by dark wind
“You weren’t complaining last night, Reaper.”
“No, but I could barely walk this morning.”
She grinned at his exaggeration and leaned back on the sofa, crooking her finger at him.
“You are evil.” He grunted and started toward her, but the computer clicked on
“Commander Cree, your A.I.U. has arrived.”
Caitlin looked toward the door. “A.I.U.?”
“Artificial Intelligence Unit.” He the computer to admit the cybot.
Caitlin sat up and smiled as the gangly A.I.U. waddled into the room. It was a little over five feet tall with a rubbery-looking face that had a smile plastered there that she could only describe as goofy. It bowed to her, bowed to the Reaper, then came closer.
“His name is Raven. I programmed him myself.”
“Does it speak?”
“Raven,” Cree said. “You may greet my lady.”
“‘I saw thee on thou bridal day when a burning blush came o’er thee,’” the cybot said.
Caitlin turned to her husband. “Raven?” she asked, one brow arched.
“‘That blush, perhaps was maiden shame,’” Raven added.
“That’s enough, Raven.”
“‘Nevermore.’”
“Dear God!” Caitlin chuckled. “Poe, Reaper? Edgar Allan Poe?”
“About a year ago, I found an old Terran book of poetry and rather liked the words,” Cree replied with a careless shrug. “I needed a voice for my ‘bot so that’s what I chose.”
“‘Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December...’”
“I said that’s enough, Raven.”
“‘Nevermore.’”
Laughing, Caitlin thought the cybot adorable...until the next morning she woke to find it bending over her bed.
“‘The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep, which is enduring, so be deep!’” Raven chanted as he poked a finger at her bare arm.
“Get out of here!” Caitlin screeched, drawing the covers over her naked breasts.
“‘The lily rolls upon the wave; wrapping the fog about its breast.’”
“Out!”
“‘Nevermore.’”
“What’s going on?” Cree asked as he came in from a trip to the sonic shower.
“Keep that piece of plastiform out of our bedroom, Reaper!” Caitlin demanded, pointing at the A.I.U.
“Raven, were you on last eve?” Cree asked suspiciously. “I thought I deactivated you.”
“‘The moaning and groaning, the sighing and sobbing are quieted now, with that horrible throbbing...’” Raven quipped with a giggle.
“Cree!”
The Reaper’s lips twitched. “Leave us, Raven, and don’t lurk about like that again. Understood?”
“‘Be that word our sign of parting.’” Raven bowed deeply and waddled from the room.
“I won’t have that thing spying on us, Khiershon.”
“I’ll make sure he’s deactivated in the evenings.”
“You’d damned well better!”
The next morning, Caitlin found Raven trundling along behind her as she left her quarters and turned to confront the A.I.U. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“‘From the torrent, or the fountain, from the red cliff of the mountain, from the sun that...’”
“Cree!” Caitlin complained, storming back into her quarters. “That piece of plastic...”
“Is there to protect you.”
“‘Wreathed in myrtle, my sword I’ll conceal like those champions devoted and brave.’”
“Enough, Raven.”
“‘Nevermore.’” Raven grinned.
“I don’t need protection,” Caitlin protested.
“If you intend to work down at the med barracks, he stays with you.” From the look on his handsome face, it was obvious there would be no discussion of the matter.
“Fine!” Caitlin pushed past the cybot and stomped down the corridor. “Keep out of my way, you goober!”
“Watch her closely, Raven,” Cree instructed. “If you need to kill to protect her, you have my permission.”
Raven’s elastic smile hardened. “‘And, in parting from you now, thus much let me avow .’”
“And keep out of her sight as much as possible.”
“Darkness there and nothing more,’” Raven promised.
Cree nodded, dismissing the cybot. He leaned over the desk, studying the schematics of the Titaness on Rysalia Prime, the prison in which the last of his kinsman from this side of the wormhole were housed.
Raven waddled down the hall, picking up speed as he lost sight of his quarry around a corner. Scooting forward in a blur of motion, he nearly plowed into Caitlin’s back as she stood at the intersection of two corridors, trying to decide which way led to the medical facilities.
