Sword and Shadow (16 page)

There was nothing else in the box.

Val pressed her eyes most of the way shut and opened them again, summoning her courage to study the four deep furrows in her flesh. It stung, but the real pain hadn’t set in yet. It would, in time. Had she not been parahuman, she would’ve worried about infection.

Raven squeezed a little of the gel inside the bottle into his cupped palm and raised it to his lips. He tasted it and frowned deeply. “Weird. It numbed the end of my tongue.”

Shrugging, he reached over and dabbed a little on her wounds.

Before their startled eyes, the wounds began to close as the pain receded.

He smeared it on a little thicker and, as they watched, the wounds vanished completely. “Well, I’ll be damned,” Raven muttered. “We’ve got to get this stuff back to Starhaven.”

Val nodded. He was right. If the Cen were producing and sending out this stuff with
their
operatives, the medicos at base needed to backwards-engineer it and hand it out to their agents.

“Can we finish up with the screwing around and canoodling?”

Morrigan asked waspishly. “We need to disable this thing completely and get the hell out of here.”

“What the matter, Morrigan? Getting nervous?” Raven grinned back at her.

She didn’t reply, instead settling her hands on her hips and glaring down at them, tapping her foot impatiently.

142

www.samhainpublishing.com

Sword and Shadow

Chapter Twenty

At dawn, Morrigan sent her crows up to do an aerial recon of the nearest islands. They returned around noon with information regarding several hybrid installations spread across the four they’d surveyed.

She found this puzzling. Why weren’t they all gathering in one place?

Certainly it would be easier to supply them from one worldgate rather than a dozen or more. There was something about this whole situation that stank to high heaven, and she was determined to get to the bottom of it. This bore no real resemblance to any Cen operation she’d ever heard about.

Had there been some sort of break in the Cen leadership? Was there now more than one faction operating out here? It
would
explain such things as this strange placement of troops, and the fact that Raven thought they were sponsoring the Church and its attempted monopoly on using magic.

The best thing was that they could capitalize on it if that was what was happening. The Cen had been a monolithic, indivisible threat for so long. Maybe their defeat on Earth Prime had led to fractures within their ranks. Which, in her mind, wasn’t a bad thing.

She noticed Val watching her talk to the crows once they’d returned, so she waved her over. The blonde woman, who’d spent a good part of the morning supervising the digging of a mass grave for the dead hybrids, made her way across the clearing and stopped about ten feet away.

Morrigan suppressed a smile. She made Val nervous, which was not her intention at all. She rather liked the young woman, though she was www.samhainpublishing.com 143

Saje Williams

far too earnest and uptight for her tastes. She could use a few energetic tumbles with someone with a pulse.

She suppressed that thought, deciding it was a bit too catty. She liked the vampire, too, and had to admit he was nowhere near as cold-blooded as she’d originally assumed. He remained, however, far more barricaded within himself than she thought was healthy.

She nearly laughed at herself then. Psycho-analyzing the undead wasn’t a particularly healthy pastime. The immortal part she got—the rest of it confused her. She knew something about the breed they never discussed with outsiders, what few mortals knew or understood about them in the first place. Vampires were a colony organism, ruled by the once-human brain that still resided within their skulls, but made up a colony of cooperative cells that bore very little resemblance to those of a true human being. They were as much alien as they were human, when you got right down to it.

“Can you really talk to them?” Val asked her with a pointed glance at her crows.

“I can. It’s one of my few immortal talents, and a pretty weird one at that. I’ve been able to talk to crows since we first arrived on Earth, though it took me a while to realize I wasn’t simply going nuts.”

“I can imagine,” Val said with a little laugh. “So what do they say?”

“Now they’re telling me that there are a bunch of different encampments like this one across the nearest islands. What I can’t figure out is
why.
”

“How about war games?” Val asked after a moment’s thought.

Morrigan blinked at her. It seemed obvious in retrospect. It was really the most plausible explanation. Her estimation of the woman, which hadn’t been lacking in the first place, went up another notch. “That makes sense. Kinda a weird way to go about it though.”

Val shrugged. “We were taught not to expect the Cen to make any sense from our perspective. They’re alien, and their servants, however much human DNA they have, are just as alien. The hybrids who’ve defected to our side tend to think more like us, but this bunch? Not for a minute.”

