The Her-Gla loped back and scooped the massive corpse into her muscular tentacled arms, claws clicking an irritated tattoo. He threw open the doors and jumped into the passenger seat as she tossed the body into the back, then scrambled in after it.
The van roared in pursuit of the primitive’s car even before she’d slammed the door.
“Hirglir ak cok vira ba, I’Var!” the Her-Gla snarled.
“Vira ba back at you, bitch.” Ivar floored it. “Who’d have guessed the primitive little bastard was strong enough to slab a Tevan?”
• 15 •
“Can you use a gun?” Nick demanded, muscling the wheel as the black Beamer shot into traffic.
Riane stared at him. “You’ve got a gun? Why in the hell didn’t you use it before now?”
He shot her a fulminating look. “It’s in the glove compartment. It’s not legal to carry concealed into the damned mall.”
“Since when do you care?”
“Since the last time I got busted, the freaking aliens came right into the jail after me. Damn near killed three cops and some poor bastard in the drunk tank.”
She fumbled a moment until she figured out how to get the compartment open, then pulled the big Glock out. Nick hit a button to roll the window down. “Are you sure you know how to use that?”
Riane snorted. “I can load and fire a flintlock in under thirty seconds. I can damn well shoot the wings off a fly with an automatic.” She twisted around in the seat and rose on her good knee, leaning out the window.
“A flintlock? Why would you need to . . . ?” He shook his head. “Time cop. Never mind.”
Riane grunted, watching the van draw closer through the rear window. Blood ran, wet and sticky, into her eyes. Her head spun from a combination of blood loss and exhaustion. She’d burned through her riaat reserves fighting the Tevan, and her hands were shaking. She steadied herself on the frame of the window and exhaled, readying herself for the shot.
The van roared closer, obviously intent on ramming the car. Riane took aim through the tinted windshield at a spot right in the center of Ivar’s forehead. The cyborg’s eyes widened, and he jerked the wheel in the instant she fired. The roar of the gun was deafening, and the car filled with the smell of cordite. Ivar yelped as he ducked.
“Get him?” Nick demanded, taking the corner with brakes squealing.
“He swerved. Bullet grazed his ear.” Coolly, she took aim again, this time on the van’s tires. Her next two shots did not miss. Both front tires blew, and the van swerved and spun out of control. She watched with grim satisfaction as the big vehicle hit the curb, ran onto the sidewalk, and slammed into a light pole.
“Good shooting!” Nick said, sounding vaguely surprised.
“I’m a Warfem. I hit what I aim at.” She twisted around and dropped back into the seat, grunting in pain.
“How badly are you hurt?” Nick asked as the car shot through the night.
She shrugged. “Leg’s pretty bad. Blood loss isn’t good, but most of the knife wounds are minor. I can dance my way through a fight pretty good when I have to, even half-crippled.” Raking a hand through her blood-sticky hair, Riane shot him a look. “So what’s our next move?”
“We run like hell. We don’t dare go back to the apartment; they’ve obviously figured out where it is, since they followed us here.”
Riane shook her head. “No, we’ve got to go back. My T-suit’s there.”
“And there’s a real good chance a hit team is, too. We can’t risk it.”
“Nick, we’ve got no choice. You don’t leave twenty-third-century tech where the natives can find it. That’s the kind of shit that gets Enforcers court-martialed. Even Ivar went back for the Tevan, and he’s not even in the agency anymore. I’ll bet he didn’t even think about it; it was sheer reflex.”
“Fuck.” Nick glared out the windshield, then threw up a hand in disgust. “Fine, we’ll go get the damned suit. I just hope we don’t get killed in the process.”
Despite his considerable misgivings, Nick left Riane in the car with the gun when they reached the apartment. She wasn’t up to climbing the stairs to the second floor with that leg, and he didn’t dare take time to heal it now.
He bounded up the steps three at a time, his nape crawling as his every instinct howled that the aliens—no, Xerans—would attack any minute.
