Too Long a Soldier (Kingdom Key Book 3)
Page 45
“I didn’t. She…she made me. I couldn’t stop it.”
Tyler lowered her pants first, and then herself to the toilet seat, and the tears came at once. Her body performed its emptying as she cried in the silence of her own mind. Rovan. Five doses of Rovan and she had somehow survived. The image of Mariah’s dead body, arms sliced from wrist to elbow, bloody mess all over her and the bathtub. Tyler had found her, had been the first to read the barely legible note, had felt Mariah’s pain firsthand through that note. Had experienced the harrowing cravings as if she’d been inside Mariah to feel it herself. She knew all too well what she was in for in the coming hours.
If she could be afraid, she would be terrified.
Silent tears became convulsive with her grief. No human ever quit using Rovan. If they did, they would die from the physical stress of the pain of withdrawal. They were already dying in droves, already doing anything and everything they had to do in order to get the next fix. Eventually, they couldn’t get enough of a fix. Once every three days would become every day, would become every few hours. The body would give out. They’d go insane and kill themselves.
Emotions spent, she heard pounding on the door that broke through her trance-like state. Looking up and around, she wondered where Roc had gone.
“What’s going on in there?!” Jerome shouted.
“Be out in a minute,” she managed, reaching for the toilet paper to clear her nose first.
She struggled to her feet, struggled to get her pants up, hobbled to the sink to brush the fuzz off her teeth. She needed to rinse the brackish taste from the back of her throat. She was so weak and tired that she had to lean on the countertop the entire time. Her hair was a mess. She let the water run to wet her comb and worked out the surface snarls. Finally she trudged to the door and pulled it open.
“Don’t you ever fuckin’ do that again!” Jerome shouted at her.
“Do what?” she answered blankly, unaffected by his outburst. “Where’d you go?” she asked Roc.
“You pushed me out with psychokinesis.”
“I did?”
“Yes, you did,” Jerome backed Roc. “What were you doing in there?”
“Crying,” she replied, hobbling toward the bed. “Cleaned myself up a bit. See the wet hair?”
Landra Ahr stepped forward to assist her. “You don’t remember shoving Roc out of the room?”
“No, I don’t,” she said, and crawled into bed.
She barely reached the pillows before collapsing unconscious. He continued his scans, replaying all readings from the moment she woke.
“Da fuck just happened?” Jerome asked of no one in particular.
“I do not think she was really awake,” Chen said.
“You are correct,” Landra Ahr said. “She was sleep walking from the moment she put her head on Jerome’s chest.”
He replayed the sequence, projecting recorded readings onto the nearest bare wall. “Watch. Here she is talking. Alert, mind almost normal. This is moving to get off the bed. And this is rising to her feet. Notice the drop in brain activity.”
“Dropped like a rock,” Jerome said, more concerned than angry now. “So she really did not know what she did.”
“We will have to be more careful with her for the time being,” Landra Ahr said.
“Damn straight we will. Only me or Landra will be alone with her.”
“Agreed. But even you must be careful, Jerome. She cannot catch you off guard again,” Landra Ahr said.
“When is this nightmare going to end,” Jerome shook his head.
“It may never end,” Chen said. “That is the horror of Rovan.”
With that thought, Jerome covered her with the blanket and lay beside her. The Taveragian stimulant wearing off, he was able to sleep at last. Solid and deep, but all too brief as he was roused by a moan coming from her.
“It is beginning,” Chen said, getting off the corner of the bed and reaching for the large, dark scorpion.
“Do you really think that will help?” Jerome asked. “I’ve heard the pain is excruciating.”
“It is caused by contractions of the stomach muscles that are three times harder than the worst birthing labor.”
“Okay, that tells me nothing,” Jerome said, watching his Master grind a piece of scorpion venom sack to powder.
“You will understand, Disciple.”
Understand he did, only forty five minutes later, as he watched silent tears roll from her eyes. Twinges minutes apart had been uncomfortable but tolerable. They had become gripping contractions that seized her entire midsection all at once, with no warning. She was pulled into a fetal position so tight that her knees were pressed to her breasts. Each pain lasted from thirty seconds to three minutes, with no pattern to how long or how frequent.
Heart-wrenching to watch, knowing all he could do was hold her from behind and be there for her when it released her. He’d stopped with the encouraging words and suggestions to breathe. She couldn’t hear him anyway. He wiped her face with a small towel while she gulped for air, the cessation of pain as sudden and unpredictable as the onset. She poured out sweat that smelled alkaline.
Chen spooned his tea into her mouth again and followed that with two ounces of water, trying to keep her hydrated as she sweated out bucketfuls that drenched her bed.
She was quiet a moment, nearly asleep, and the next pain hit. The room zoomed away until she didn’t know or care where she was. Pain was her world, hurricane the only thing she heard. She could not feel Jerome’s arms, the bed under her, Chen’s firm hand on her leg. Her hands crushed whatever was in them, muscles locking in place for the duration of the contraction. The gruff grunts and long moans were as involuntary as the clenching of her gut. It ended, leaving her sobbing a hot river of tears and sweating another bucketful.
