Damnit, Mack! What did you do to my head?
“Perhaps it’s the new implant,” Blaedergil said.
“New implant?”
“They didn’t tell you?”
I shook my head, and he smiled, leaning in close to the glass.
“You and I are going to have such fun.”
Part of me wanted to deny it, but part of me knew it was true—although it wasn’t sure about the ‘fun’ part of things. Great. Just great. When I got back on board, Mack and I were going to have a good long talk.
Mack. How could I remember him, when I could remember nothing else?
“Your brother assured me he had your full consent.”
And the implant cracked open, just the tiniest bit.
“He did. To save our people.” I stopped, and more of the answer came. “He could think of no other way.”
And now Blaedergil did smile.
“Indeed, there isn’t one,” he said. “Your people made a bargain, and you are but the first of many.”
I was? I didn’t remember that from the briefing.
There’d been a briefing?
I watched as Blaedergil walked away, his figure becoming indistinct after a few paces, and then fading, until he was little more than a shadow in the glass—after that, he was gone. I felt my body relax as soon as he’d disappeared from view.
The implant cracked open just a little bit more, and I remembered. Everything.
“Mack, you are such a bastard,” I said, remembering the plan to get me inside.
No wonder I hadn’t wanted a bar of it. First Mack had had to kill me—or as near to as to make no never mind—and then Blaedergil would kill me. Every night. From our wedding night onwards—until he tired of me, or until I conceived a child.
The briefing hadn’t covered how, either how I’d die, or how I’d conceive if I was dying every night. It didn’t cover how long it would take Blaedergil to tire of me, and ask for my replacement. And I was glad, because the concept was chilling me to the very bone. I pulled against the restraints holding my wrists to my side, and then I tried to move my feet.
Something I did must have activated the sensors in the tank, because Blaedergil returned.
“Do you remember now?”
“Please,” I said. “I want to live.”
And he laughed.
“And so you shall. How else do I get to kill you, if you aren’t alive?”
He watched me struggle until I couldn’t find the energy to struggle any more.
“You should sleep,” he said. “I want you well-rested for our special night.”
He stroked a fingertip down the glass, tracing the curve of my face and neck.
“Sleep,” he said. “You’ll need it.”
I didn’t want to sleep. I didn’t want to rest. I didn’t want a special night. I wanted, desperately, to get away. But I couldn’t. There’s no escaping a tranquilizer that infiltrates the very environment around you.
And Blaedergil stayed, watching until sleep took me under.
I wondered if he’d be there when I woke—and hoped with all my heart he wouldn’t.
6—Blaedergil’s Bride
Blaedergil wasn’t around when I woke up—and I wasn’t in the tank.
I was chained to a bed... because that was so much better.
The room was empty when I first opened my eyes, but it wasn’t for much longer afterwards. Can’t a girl have any privacy? I thought, glaring at Blaedergil.
“It’s bad luck for a groom to see a bride before the wedding.”
He looked vaguely amused.
“Memory back yet?”
I swallowed, nodded, and then realized I should be afraid, instead of figuring out ways to kill him. He didn’t seem to notice, though. Just reached across and undid the cuffs.
“I’d give you an abject lesson on why you shouldn’t try to leave,” he said, “but I can’t be bothered. As to our wedding night, I think I’ll let you get acquainted with the house, first.”
I sat up when he stepped away from the bed, and followed his hand as he gestured around the room.
“These shall be your quarters for at least the next two nights. After that, we’ll talk wedding plans, ceremonies, flowers, cake—but not guests. I’m not into last-minute heroics, or hysterics.”
He turned back towards the door, and I watched him walk away.
Two nights, I thought, remembering. It would be more than time enough.
Inside my head, I felt Mack agree. Before I could think on why I could feel Mack in my head, Blaedergil stopped, and looked back.
“I want our first night to be special,” he said, and then continued on his way.
I had thought he’d want to say more than that, but movement caught my eye, movement slightly beyond him, a woman waiting by the door. I stared, and then realized what I was seeing. I must have made some kind of sound, because Blaedergil looked back.
“My corpse bride,” he said, indicating the girl beside him. “You and I cannot yet wed, for I am still married.”
He said no more, but offered his arm to the woman waiting at the door. She folded her hand through the crook of it, and looked, once more, to me, before turning a rapturous gaze on his face.
“Thank you.” Her whisper reached me from the door, and, for the life of me, I could not say who it was she thanked.
The door closed behind them, and fear washed over me. Mack’s voice caught me tucked up on the bed, my knees drawn tightly to my chest as I shook.
“Two days.” His voice cut through sheer panic rolling through me. “Two. You heard the man. Now, move!”
I moved.
I’d made planet-fall in a stasis box. With a hole in my heart. I had woken without a stitch of clothing and the injury healed. I had nothing else I needed.
“Time to move,” Mack repeated, as I registered just how much work I had to do in the very short time Blaedergil had allotted. “Get dressed.”
I tried to do just that. There were gowns hanging in a closet on one side of the room. Gowns. And nothing else. Inside my head, I heard Mack laugh.