Caitlin narrowed her eyes. “Do you know where the medical rooms are, you goofy twit?”
“‘The venom thou has pour’d on me-Be still, my spirit!’”
Gritting her teeth, Caitlin rolled her eyes. “Just tell me which way to go, Raven!”
“‘Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche,’” Raven replied and pointed to the left corridor.
“Making friends, are we?”
Caitlin turned to find Helen walking toward her. “My bodyguard,” Caitlin scoffed.
Raven slapped a gangly hand to his chest. “‘Helen, thy beauty is to me like those Nicean barks of yore!’”
Helen’s blond brows lifted. “And who might you be?”
“‘Raven,’” The cybot reached for Helen’s hand and brought it to his rubbery mouth. “‘Ah! Ever I behold thine dreamy, passionate eyes, blue as the languid skies...’”
“Knock it off!” Caitlin warned.
Helen withdrew her hand. “How’d he know my name?”
“Cree programmed him, so I imagine he put in images of friends.”
“‘Therefore thou art not wrong,’” Raven agreed.
“Shut up, Raven.”
“‘Nevermore.’”
“How cute!” Helen laughed. “He’s quoting Poe!”
“Don’t encourage him. Come on before he starts rattling off something else.”
“‘Nevermore.’”
“Is Cree worried about Raphaella causing you trouble?” Helen smiled at Raven, who lowered his head, dug the toe of his rubber boot into the ground like a shy schoolboy and beamed up at her through his plastic eyelashes.
“I’m not worried about that overgrown harpy.”
“You handled her well enough, but...” Helen stopped, putting a hand on her friend’s arm. “Uh oh, Amazeens.”
Two Amazeen warrioresses strode toward them, their backs ramrod straight and their green eyes narrowed into slits.
“Sister, look,” one of them drawled. “It’s Cree’s whore.”
Caitlin tensed, her hand easing down to the dagger she had taken to wearing. “Helen, look,” she mimicked. “It’s the watchdogs of Cree’s castoff.”
The face of the Amazeen who had spoken turned red and her own hand dipped to the blade at her waist.
“Nuella, be still! That is Cree’s ‘bot,” the other Amazeen warned. “He’ll have programmed it to protect her.”
Nuella Amhmadad flicked her gaze over the A.I.U. She caught the penetrating look sent her way from the large black eyes of the cybot then locked stares with Caitlin. “There will come a time, you Terran bitch, when you won’t have the Reaper’s protection.”
“Perhaps. But I’ll always have his love. That’s something your friend will never know.” With her chin high, Nuella pushed past Caitlin and her friend without responding to the insult.
“I’d be very careful of that one,” Helen warned. “I didn’t like the way she glared at you.”
“‘Death was in that poisonous wave,’” said Raven.
“Don’t worry about me. Let’s see if we can’t find something to do in the med barracks.” Raven turned to watch the Amazeens’ departure. His rubbery lips were clamped tightly together and
his stygian scrutiny sharp. Though he was as still as a statue, his data banks were flashing messages to his creator and at the receiving end of those messages, the air turned chill.
Chapter Thirty-One
Iyan stood watchingCaitlin as she and Helen helped the Serenian colonists in the medical facilities. He was leaning against a buttress, his arms crossed as he studied Cree’s woman, marveling at how the colonists deferred to the Terran woman’s authority and medical advice.
“The Terran is fast gaining friends amongst the colonists,” one of the Amazeen warrioresses who had accompanied her princess into exile remarked.
“I believe she has bewitched our Reaper.”
“I am told she is of the same race as the Chaleans,” the warrioress commented. “Perhaps she is one of the Sidhe.”
Iyan smiled. “It wouldn’t surprise me, Dania. She fights like a warrioress.”
“Aye,” Dania Constantine said in a begrudging voice. “That she does. You have to grant her a measure of respect for that reason, if that reason alone.”
“I’m changing my mind where she’s concerned.”