144

www.samhainpublishing.com

Sword and Shadow

“Explains the whole cannibal theory though, doesn’t it? If they’ve been using these islands as a training area for very long, it only makes sense that the sailors would have some hair-raising stories about them.”

Val nodded thoughtfully. “That’s a good point. So what now? Do we go from encampment to encampment slaughtering them, or do you have something else in mind?”

Morrigan closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She knew Val hadn’t meant to be insulting, and probably wouldn’t realize how offensive the question actually was, but she really hated to be painted as some kind of bloodthirsty mass murderer. She wasn’t, and neither was Raven.

The hybrids weren’t human beings, but, even so, deserved a chance to escape their bonds and live as free people. Killing them surely wouldn’t go very far toward accomplishing
that
objective.

Their best bet, actually, was coming up with a way to disable the

’gate modules without leaving a trail of dead bodies behind them. If marooned here, the hybrids would likely be more open to negotiation.

She knew that they weren’t mad beasts—she’d met several hybrids on Starhaven and had grown to consider them almost friends.

She certainly didn’t want to kill them all. When the vampire rose, she had a feeling he’d be as interested as she was in getting them to abandon their masters. It wouldn’t be easy, but leaving them stranded here would be a good first step. If she could turn them, and bring them home, she’d make her partner
very
happy.

Not that Val would easily believe most of this. Morrigan’s reputation had definitely preceded her, and the fact that most of the other immortals still distrusted her didn’t do much for her case.

She shook her head. “Uh-uh. We’re going to destroy the gate modules and leave them high and dry.”

Val considered this, then broke into a wide grin. “You’re going to try to free them, aren’t you?”

“It’s an option. They’re used to getting almost constant direction from their handlers. We cut them out of that loop and they’re going to lose any semblance of cohesion. Within a week on the outside, at least some of them will be approachable.”

www.samhainpublishing.com 145

Saje Williams

“Those that aren’t completely pissed off,” Val added with a chuckle.

“There is that,” Morrigan grunted. “It’s not out the of the question that they’ll start fighting amongst themselves for real in order to secure whatever rations and other supplies they can find.”

“It’s going to get pretty damn hot around here, isn’t it?”

Morrigan responded with a quick nod. “Probably so.” She glanced over at the three sailors Val had conscripted to dig the grave. They’d finished excavating the hole and were eyeing the bodies nervously.

“Don’t worry,” Morrigan called out. “They’re not going to get up again.”

Three baleful glares converged on her and they spat in the trench as one. She knew they didn’t like taking orders from her—bad enough to have to share the ship with two women, but having to take orders from one? Humiliating.

The three men argued amongst themselves for a few minutes, then two of them broke off and went over to where the bodies were stacked.

They grabbed the arms and legs, slowly slogged their way back to the edge of the pit, and tumbled it over the edge.

The two women watched as they disposed of the bodies one by one, then began to fill the trench using the primitive shovel they’d found in the gear surrounding the now defunct gate. One of the men, obviously of higher rank, watched as the other two men did the deed.

“When Raven wakes up we’ll start putting together a plan,” Morrigan said. “I’m assuming he plans on short-circuiting the other ’gates in turn.”

Val regarded her with what Morrigan thought was a suspicious look.

The young woman was too smart by half, she decided. She knew Morrigan had motives she hadn’t mentioned, and was, even now, nearly bursting at the seams with the urge to ask about them. But she was also smart enough to realize Morrigan wouldn’t give up her secrets that easily.

Morrigan suspected that Val would talk it over with the vampire later and he’d confront her about it sooner or later, forcing her to come clean.

She sighed inwardly. She hated all this political crap. Pretending to do one thing, or to pursue a certain agenda, while, in fact, chasing some 146

www.samhainpublishing.com

Sword and Shadow

other objective altogether. Her life had grown a lot more complex than she liked, especially now that she was answering to someone else as well as her own conscience.

Not that her partner was that hard to work with, when you came right down to it. They shared similar motivations, and their ultimate goals were close enough that they made a better team than anyone would have expected. The woman was a little strange, of course, even for Morrigan, but what could one really expect from the Queen of the Goblins?

Val settled in, her back braced against one of the six foot tall sidearms of the worldgate module, her eyes following the dark-haired figure of Morrigan as she paced a thirty foot path on the other side of the encampment, apparently murmuring to herself. The woman was up to something, and Val wanted to know what it was.