“Not funny, Mack,” I said, sliding the least revealing one over my head.
“I preferred the red one,” he told me, and I stuck out a mental tongue.
“Tell me where I need to go.”
He did, and I went.
Two floors up, and I still hadn’t encountered another living soul. Nor a dead one. For which I was eternally grateful. Although the total lack of life was really starting to freak me out.
Three floors up, and the screaming started.
“His bedroom is on this floor,” Mack said. “Keep climbing.”
I kept climbing, but Mack was silent in my head, and I felt like I had lead weights sitting inside my chest.
Another scream rent the air, echoing around me, echoing through me.
“Get up,” Mack said, when it stopped, and I realized I had curled up at the foot of the wall closest to the windows. “Go!”
“I’ve got you,” he added, when I reached the stairs leading to the next level. “You’re almost there.”
He was right. I found out, when I got to the top, that I was there.
I reached the landing on the next level, and I stopped.
“Oh, Mack,” I whispered, and then I couldn’t say any more.
“Move!” he snapped, the order slashing through the horror in my head. “You have to find her.”
“I have to find her,” I repeated, moving between the cages, glad of the fine mesh that stopped the creatures within from stretching through and touching skin. “I have to... Mack, are you sure?”
“It’s what we’ve been paid to do.”
I gestured at the cages around me.
“Mack,” I said, and even communicating through the implant I could hear myself weeping.
“Move!” he snarled, reinforcing the command with a picture of what I was seeking.
Another scream echoed up the stairs behind me, and I
moved, scanning cages, and wondering if it was worth retrieving someone once they reached the state of the women behind the mesh. Wondering if there was anything left to retrieve.
“Hurry!” Mack said. “Locator says here.”
Locator... When I got back he was going to die.
“When did that start working?”
“It’s always worked.”
“Then why?”
“It’s because he needs a visual confirmation.” I bit back a yelp, as Blaedergil’s voice came from the door to the stairs.
“Crap!” Mack’s voice in my head.
Well, Hell, yeah. Crap. Mack that is one of a sonuvabitchin’ understatement, you ass... I thought, knowing he could hear every word, and then, as my gaze fell on another section of the room. Found her.
And I had.
She wasn’t in one of the cages, after all. In fact, she didn’t look like she’d been touched.
“So, tell me...” Blaedergil’s voice sounded much closer, now, but I refused to look back.
His hand came down, hard, on my shoulder, grabbing tight, and forcing me to a stop.
“Mack...” It came out a breathless squeak.
“Show me,” Mack said, and I knew he meant our target.
“Yes. Show him,” Blaedergil repeated, and Mack and I both came to the same realization at the same time.
“You can hear us?”
It shouldn’t have been possible. Not when we were communicating via the implant.
“First thing I hacked.”
And I felt Mack’s astonishment.
“That line was secure.”
“Nothing is secure on Magnus 19.” And then Blaedergil turned me to face the pod in which our target lay. “Is this the one you seek?”
I felt his grip tighten even further, and knew I had to think fast. If the locator was working, then the teleport could work, too, but it might not be able to get a fix through the pod’s outer shell. I turned to Blaedergil.
“Not good enough,” I said, and he glared at me.
“It’ll have to be,” he snarled, and tried to jerk me away from the pod.
I dug my heels in. It was no easy feat, given I had no shoes.
“Tell him, Mack.”
“It’s easy enough to project an image on the inside of the pod.”
Man, for fast thinking Mack had what it took. I hadn’t been able to think of a reason why. Not that quick. Blaedergil stared at me.
“Did you tell him to say that?”
I shook my head.
“Nope,” I said, and answered truthfully. “He thought that one up all by himself.”
I met his gaze.
“He’s got a point, though, doesn’t he? You could be projecting anything on the inside of that pod.”
In the face of my stubbornness, Blaedergil sighed.
“Very well,” he said, and let go of me.
I sensed surprise when I didn’t run, and I didn’t bother to explain. Honestly, where was I going to go? Here, at least, I knew the locator worked. Here, I might have the tiniest ghost of a chance. I still didn’t know if Mack meant to let the man live. Stars alone knew he hadn’t given me the wherewithal to kill him.
“That’s good to know,” Blaedergil said, lifting the lid, just as another scream rang out behind us. I jumped, startled to hear screams, when he stood right beside me. I jumped, again, when he laid a hand on my arm.
“She’s giving birth,” he said, and granted me a happy smile. “When it’s over, she’ll join the others in Skymander’s harem, and my marriage will be annulled.”
I stared at him, shuddering as another cry rent the night. Before us, in the pod, the girl continued to sleep.
“Why?” I asked, but he had noticed me staring at the young woman in the pod.
“Is this who you were sent for?” he asked, and I referenced the photo in my head.
It sure looked the same. I shrugged, anyway.
“I’ll need to take a bio sample to be sure.”
Blaedergil curled a lip in a sneer.
“What? Afraid this is another holo-projection?” he asked.
“No,” I said, “but I have heard of clones, and body doubles, and I’d like to check for both.”
