Sword and Shadow (19 page)

A shiver ran through her as Cerberus surged to his feet and backed around the fire, coming to stand next to her. She laid one hand on his back, feeling the tension in his muscles as he continued to scan the night. He lifted his nose and sniffed and she felt his hackles rise beneath her fingers.

This couldn’t be good. Whatever it was.

Something cracked in the woods opposite her, across the fire. An icy numbness settled in the pit of her stomach and she could taste her heart beating in her throat.

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Sword and Shadow

Chapter Twenty-three

Her first thought when they came out of the forest was that they were lycanthropes—werewolves—but they were too small, and too humanoid.

They were taller than her, definitely, at about six and a half feet, and wore mottled green and black camouflage, like military BDUs. They carried bows and had swords strapped to their hips.

They fanned out around the camp, searching through everything while she and Cerberus watched, directed by a slightly larger representative of their kind.
Obviously the alpha,
she thought, as her eyes met its golden gaze.
Her
golden gaze, she realized with a start. The alpha was a female. Val wasn’t sure how she knew this, but she did.

Something about the way she moved?

Cerberus glanced up at her and she smiled hesitantly. She didn’t expect him to try to defend her from eight wolf hybrids—especially since none of them had offered her any threat so far.

The alpha walked around the fire and straight up to her. “I assume you’re what happened to the worldgates.” she said. It wasn’t a question.

The other wolves lined up to the left of the fire, eyeing Val and Cerberus with distinct suspicion.

“Not precisely,” Val said.

The alpha’s gaze flicked down to the rapier in her hand. “That pig-sticker isn’t going to do you any good.”

“If that’s a hint that you want me to drop it, it’s not going to happen.”

The wolf cocked her head and stared at her. “You can’t possibly win a fight against us.”

“You’d be surprised,” Val said sadly. “I don’t want to fight, but I’m not going to surrender either.”

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“Did I ask you to?”

She wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that. “No, but I suspect you were about to.”

“What are you, a mind-reader?”

“Actually, yes. Sometimes.”

The wolf looked nonplussed for a moment. “You don’t attack us, we won’t attack you. We’re just trying to find the weasel camp.”

“The weasel camp?”

“Yes. Our mission objective is to sneak into their camp, disable their

’gate—which is probably an unnecessary step at this point—and capture their leader.”

“Who’s their leader?”

“Some
barqua
named Claw,” the wolf replied. “A pretty tough customer, from all reports. But the weasels aren’t very good at teamwork.”

“There were something like eight camps on this island alone, and more on the adjoining islands,” Val told her. “Most were abandoned after we disabled the gates and killed the valkyrie.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” the alpha replied. “You killed the valkyrie?”

Val nodded, hoping it wasn’t the wrong thing to admit. “You have a name?”

The wolf’s lip curled into what might have been a smile. It could also have been a snarl. Val was hoping it was a smile. “Bridget.”

How in the hell do these creatures get their names?
Val found herself wondering. Bridget, after all, was a human name, and as far as she knew they were given very little knowledge of their human ancestry. The Cen, for all of their vaunted intelligence, could be remarkably stupid at times.

Maybe they were educating their slaves a little
too
much. “Nice to meet you, Bridget. I’m Val.” She extended her hand without thinking.

The alpha appeared a little baffled by this but, after a moment, enveloped Val’s hand in her grasp. The skin on her palm was calloused and rough, thicker than that of a human’s. “If you killed the valkyrie, I have to thank you for it.”

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It was Val’s turn to look puzzled. “I kinda figured you’d be pissed about it.”

“Pissed?”

“Angry.”

“Ah—well, the valkyrie was a bastard. Most of them are, but this one was worse than usual. We were bound to follow its orders, but some were outright idiotic. Had this been a real operation rather than an exercise, it might well have gotten us killed.”

“I don’t understand,” Val said. “You’re being trained to do what—

invade this world?”