His stomach heaved. He always felt a little sick when he cut loose. It was one thing to kill, particularly since the bastards would have gutted both him and Riane given the chance. But there was something about the unholy joy he felt when he cut loose that bothered him.
What if the next time he started killing, he wasn’t able to stop?
Shut up, Nick. You stopped. You’re fine.
He found the suit draped over a chair and stuffed it into a gym bag. What the hell, as long as he was here, he might as well grab a few things. Being no stranger to speed packing, it took him no time at all to bundle a few pairs of T-shirts, jeans, socks, and jocks into the sack.
Five minutes later, he threw the bag in the back of the car. Riane, gun in her lap, pale as milk, barely looked up as he slid into the driver’s seat. Having left the engine running, Nick hit the gas and took off at a speed just barely legal. He really didn’t want to get pulled over.
“I don’t get it,” he growled the fifth time he checked the rearview mirror only to find it empty. “Where the fuck are they?”
“Maybe they were killed in the crash.”
“We’re not that lucky.”
Hidden behind a sensor shield to keep Riane from spotting it, the courier ’bot followed the car . . . and the shielded nanobot spy hidden in her combat decorations.
The trip to Xer was a bitch. No surprise, considering they had to cross three centuries and four hundred light-years to get there, all while lugging the Tevan’s corpse.
The three first materialized in twenty-third-century Atlanta. A ten-year-old boy on a gravboard gaped at them in wonder. Either the kid had never seen anybody make a Jump before, or a dead Tevan, Ivar, and a Her-gla made a particularly striking combination.
Ignoring the boy, Ivar and the surviving alien made the next Jump in the trip, this one designed to take them one hundred light-years through space.
They materialized on Kardiv next, then went on to Uty, then made two more Jumps, each time materializing on worlds farther and farther toward the edge of the Galactic Union.
Five more Jumps carried them into the heart of the Xeran Empire, to Xer itself.
They materialized at the coordinates they’d been given, an outer courtyard of the Cathedral Fortress. The first thing Ivar saw when the sickening dazzle of the Jump faded was an armored guard with a quantum sword, standing less than a meter away. The glowing blade made a musical chime as the guard lifted it. “Prepare to be searched,” the man snarled.
The Her-gla growled something guttural at him. Ivar told her to shut the fuck up, and she subsided sullenly. He wasn’t real thrilled either, but considering how thoroughly they’d screwed the mission, they were in no position to get pissy. Particularly since there was a good chance they could end up as dead as the Tevan; the Victor was not exactly known for his forgiving nature.
So they endured the searches. A body tube arrived, and the Tevan was loaded into it with no ceremony at all. Finally a team of armed priests arrived to escort Ivar and the Her-Gla off to the Cathedral Fortress’s great audience chamber.
Then it was a matter of cooling their heels until the Victor decided to grace them with his glow-in-the-dark presence.
The wait apparently got on the Her-Gla’s nerves as badly as it did Ivar’s, because she spent the entire time clicking her claws until he was seriously tempted to slap her upside her toothy head. Only the realization that she’d probably eat his face made him keep his hand to himself.
Finally the familiar music swelled into thunder, signaling the Victor’s arrival. Ivar felt sweat break out between his shoulder blades.
The sweat became a cold trickle d
own his spine as he recounted the day’s disaster to the god’s pitiless black eyes. He badly wanted to lie, but he knew the Victor would sense it. And he had heard enough to know the Xeran’s idea of atonement was even worse than his idea of upgrading.
“The little bastard was dancing around the Her-Gla as if he was scared of her,” Ivar said, forgetting his fear as he got into the frustrating details of his story. “Then he realized that little bitch Riane was about to get whacked. And all of a sudden . . .” He shook his head. “That fucking arm thing of his started glowing. He hit the Her-Gla, and she just sailed off like—”
The Her-Gla interrupted with a rapid-fire stream of guttural protest.
“Silence!” the Victor snapped at her, without turning those black eyes away from Ivar. “I have no interest in thy excuses. Continue, traitor.”