“He will be glad to here it,” the Amazeen said, cocking her head toward the advancing Reaper.
Iyan pushed away from the wall and intercepted his friend. “Did you gain the information we needed from Raphie?”
Khiershon shook his head. “No.”
“She wouldn’t tell you?”
“We didn’t get around to discussing it.”
Iyan grinned. “Matters of the flesh intruded in the conversation I take it?” The warrioress laughed, but when the Reaper turned a frosty glower her way, she hurried away.
Cree stared after the retreating woman for a moment, then put his thumb and forefinger in his mouth and whistled loudly, gaining her attention.
The warrioress spread her hands in question.
“Go check on your mistress, Dania.”
The Amazeen frowned. “Why, milord?”
“Just do it, woman!” Cree snarled. He was uneasy, but didn’t know why.
Iyan turned his attention from the Amazeen to Cree. “What happened?” Khier flung out a dismissive hand. “Nothing,” he said then turned to look at Caitlin. When she smiled at him, he answered the smile with a tender one of his own.
“The two of you fought,” Iyan said with an exasperated sigh. “Khier, you know how Raphie feels. Why do you have to antagonize the woman?”
The Reaper looked away from his wife. “Do you remember the Ionarian woman who joined us at Ghurn colony?”
Iyan shrugged. “Vaguely.”
“She worked in the Titaness for several years if memory serves. She’d be able to tell us what we should know. I’ve used Raphie enough as it is,” Khier snapped. “I wasn’t about to go plundering her mind.” Caitlin smiled again, giving her husband a look that told him she was proud of his decision not to use his powers to take what he wanted from Raphie.
“You’re not going to tell me what happened between you and Raphie.”
“If it were any concern of yours, I would. Considering it is not, you have no reason to know.”
“Ah,” Iyan drawled. “That bad, eh?”
“Go find the Ionarian woman,” Cree ordered, “and mind your own business.”
“You are my business, Reaper,” Iyan said softly.
Cree was about to answer when a loud shriek filled the underground corridors and echoed off the walls.
He turned, his hand going to the dagger at his thigh.
Dania came running into the medical facility. “The princess!” she shouted. “She has been attacked!” Caitlin saw her husband spin around and with Iyan McGregor right behind him, run down the corridor.
She snatched up the medical bag she had brought from The Orion and ran after them, Helen close on her heels.
The sight that greeted Caitlin as she stumbled to a halt outside the door of the Princess Raphaella’s chamber was one that would stay with her for as long as she lived. She watched in shock as Cree lifted Raphaella’s hand, licked at her fingertips, then scooped her up in his arms, Raphaella’s blood saturating the front of his jumpsuit.
“She’s been stabbed in the back,” Cree told her as he laid the unconscious woman on her cot, carefully turning her onto her belly.
Caitlin winced as she saw the jagged tears in the Amazeen woman’s tunic. “Who did this?”
“Anyone could have,” Iyan responded. He was blocking the doorway of the Princess’ chambers, his hand on the dagger at his hip.
“The Princess has enemies among the Serenians,” Dania said from her place beside Cree.
“Not hard to believe,” Caitlin muttered. She pushed her husband out of the way and bent over the unconscious woman. “She’s losing a lot of blood.”
“She will not appreciate you tending her,” Dania warned, looking to Cree.
“Dania is right, Lady. Perhaps you should not-”
An irate voice drown out his words. “Gods-be-damn it, let me through!” the Serenian Chief Healer demanded.
Cree took his wife’s arm and pulled her back, motioning Dania to make room for the Healer.
“You!” the Healer snarled, grabbing Caitlin’s hand. “Help me here.” Cree bit his lip, knowing full well how Raphaella would react to the knowledge that her rival saved her life. He was about to protest, to order Caitlin to come away, when his wife turned to look him in the eye.
“I am a physician, Khiershon. I am sworn to protect life and to sustain it. That is my duty and that is what I am. To stand aside when a life is in danger would be to forsake my honor-bound oath and that I will never do. Is that clear?”
“Aye, beloved.”