Bridget shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s possible. Things have been very mixed up lately—I’ve talked to older slaves and they said that it wasn’t always this way. The orders they received from on high used to make sense, but now it’s like there’s no one steering the boat.

“Or too many people steering the boat,” she added in a musing tone.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say the empire was collapsing.”

“Why do you know better?” Val asked, genuinely curious. It would be simply amazing if the Cen empire shattered, though it could well plunge a thousand worlds into chaos. She wasn’t sure if it would be a good thing to hope for or not. It would free a lot of people, but it would also kill more people than she could easily calculate.

“Because they told me…” Bridget let her voice trail off. “Because they told me so,” she repeated, clearly irritated with herself. She shook her head and grunted something Val couldn’t quite make out.

She turned to her squad. “Secure the perimeter,” she told them. “If even a field mouse crosses into the area, I want to know about it. Go!”

They exploded into motion, vanishing into the forest like so many furry ghosts. “You work for the immortals, don’t you?”

Val blinked at her. She was remarkably knowledgeable when you got right down to it. She couldn’t figure out why the Cen would educate their slaves any more than absolutely necessary—though it could be argued that they needed to know about the immortals to be informed as to what they’d be up against.

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Still seemed odd. None of this followed the Cen Empire’s standard operating procedure according to what she’d learned in agency school.

None of this made any sense whatsoever.

“I work for the immortals, yes.”

“Good. My team wants to defect.”

Well,
thought Val,
that was certainly easier than I thought it would be.

“Okay. Good.” She wasn’t quite sure what to say next. Where in the hell were Raven and Morrigan? She could really use some backup here, she decided. Somebody with more of a plan than she had. “You’ll have to wait until my companions get back.”

Bridget seemed to consider that and then nodded. She opened her mouth to say something else but the buzzing whine of the allegedly disabled worldgate re-activating cut her off. The silver doorway sprang into existence in an instant and the three of them whirled just in time to see a single giant figure stride out of it.

It was another valkyrie.

Morrigan didn’t like how easily all of this had gone. Every instinct within her was screaming that something was off about this whole arrangement. The hybrids were way too eager to join up for her comfort, though their motivations seemed clear enough. They didn’t feel like they were being protected by their absentee ‘masters.’

But what did this say about the Cen indoctrination procedures?

These creatures had been raised from infancy with loyalty conditioning efforts at maximum overdrive twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. They
had
to identify with their masters—how would they know how to think any other way? Hell, the Cen could probably program it into their genes.

So why did they seem so eager to escape, to join up with their masters’ most hated enemies? It didn’t ring right, like they were walking into some sort of a trap.

The only one of the hybrids whose reactions she actually trusted was the one who’d tried to attack them.

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Maybe she was just being a suspicious bitch, but being a suspicious bitch was far better than being caught by surprise by whatever screwy game plan their masters had dreamed up. She’d already targeted a spell on the tiger for when things went south, simply the nastiest offensive spell she’d ever designed. He wouldn’t even have a chance to scream before it tore him limb from limb.

They trooped through the forest towards the camp they’d taken over, Raven in the lead, Morrigan following not far behind, the captive Claw floating in the air between her and their hybrid escort. They’d be there in less than a minute.

Raven halted and lifted his hand. “Val and Cerberus are not alone,”

he murmured. She glanced over her shoulder as the column of hybrids ground to a halt.

She slipped forward and peered out of the underbrush alongside him.

“I’d been wondering where the wolves were,” she said quietly.

“Yeah, me too. But what really interests me is the valkyrie. There’s something different about it…”

“The fact that it’s not an
it?”
she said. The creature was obviously a valkyrie—the massive frame and angelic aspect was too familiar to mistake. But she’d never seen, or heard of, a valkyrie possessing a definable gender. This one was female, and wearing more clothes than was generally common with the valkyries, though its outfit revealed a wide expanse of alabaster flesh nonetheless. It seemed almost scary to contemplate how enticing the creature was—beauty and brawn all wrapped up in one deluxe-size package.