Solomon’s torture device had not been this bad. At this moment, she would happily trade that for this and tell him to do his worst.
Jerome clenched his jaw against his own emotions, brought nearly to tears at being forced to listen and know her torture and be helpless to do a thing for her. Darkness in the bathroom door caught his attention and he looked up to see Roc leaning against the door jamb. Arms wrapped around herself, one hand over her mouth, crying softly to see the suffering of her best friend in the galaxy.
Perched on the wooden footboard, invisible but knowing Landra Ahr knew he was there, Hades enveloped her mind when the pains came. He took her to the black hole of peace to ease her suffering as best he could. As the pains ebbed away, he released her from the blackness.
He could do no more without endangering his place in the pentagon around her.
“Julian just contacted me,” Roc suddenly said. “He’s on his way with something he says will help.”
“About fucking time,” Jerome spat.
“Incoming,” Landra Ahr said, his sensors picking up a concentration of energy filling in by the window seat.
Julian appeared with a second being, a magnificent feline humanoid with gray velvet for skin and yellow eyes that sparkled from within as he appraised the dim room and its contents. Eyes that held meaning and settled almost immediately on the motionless woman on the bed.
In a flash, Jerome was face to face with the cat-man. “Who’s this?”
“That is Shestna,” Landra Ahr said, stepping forward from his post. “I asked Julian to tell him of our situation and ask if he could help. Welcome to Earth. I am Landra Ahr.”
The feline and the mechanoid shared a mutual nod.
“What’s a Shestna?” Jerome challenged.
“The one she married twice in her previous life, as I am told,” Shestna said in perfect but oddly accented English. “I have brought a medicine to stop the pain.”
“We were told there ain’t one.”
“For humans there is nothing,” Shestna said to the volatile Dragon he’d been warned about. “We developed one for Sistarians three hundred years ago when a similar invasion occurred there.”
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Jerome’s eyes slammed onto Julian with the silent demand.
“I did not know about it myself until a little while ago or we’d have been here sooner,” Julian apologized.
“It is a very closely guarded secret,” Shestna said. “If the general public of Sistair knew, more would try to obtain our Rovan. If you will let me pass, Mr. Black, I will tend to her and this can be over.”
No threat posed but recognizing whose turf this was and respectful of that. Glaring hard, Jerome took one turning step to the right to clear the path. Shestna walked an even, unhurried pace around the bed, his unreadable gaze on Tyler.
“Please open a window. This room stinks like a Rovan Den,” he said with a bite of distain.
“Will one suffice?” Roc asked, opening the window seat.
“It will,” he replied.
Lowering to the bed, he removed a small black case from the inside of his fancy long coat and placed it on the table. Coat off next and laid neatly across the foot of the bed, he folded up his left shirt sleeve. He slid an arm behind Tyler. In one confident motion, he pushed her onto her back on his forearm, head in his hand and dragged her straight. Head and shoulders on the pillow, he picked up a hand to look at her fingertips.
“Is there anything you require?” Roc asked, stopping Jerome’s protest of the rough treatment.
“More light,” he said, placing her hands on the bed.
Roc went to the wall to turn on the overhead lamps, ignoring Jerome’s hot gaze. “Will that do?”
“Yes, thank you,” he said, pulling an eyelid up to look horizontally across the surface of her eye.
Jerome heard a measure of relief in the release of breath, wondered what the eyes would have meant.
“Her eyes are clear. That is good,” he said as if he knew the question.
Right palm resting across her forehead, left over her heart, he was motionless a good ten seconds.
“What has she been given?” he asked suddenly. “This is artificial unconsciousness.”
He sat facing her, reached for the case.
“A mixture of sedating herbs,” Chen replied from his post at the foot of the bed. “Including ground scorpion venom.”
“What is scorpion? I do not know this word.”
“It’s like a Keeska-roke,” Julian said.
“Ah. Very good.”
He opened the case and laid it on the bed in front of him. Metal vials and what could only be a syringe. He selected a needle and twisted it onto the plunger.
“When did she last have your concoction?”
“About fifty minutes ago. The mix is very strong but she overcomes it too easily,” Chen explained. “I cannot make it more potent or give her more for at least two hours.”
“How much does she weigh?”
All eyes went to Jerome.
“About a buck twenty.”
“Say again?” Shestna asked, shaking a small metal vial.
“One hundred twenty pounds Earth,” Landra Ahr reiterated. “That would be a forty stone in the Language of the Landers.”
Shestna spoke under his breath in his own language, figuring the math for the first dose. Syringe into the membrane, he pulled carefully to the exact line he wanted.
“The squeamish should look away,” he announced, and waited several seconds.
No one moved.
He inserted the short needle into an abdominal muscle and injected about one third of the serum. Out it came and in again into the corresponding muscle on the other side of her belly button. One more time, the last third went in two inches above the belly button. One finger to the spot above, finger and thumb on either side, and he massaged deeply in small circles that steadily widened.
Turning to his syringe, held carefully upright and away from himself, he twisted off the needle and tucked it into a vial at the far end of the case. Plunger unit into place, the case closed and on the table and he looked her a moment.
