Can you reach Verno? We might need help getting these two to the brig.”

In spite of the fact that he should be dead, Sully refused to let Ren and me take him to sick bay and instead chose to collapse on the couch in our quarters, booted feet splayed on the low table, head angled back, eyes closed. His breathing was slow and labored, his skin clammy. The medistat in my hand beeped and trilled as readings raced uselessly across its screen in a nonsensical pattern.

The medistat had no settings for a
Kyi-Ragkiril
in healing mode.

I shut it off and sank down onto the couch next to him.

He’d been beaten, bludgeoned by a wrench, and shot. The last had been a grazing wound, charring a small area of skin on his left side about the size of my palm. It would have put me in sick bay for a full shipday or two, with med-broches pumping in painkillers and anti-infection agents. His wound was almost healed.

The concussion and ruptured spleen were taking a little longer.

He opened one bruised eye and peered at Ren, who was sitting nervously on the edge of the cushioned chair next to the couch, hands clasped tightly together. “Last time we go on a drinking binge, eh?” Sully rasped.

“It was foolish,” Ren said. No rushing waters in his voice. It was muted, parched. “I should have known better. Discomfort or not, it placed you at great risk.”

The discomfort was the fact that Sully’s increasing abilities kept a restless energy surging through his body, an energy he’d not yet learned to control. Because he couldn’t, he’d taken to numbing it with honeylace. Lots of honeylace. More than I’d realized.

This time, Ren had joined him. An hour later Ren was numb and falling asleep while Sully was wide awake and, in his own words, unable to stop the tiny explosions ricocheting around in his body. He’d almost returned to our quarters to wake me—lovemaking was a kind of explosion he enjoyed—but he knew how little sleep I’d had in the past few days. So he did what Sully usually did when he was nervous. He paced. And he paced right into Gregor about to abscond with not only the
Karn
’s only shuttle, but a large amount of information on Sully and this ship as well.

He had no idea Aubry was in the bay too, until the short man hit him on the side of the head with a wrench.

That’s when Gregor shot Sully. And Sully found out that he’d ingested just enough honeylace that most of his
Kyi-Ragkiril
defensive talents were essentially offline. He couldn’t manipulate energy fields, he couldn’t levitate, he couldn’t create ghostly apparitions to threaten his attackers, and he couldn’t sway his attackers with his mind. He was still stronger and faster than a normal human but he bled and burned like one too.

He’d even tried to link to Ren and me and failed.

“When you showed up,” he said, wincing as he turned his face toward me, “I thought I was either hallucinating from the pain or I’d finally managed to shift some of the
Kyi
energy to make it appear help had arrived. Although honestly I think I would have manifested Verno, not you, angel. No offense.” His mouth quirked slightly.

“How did you know it was really me?”

The twist of his lips turned into a grin. “No one threatens to fry someone’s fucking brains quite like you do.”

“I should fry yours,” I murmured.

“It occurred to me you might feel that way.” His voice rasped again and he coughed. “Is that why you were wandering around the lower deck, armed?”

“I wasn’t wandering. I felt you either get hit or shot. I just followed the pain.”

This time he frowned. “You shouldn’t have been able to do that.” He shifted slightly, glancing at Ren for confirmation, and I felt the mental questioning nudge flow between them.

“The
ky’saran
link may run deeper than you realize,” Ren said after a moment.

“You said it’s also a life link,” I reminded him. “If your life was threatened, I’d know.”

“Knowing I’m injured is not the same as knowing where I am.”

Ren shrugged. “There are only so many places you could be on this ship.”

“No.” I looked from Ren back to Sully. “I knew exactly where you were. And I knew you were in trouble, and that I needed to be armed.”

“You’re not supposed to—” Sully huffed out a short sigh, but if it was frustration or pain, or both, I didn’t know. “Everything I’ve read about nullifying a
ky’saran
link shows honeylace, or some agent like that, to be an effective barrier.”

“Likely its effects were wearing off,” Ren said.