“Very well,” he said, and slid open a panel in the side of the pod, taking out the instruments I’d need. “Here.”
I took them, and made the necessary tests, using my implant to interface with the hand unit identifying the DNA. It was no surprise when I found them a match, with none of the tell-tale traces indicating cloning. It was no surprise, either, when light curled around the girl in the pod, and she vanished from view.
What was a surprise, was the light that wrapped around Blaedergil, just as his hall of horrors vanished from view. Even so, I held my breath. I wasn’t taking anything for granted. Mack might just have decided to leave me behind, or he might materialize me within Blaedergil’s reach, or he might decide a contract was a contract and...
“I would never do that to you,” Mack said, as I appeared in front of him.
And, before I could respond, he had swept me behind him with one arm, and shot Blaedergil three times, running his aim from the man’s gut to his chest in rapid succession. As I found the time to take a breath, he shot Blaedergil once more, making the man’s head explode, and leaving a crater where his face had been.
The sight of it made me freeze, but not before I’d laid a hand on Mack’s bicep. I’d stuffed a fist into my mouth, too, but it didn’t stop the scream, and Mack turned and enveloped me a second time in his arms.
“Told you, I had you,” he said, and turned me around, walking me toward the door.
He was met by a medical team as he opened it, and jerked his head toward Blaedergil’s corpse.
“Bag it and tag it,” he said. “There’s another bonus for him.”
I didn’t speak, as he guided me past them, one arm around my shoulders, as Doc Oskar cast an anxious glance towards me.
“Is she...” he began, and I felt Mack’s arm tighten.
“Not a scratch,” he said. “She’s fine.”
And he tucked me closer to his side.
Doc frowned, and gave me a dubious look.
“Well, if you’re sure, Captain.”
“I’m sure,” Mack told him, and led me past them, and out into the corridor.
7—Three Rounds
To give him his due, I was all right. Physically. Physically, I didn’t have a scratch. My mind was a blank, and my emotions were frozen behind a barrier of nothingness that kept them from overwhelming me, but physically? Physically, I was perfectly fine. I searched for the words I knew I needed.
“I am not okay,” I said, and the arm across my shoulders tightened.
I tried again.
“I am not okay.”
“Yeah, you are,” he said, and I felt the wall of nothingness start to crack.
“I. Am. Not. Okay,” I said, a third time, and, this time, it was my voice that cracked, and then I started shouting. “I. AmNot. Okay!”
And I turned beneath his arm, and slugged him as hard as I could. He grunted, and I slugged him again, and again, and I would have kept on hitting him, if he hadn’t picked me up by the collar of my gown, and held me out at arm’s length.
“You will be,” he said, keeping his arm rigid, while he opened a door in the corridor, with his other hand.
“Put me down!” I said, frustrated enough to try a kick, which missed when he shook me.
“With pleasure,” and he tossed me through the door. “Welcome to the gym.”
If I hadn’t had to pick myself up from the floor, Mack wouldn’t have made it through the door. As it was, as soon as I scrambled back to my feet, I ran at him, closing the distance between us, just as he stepped into the room.
He blocked my first flurry of blows with easy expertise.
“That’s quite a temper you’ve got.”
“You almost killed me!” I said, bouncing back, as he moved towards the end
of the room.
“I did kill you.”
“Like that makes it any better!”
He reached the edge of the clear space whose floor was covered with mats, and stooped to take off his boots. I didn’t give him the chance. As soon as he was bent and focused on the laces, I struck him hard in the side, using one of the moves he’d taught me. He toppled, and I followed after, completely unprepared to have my legs swept from under me.
“You got a problem with me?” he asked, using the leg he’d swept under me, to pin my head to the floor.
I scrabbled at his boot.
“Darn right, I have a problem with you, you sadistic son of a bitch!”
“Then we’ll take it to the mats. Best of three. Winner names the penalty.”
“Penalty?”
“For whatever indiscretion we’re fighting over.”
That got through to me.
“What are we fighting over?”
“You not being all right.”
“So, we’re agreed on that.”
“We are.”
“Then why...”
“Because you needed to hit something.”
That much was very true. But I wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen next. Mack didn’t give me a lot of time to think about it. He reached across and finished taking the boot off the foot that wasn’t pinning me, and then he changed feet, and went to work on the other one. When he was done, he let me go, and moved onto the mat.
“Come on,” he said, beckoning me with a slight ripple of his fingers.
I got up, still feeling hollow inside, and moved cautiously onto the mat after him.
“If we’re agreed...” I began, but Mack didn’t let me go any further.
He came at me with several sweeping blows that would have felled me if I’d stayed in one place. I danced back, unwilling to take him on, and not at all sure why I should.
“Why are we fighting, again?” I asked.
“You started it,” he said.
“Then I can stop it?”
“Nope. Now, we go three rounds, and discuss the outcome when you wake up.”
“You’re very sure of yourself.”
I must have stayed in one place for too long, because his fist caught me in the ribs, and I felt something crack.
Seriously?
“Mack!”
Blaedergil's Host Page 3