“Then stand aside and let me do my job.”
Cree stepped back, taking Dania’s arm and drawing her out of the room with him. He looked at Iyan.
“Stand guard and make sure no one enters.”
Iyan nodded. “Where are you going?”
“We,” Cree said, indicating Dania, “are going after the one who did this.”
“But we don’t know who it was. Where do we start?” asked Dania.
A muscle in Cree’s jaw jumped. “I follow her scent.”
Dania frowned. “How do you know it was a woman?”
“He has the taste of her on his tongue,” Iyan replied.
Caitlin turned from helping the Healer remove Raphaella’s tunic. Her husband was already out of sight.
“What did you mean, Iyan?”
“Raphaella must have scratched her assailant when she was attacked. Cree smelled two different blood types on Raphie and got a taste from her fingernails.”
Caitlin shuddered, remembering the sight of her husband licking the unconscious woman’s fingers. “But how can that help?”
“It is as I told you on The Orion when you gave your blood to Khiershon. He will track the assailant through her DNA. That’s how Reapers find their target. Any blood a Reaper consumes is encrypted into his genetic makeup. It is bookmarked and stored for retrieval.”
“Like a bloodhound,” said the Healer. He chuckled at his joke. “Here, woman. Help me with the laser.” Caitlin took the laser wand thrust at her and bent to the task at hand, but her thoughts were on her husband and the uncanny ability that made him what he was.
Dania risked alook at the infuriated man beside whom she walked. The Reaper’s face was rigid, his golden eyes narrowed. Glancing down at his powerful hands, she was not surprised to see his fingers curled into tight fists, the knuckles bled of color. Although she was a tall woman-6’10” in her bare feet-and possessed a long stride of her own, she could barely keep pace with Khiershon Cree’s heavy tread.
She dared not address him for his formidable expression made it all too clear he would not appreciate the interruption. The way his nostrils flared from time to time, she knew he was searching for the tell-tale scent that would take them to their quarry. When he stopped abruptly at the intersection of three corridors, lifting his head to sniff the air, she st
illed, holding her breath.
“This way,” he growled, indicating the corridor closest to them.
Raphaella’s eyelidsfluttered open. She had difficulty focusing on her visitor, but as the face shifted into clarity, she heaved a sigh. “Has he returned?”
“Not yet,” Caitlin replied.
There was an uncomfortably long moment when neither woman spoke then the Amazeen broke the silence.
“I am told it was your blood that helped me to survive the attack.”
“We just happen to share the same rare type, that’s all.”
“You did not have to share your blood with me.”
“No, I could have let you bleed to death. No one here would have been any the wiser.” Raphaella locked gazes with the Terran woman. “Then why not remain silent and let your rival die?” Caitlin shoved her hands into her pants pockets. “You’re not my rival, Raphaella. I have him. You never did.”
Raphaella flinched and looked away.
“This makes us bloodsisters,” the Princess whispered. “Do you understand the implications of what you did?”
Caitlin opened her mouth to say it meant nothing at all beyond the medical ramifications, but she knew in Raphaella’s culture it meant far more so she did not reply. When the Amazeen turned around to face her, her gaze expectant, Caitlin heaved a long sigh. “Look, Raphaella, you don’t owe me anything.”
“I owe my very existence to you, Caitlin Cree.”
Caitlin drew in a stunned breath. The Amazeen was acknowledging her marriage to Khiershon. From the wounded look in Raphaella’s eyes, Caitlin knew the princess had come to terms with losing Khiershon and was ready to move on.
“I suspect we will never be friends,” said Raphaella, “but we no longer need be mortal enemies, do we?” The Amazeen princess held out her hand.
Caitlin looked down at the other woman’s strong sword hand. She did not hesitate, but took it in her own. “No,” Caitlin replied. “We do not.”
Raphaella smiled crookedly, still gripping the Terran woman’s smaller hand. “He is worth fighting for, though, don’t you agree?”
“Aye, but he doesn’t need to be reminded of that.” Caitlin grumbled and politely withdrew her hand.