Sully didn’t comment. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back into the cushion again.

And then I realized what he’d said—everything I’ve read about nullifying a
ky’saran
link—and something tightened in my chest. A few hours ago, I’d thought he was planning his funeral. Now it sounded more like a divorce. But he couldn’t divorce me. We weren’t even married.

Looking to get rid of me, Sullivan?

I let the question hang in my mind. I had no idea if he was reading me or not.

Suddenly something heated against my thigh. My hand slid down, my fingers finding the outline of the playing card in my pocket. The one he’d left on my beside table.

I love you beyond all measure, Chasidah.
His voice in my mind was a husky whisper. The tightness in my chest began to abate.
But I am concerned when I no longer know who or what I’m asking you to love in return.

I brushed my hand down the side of his face. His skin was still chilled. “Try to sleep for at least an hour or two,” I told him. “Ren and I are going to take a look at what Gregor filched from our databanks.” And how Gregor was able to do it. “We’ll bring you up to date when you wake.”

His eyes fluttered open. They were fully dark again, fathomless. He nodded, then closed them. I stood and, with Ren’s help, shifted him so his legs were on the couch and his head against the armrest. I tucked a pillow under his head then brushed his lips with a soft kiss.

A small heat danced over my skin. Then a silvery glow flowed over his.

I followed Ren into the corridor, heat fading and worries flanking me like a contingent of the emperor’s most formidable bodyguards.

We were twelve hours from Narfial. Twelve hours from another data beacon. Twelve hours from either our best hope to date or our worst nightmare in a man we knew only as Del.

And the price of our mission was growing steeper by the hour.

“How is he?” Dorsie was waiting for us outside the door to the ready room. She had a red apron dotted with various stains over the long dark tunic shirt she usually wore, and a recognizable bulge on her right hip. She’d taken to wearing a weapon again. “If I was in the galley like you, Chaz, I might’ve heard the fight. I could’ve done something, maybe. Worthless sons of bitches.”

Visions of Dorsie charging into the shuttle bay, frying pan in one hand, fruit peeler in another, brought a small smile to my lips. I draped an arm over her shoulder and hugged her. “He’s better. He’ll probably be up and around in a few hours. Not that he should be. But you know Sully.”

Dorsie did. She’d been with him for several years.

“I can’t believe Gregor shot him.”

“Missed, mostly.” We’d had to downplay Sully’s injuries or there’d be no way to explain his rapid healing. Just as we’d lied about how I’d found Sully.

“Worthless son of a bitch,” she said again, then glanced up at Ren. “If those two slag-heads think I’m sending them anything good to eat, they can kiss my ass. Scraps and peelings are all they’re getting. Now, Sully!” And she brushed at the stains on her apron. “I have all his favorites whenever he’s hungry enough. Good food makes you stronger.” She switched her gaze to me. “We going to dump those assholes in a lockup on Narfial?”

“We’ll discuss that with Sully when he wakes up,” I told her.

“You’re not going to just let them go?”

“They know quite a bit about our mission, about Sully,” Ren said. “We have to be careful.”

“You can be careful. I’ll poison the bastards.” Dorsie gave me a brief hug, started to pat Ren on the backside, then caught herself and clasped his arm. She winked at me—there was no way Ren could see her aborted gesture—then headed down the corridor for the stairway.

I followed Ren into the ready room and waited for the door to close before I spoke. “A
zral
. Sully could wipe their minds of everything that’s happened since they signed on with him. Then it wouldn’t be a problem if we leave them on Narfial.”

“That’s an option,” Ren agreed, taking his usual place on the right side of the round table. “But there are people who know that Gregor worked for Sully for years. They might find sudden amnesia a cause for questions.”

“If Tage releases Thad’s information, they’ll have their answers.” I took Sully’s seat at the table’s midpoint—even though it was round. But it was midpoint to the room, back almost to the wall, with a clear view of the room’s two entrances. Never sit with your back to the door. I pulled up the deskscreen.