He took a small knife from his pocket, flicking it open in a smooth motion Jerome took note of. He picked up her hand and deftly cut off the thumb nail.
“What are you doing?” Roc asked quickly.
“Removing her most lethal weapons,” he replied.
All five cut off, he swiftly filed the edges even and flat and moved on to the other hand.
“Why didn’t I think of that?” Jerome said. “Would have saved me some grief. You’re too good at that.”
“It is customary on Voran for the male to maintain the claws of his mates to his preferences. I have known my share.”
Finished with the task, he looked on her. He leaned on his hand on the other side of her legs, too familiarly close for Jerome’s liking, and spoke in his own language as if the people around him were not there.
“Ahhh, Femina. Look what you get yourself into now. Much I am told I find difficult to believe. I look at you and how can I not know I am told truths?” He lifted a hand to look at the blue bead that proved she had been his wife. “I approved of this wearing? I left the Administration for you? You gave up your everything for me?”
Roc looked warily to Jerome to gauge his reaction to this intimacy. His normally expressive face was uncharacteristically blank. Only the clenching of his fists betrayed his anger and jealousy at the sudden appearance of this most important lover from Tyler’s past.
Shestna stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. “Julian tells me you carried my child and it was taken from you. A girl.”
Familiar, long ago voice she’d longed to hear for ages. Familiar touch of soft fuzz. Familiar energy. Long ago scent. Her eyes popped open and she stared at what she saw. Could her eyes be trusted?
“I am real, Femina,” he smiled in Voranian.
She was sitting up, holding him impossibly tight. His arms went around her in comfort but not so tight. She cried harder than Jerome had seen before. Unable to watch, he turned smartly away toward the open window. Here he was half a minute from telling her how he felt and the man she married twice shows up to steal her away.
Her sobs stopped suddenly, that same gut-wrenching moan coming from her.
“Yes, yes,” Shestna whispered, lowering her to the bed. “One more pain. Maybe two. It will be done for a while and I can help you with other things.”
She curled onto her side, legs drawing up convulsively.
“I thought your medicine was supposed to help,” Jerome said sharply, lying behind her once more.
Julian had warned Shestna of Jerome’s unpredictability, among other things. He responded with calm tones.
“It does take time. The one or two contractions of the muscles moves the serum to where it needs to be and it all works together to stop the pains,” he said more to Tyler than to Jerome.
The pain released her and she lay gasping on the pillow. Shestna captured her attention with a finger to her cheek. She turned onto her back, belly becoming icily numb. Her eyes on him bore an uncommon intensity and she spoke in his language.
“You are not the man I knew but you act as though I am the woman you knew. You’ve been dead for me for a very long time, Sta.”
Jerome moved away to the chair.
“You are newly dead to me, Femina.”
“Please don’t call me that,” she whispered, tears sliding from the corners of her eyes and shoulders cringing at the sound of the pet name she’d heard so often eons ago.
“I do not know what transpired between you and my counterpart in your Home Time. What I do know is that you have much to do and you’re not going to get it done if you are in bed.” He smiled, taking her hand. “Come. Let us walk a moment.”
“I’m too tired.”
“No refusals. The more you move, the faster you will regain your strength. Come now.” He tugged her hand until she acquiesced and slowly left the bed.
He helped her, offering his arm for her to brace herself on as they walked step after hobbling step. In a few minutes she was able to stand more upright and walk with more strength.
Chen and Julian came down after a moment. Jerome saw Julian and went back out to the deck, furious and not wanting to start a fight.
“Seems her bedroom isn’t the only place I am the fifth wheel,” Julian remarked.
“Don’t mind him,” Chen dismissed, taking a seat at the breakfast table. “His ego smarts from the appearance of an unexpected rival. One cannot argue with the dead.”
“Yes, of course. May I sit?”
“You are always welcome here. What should we expect from the Rovan addiction at this point?”
“I cannot tell you,” Julian had to say. “Watch for behavior that just isn’t Tyler. By now you know what’s right and what’s not with her. If she’s acting wrong, keep an eye on her for a while. I’m more concerned with her pyrokinesis. Try to shield her from things that will make her react suddenly with anger until she gets it under control.”
Jerome came in, sitting in his usual seat at the head of the table. “Can you tell me where the shit’s made?”
“No. I don’t know where it’s based,” Julian had to say.
“A space station full of telepaths and technology can’t find one alien on this little shit planet?”
“I cannot use that technology without raising suspicion. He has technology too. K’Tran ships are equipped with Perimeter Scan Inhibitors.”
“What’s that?” Jerome asked, unafraid to show his ignorance of advanced technology.
“Exactly what it sounds like. A series of posts set up around the perimeter of what you want to hide. It prevents scans of what is contained within that space. It works best in open, otherwise unremarkable spaces. If used in the city, for example, you’d see the odd blank spot.”
“But out in the farmland, no one would notice a section of nothingness on a scan,” Jerome nodded, getting it.
“It also inhibits psionic scans. Anyone with average ability would not be able to find him so long as he remains within the perimeter.”