Ivar wanted to grind his teeth at that “traitor,” but he knew better. “Then he went after the Tevan, and I tried to stop him. Sparks just came pouring out of that arm gem, and he started glowing like a damned laser torch. And when he hit me . . . I’ve fought Tevans, Warlords in riaat, Rivarian combat ’bots—you name it—and I have never been hit like that. He shouldn’t have been that strong. He just shouldn’t. And then damned if he didn’t drive my knife right through the Tevan’s chest plate. That blade wasn’t rated to penetrate combat armor. I have no fucking idea how he did it.”
The Victor smiled, a tight curve of his glowing lips. “I do.” He leaned down to look into Ivar’s eyes. Ivar fought the urge to back away. “So he called more power because the girl was in danger?”
Ivar nodded cautiously. “That’s the way it looked to me. Which would make her his Achilles’ heel.”
“Yesssss. It does seem that way.” Those black eyes narrowed. “However, I am not particularly happy with your performance on this mission. I think you need a bit more . . . power.”
Oh, shit.
Riane rested her forehead against the car’s cool window. She felt as if she swam in a stew of exhaustion, weakness, and the kind of dull lack of sensation she associated with her comp’s blocking a great deal of pain.
Worse still was the sense of defeat. The Tevan had beaten her. If not for Nick, she’d be dead.
You’re not the warrior your father was.
No. No, she wasn’t. True, Baran Arvid would have had trouble with the Tevan, but in the end her father would have defeated the big mercenary. She, on the other hand, had let him break her freaking leg.
Moron. Clumsy. Stupid. Moron.
If Nick hadn’t appeared like an avenging angel from one of her mother’s stories—glowing, for the Mother’s sweet sake . . . “Where’d you learn to fight like that?”
He shot her a worried look, then managed a smile. “Well, I’ve been taking martial arts classes ever since I can remember. Trouble is, we kept having to move, which made it really hard to learn. I got so desperate I started using my powers to absorb the knowledge I needed.”
She lifted her head off the cool glass and stared at him. “Absorb? How?”
Nick shrugged. “I’d find someone with the abilities I needed, and I’d tell them what I needed to know and why.”
“You’d just tell them. That you were being stalked by aliens. And they believed you?” Many people in this time didn’t think life on other planets was even possible.
He snorted. “If I want to be believed, I’m believed. Then I ask them whether they’ll let me draw the experience I need from their minds.”
“Do they ever say no?” Can they say no?
“Sometimes.”
“What does this . . . process do to them?”
“Nothing. I don’t drain the memories. I just use the Stone to implant those techniques in my own brain. Of course, then I have to practice like hell so I can incorporate them, which usually takes a couple of months. But that’s still faster than spending years studying. And it works. I’ve learned everything from the operation of financial markets to aikido that way.”
Riane contemplated the idea, decided it wasn’t so alien after all. “So it’s kind of like an EDI.”
“A what?”
“Educational data implant. It’s a medical technique that implants information directly into the brain. Allows people to learn a skill in minutes instead of years.”
“Yeah, basically.”
“So if they say no, what do you do?”
He shrugged. “Same thing I do if they say yes, except for absorbing the abilities. I make them forget about me. As far as they’re concerned, none of it ever happened.”
Riane shook her head. “That’s a scary set of abilities.”
Nick shot her a pointed look. “Would be if I misused them.”
Question was, where the hell had those powers come from? She kept circling back to the Sela—and Charlotte Holt. Charlotte was a Xeran, but her abilities had been different. She’d been able to transport herself through time, yet she hadn’t seemed to have the pure, raw power Nick had.
Could she have been his mother?
Of course, the Charlotte Riane had encountered had appeared to be barely thirty in the year 2008. Nick appeared to be around that now, and it was what, 2009 . . . ?
Time travel. What if she traveled back in time to give birth to him? “Oh, Mother Goddess, I really am a moron!”
“Okay, that’s it.” Nick took the nearest exit ramp, then veered off down a dark country road.
She gave him a wary look. What did he have in mind now?