Raven seemed to trust her, a fact that Val found more or less inexplicable. It wasn’t as though Morrigan had done anything to
win
trust, after all. When it came down to it, Raven and Morrigan shared something she could never hope to with either of them—a memory of Earth before the Cen. Sure, the immortal woman had centuries upon centuries of memory before that to draw upon, but the fact still remained that Morrigan knew the time in which Raven had come of age. Val had only read about it, and, according to the vampire, nearly half of what she’d read was revisionist bullshit.

She knew it was stupid, but the chumminess between Raven and Morrigan made her a little nervous. Morrigan had all the morals of a cat in heat, which she’d made abundantly clear by making obvious advances on both Raven
and
Val herself at various times.

Though, Val had to admit, she hadn’t sunk so low as to make similar advances toward Bryon, Goban, or any of the ship’s crew. Now she thought about it, that was rather weird and out of character from what she’d observed of her so far.

www.samhainpublishing.com 147

Saje Williams

Despite her doubts, Val also had to admit that she’d grown to enjoy Morrigan’s company quite a bit. Her almost continual wry commentary on the personal habits and other foibles of their shipmates could skirt the edge of cruelty at times, but it was always funny.

No, the question wasn’t whether she
liked
the woman, but whether she trusted her. And Val honestly couldn’t say she did, no matter how much her lover apparently did.

Trusting someone with Morrigan’s reputation was an iffy proposition, she decided, watching as the woman spun on a heel and paced back the other direction. What the hell was she doing?

She stopped dead in her tracks and threw up one arm as a blue-black bird dove from the sky and alighted there. She seemed to listen to the crow for a moment, smiling, then tossed it back up to wing its way southward.

That
in itself freaked Val out. She wasn’t a big fan of the breed in the first place. During one of her training missions she’d found herself alone on a battlefield, slightly wounded and knocked unconscious, and had awakened to find one of the beastly birds standing only a few feet away, its eyes like tiny pools of darkness staring at her. When she tried to shoo it off, it had hopped a couple feet away, cocked its head at her, and cawed something that sounded rather insulting.

No, she didn’t care for crows.

One thing that made this particular detail bearable despite her suspicion of Morrigan and her damn birds was the fact that they’d left Bryon and the ex-merc aboard the ship, cloaked in a field of invisibility.

Not that she really objected to Bryon anymore—ever since Raven had set him straight he’d been the very model of decorum and respect. No, the issue now was Goban, who’d actually started to make her skin crawl every time he came near her.

Cerberus had accompanied Raven into the wild just before dawn, most likely to guard him while he slept. He was certainly no ordinary dog, even though he seemed to be able to make people
think
he was. She had the eerie feeling the animal was a better telepath or empath than she 148

www.samhainpublishing.com

Sword and Shadow

was herself, though the damned creature was so well shielded she couldn’t know for certain.

She always had the impression the dog was laughing at her. Or, at the very least, a joke to which none of the humans in his company were privy. Yes, the dog was a complete wiseass. What was worse was that his only real loyalty seemed tied to Raven. If instructed to guard Val or the others, he would, but otherwise he looked after his master.

She glanced up at the sun, saw it making its leisurely way toward the horizon, and figured it would be another hour or so before Raven rose.

Enough time, she decided, to close her eyes and catch a few minutes of rest herself.

Morrigan paused, throwing a glance over at the snoozing blonde woman, and smiled. It was probably better Val got some rest now, since there wouldn’t be a lot of time for sleeping once all of this kicked into high gear. The vampire would have to be allowed to rest during the day, of course. There was no way around that. But Val, and Morrigan herself, would have to remain vigilant to make sure nothing went awry when the vampire was away.

Morrigan rarely slept, but she needed to be able to depend on someone for backup. She could conscript one of the crew, or perhaps Bryon, but she didn’t want to give Goban any excuse to spend too much time snooping around. He’d given her the creeps since the alien ship and she didn’t want to spend any more time in his company than she had to.

She spent the next couple hours prowling the perimeter of the encampment, pausing to receive updates from her crows every so often as they descended from the heavens with a bit of information. The hybrids inhabiting one of the nearby camps seemed to be making preparations to move out, most likely to assume the first phase of their war games.