Val looked to be in deep conversation with the creature, looking as relaxed as Morrigan had ever seen her. Even the dog, ostensibly there to protect her, seemed quite comfortable lying in front of the fire, watching as one of the wolf hybrids stirred it with a long stick.

Raven jumped as the valkyrie raised her gaze to his. “You can come out now, Raven. I know you and Morrigan are there. Tell your companions that they may come out as well, though I strongly recommend they not offer us any violence.”

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Raven stepped out into the clearing, gaze locked upon the valkyrie’s.

“Tell the hybrids to behave,” he told Morrigan without looking back. “I’m not sure what’s going on, but I plan to find out.”

She made no reply. Not that he’d been expecting one. She positively stank of suspicion, and, if anything, this development would make it worse. She expected the hybrids to turn at any minute and, if he was being honest with himself, he’d have to admit that he wasn’t sure it wasn’t going to happen himself.

Sometimes paranoia was what kept an agent healthy. So to speak.

Health wasn’t exactly one of Raven’s primary concerns, though he wasn’t thrilled about anything that might put holes in his body.

Or, he thought, with a covert glance at the sky, anything that stalled him long enough to risk him being caught in the open when dawn came.

This, he had the feeling, definitely had that potential.

He strode confidently across the clearing, stopping several feet away from the valkyrie, smiling slightly at Val as she stood and walked over to join him. Cerberus didn’t stand, though his tail thumped the ground a couple of times.

“Traitor,” Raven growled, not really meaning it. The dog’s tail thumped against the ground with even more enthusiasm.

He pulled Val against him, throwing an arm around her shoulders as he brought his gaze in line with the valkyrie’s once again. “Who are you?”

“My name is not important,” the valkyrie said, in a voice as pure and sweet as a mountain stream. “What’s important is warning you of the danger you’re in.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed as he stared at her. “How am I in any more danger than I’ve ever been?”

She gave him a flat stare in response. “You were never targeted specifically,” she told him. “That’s about to change.”

If he had been anyone else, this news might have startled, or even worried him. But not Raven. He gave her a curt nod. “And you’re here to warn me of this?”

“Among other things,” she said. “You are about to be betrayed by someone you trust.”

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“Lady, you have
no
idea who I do or do not trust,” Raven responded through clenched teeth. He loathed people who assumed they knew how he felt, or what he was thinking.

Despite the fact that she towered over him, somehow, for a moment, they seemed to be eye-to-eye. Val shook her head to banish the illusion, but it persisted for a several heartbeats before fading. She wrapped her arms around herself and glanced between them, not at all sure what she’d just seen. Magic? Or something inexplicable? Had they even noticed it?

“There are things going on behind the scenes you know nothing about, vampire.” The valkyrie stated this as a matter-of-fact and Val could feel Raven tensing next to her. She wanted to tell him that she trusted this creature, but wasn’t sure she wanted to do it right in front of her. They’d had some time to talk, and she understood more about the Cen and what was going on here than she ever expected to. The Cen were fracturing, with some wanting to retreat to their stronghold worlds, others wanting to take the fight to a new level, and a third faction who wanted to begin negotiations to halt the hostilities. This valkyrie said she represented the third group and Val had been able to pick up enough out of the creature’s mind that she knew she told the truth about that, at least, though she couldn’t shake the feeling the valkyrie hadn’t been completely up-front about everything.

No surprise there. “Can we have a moment?” she asked the valkyrie.

She had refused to supply a name to her as well. Annoying, but hardly something she was willing to throw a fit about. If she wanted to be known as ‘hey you!’ it was no skin off
her
nose.

She received a nod and led Raven to a point several feet away, hoping that it was far enough to carry on a conversation without being overheard. “She’s on the level,” she told him. “We were right—the Cen are fighting amongst themselves.”

He nodded. “A great opportunity. We need to take advantage of it.” He didn’t bother expressing any doubts—if she said it, he obviously trusted her judgment. That realization gave her a warm feeling, but she did her www.samhainpublishing.com 173