• 16 •
Nick pulled onto the shoulder of the road and turned off the engine. A meadow stretched away to the left, ringed by trees. The moon rose fat and full, edging every weed and leaf in silver.
Riane tensed, feeling disoriented. Blood loss was getting to her. The entire car smelled like copper, and her clothes were sticky, glued to her wounds. “What? What are you going to do?”
“What the hell do you think?” He got out. She watched as he walked around the BMW, pulled open her door, and crouched on the ground beside the car. “You,” he told her, “have a broken leg and way too much blood loss. I don’t know what all your little nanothings are doing, but you’re about to get a dose of Nicky’s special magic.”
She sighed, feeling weary and discouraged. “I won’t argue with you.”
“Good, ’cause I would ignore your ass if you did.” He touched her leg with gentle hands and frowned. “That’s not a good break, Riane. There’s a lot of damage and swelling. Oh, hell, I should have pulled over a lot earlier.” He cupped his fingers over bloody leather. “It doesn’t hurt?”
Riane shrugged. “My comp does a really good job with pain.”
“Again, good. Healing something like this isn’t going to be any fun.” He frowned deeply as green sparks poured out of his palms and began to dance over her leg like fireflies. A sensation that reminded her of ants crawling began to swarm up her thigh. Muscles jerked and shivered, with no command at all from her. Something shifted, and she gasped.
“That hurt?”
“No.” She ground her teeth. It didn’t, but deep inside the leg she could feel something weird happening.
Green light swirled in his eyes, hypnotic and alien. She had the feeling he was looking inside her, as if her skin had gone transparent. The flesh on the nape of her neck chilled.
“You did well in that fight,” he told her absently. “I was impressed.”
“You must be joking.”
Nick lifted his head to stare at her. “You had a broken leg, and you were fighting a guy more than eight feet tall—from your knees. And holding him off. That’s pretty damned impressive. . . . Fuck. Hold on. I need to align this bone.”
He wrapped both hands around her thigh and yanked, hard. Riane managed to swallow a startled yelp. Sweat broke out on her forehead. “I’d still be dead if you hadn’t intervened.”
“That doesn’t make it any less impressive.”
“I shouldn’t have let him break the damned leg. Clumsy.” Her head was swimming,
and she closed her eyes, swallowing hard. Her stomach rolled in an alarming way. “I’m just not the warrior my father is.” Another ferocious jerk, and she ground her teeth. “Being half-human”—she stopped to gasp—“doesn’t exactly help. Plus, I’m not a real Warfem.”
“A what?” He seemed to be concentrating on the leg, his tone distracted.
“A Warfem. Female warrior. Genetically engineered, with computer implants. I’ve got the implants, but I’m not genetically engineered. My dad is genetically engineered . . . but he and Mother . . . had me the old-fashioned way.” She was babbling, but she didn’t care. There were some seriously unpleasant things going on in her body. “I was one of a handful of kids on Vardon who weren’t genengineered.”
“Really? What was that like?”
Riane suspected he wasn’t really listening, so she was more honest than she normally would have been. “Kind of sucked, because you know”—she drew in a hard breath as something seemed to wrench and tear—“I’m ugly.”
He jerked his head up and stared at her incredulously. “What did you say?”
Panting, she looked at him. “Ugly. I’m ugly.”
His jaw dropped. “Are you fishing for compliments? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. You’re gorgeous.”
Riane shook her head. “You don’t know. You’re not from Vardon. Mother refused to put me in the Warrior’s Creche because she and Dad wouldn’t be allowed to see me. So I went to school with the children of the Femmats and Hommes.”
He shook his head and went back to work. Once again, sparks began to flow from his palms. “Which are what?”
“Vardon’s aristocracy. Genetically engineered for beauty and intelligence. Those kids were . . . exquisite.” She stopped to pant. “Every one of them was like . . . a work of art in flesh and bone. And me . . .” Bone grated sickeningly, and she swallowed hard. “My nose is too long, my jaw is too square, and I’m not even going to talk about my mouth. They really made fun of my mouth.”
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