by Alysh Ellis
“It’s not that simple,” the captain retorted. “Hopewood’s headquarters are in the middle of a city. We can’t risk the Dvalinn being discovered and we prefer not to endanger innocent human lives.” He lowered his voice. “Our first priority is to protect our people. Before you kill Hopewood and those who work with him, you have to find out how those weapons work and whether he or his physicist has made the information known to anyone outside the circle of Gatekeepers. Once you have that information, you are to take them all out in the quickest, most expedient way possible. This threat must be totally eradicated.”
Although the captain spoke matter-of-factly, his shifting eyes, refusing to meet Huon’s, revealed how much more there was to this task.
“I know you picked me for this mission because I don’t look like the rest of the Dvalinn,” Huon said bitterly, “but that doesn’t mean I can just walk into Hopewood’s headquarters and ask him everything I need to know. Even if I broke in without being caught, I wouldn’t know what to look for or where. How am I supposed to get that information? Just because I don’t look like a Dvalinn doesn’t mean I’m capable of using torture.”
A small spot on the cuff of the captain’s jacket seemed to occupy all his attention. His finger rubbed over it restlessly. “No Dvalinn can do that. No one expects it of you. You will…” His voice faltered and he cleared his throat. “Our reconnaissance suggests the most vulnerable target would be Hopewood’s physicist, who both lives in an apartment above the Gatekeeper headquarters and knows all the technical details of the weapons. Your orders are to access that information.” He coughed. “By, ah…forming an intimate relationship with the weapons developer.”
Huon felt the heat rise in his cheeks and fought to get his breathing under control. “You want me to have sex? With a human? A human male?”
The captain’s cheeks reddened. “If necessary…you may have to use sex, yes. The future of the Dvalinn rests on this mission. You are young and I assume the idea of sex per se is not abhorrent to you. As for sex with a human… Many humans look much as you do. You may find you enjoy being with someone who does not feel you are…how did you put it? Too pale, too skinny, too weird. And we do not forget you are Dvalinn, regardless of your appearance. We would not ask you to have sex with a male. No Dvalinn could contemplate such a thing. Hopewood’s physicist is a female.” He glanced at the orders he held in his hand. “Her name is Judie Scanlon. She is twenty-three years old, which in human terms puts her quite near to your age.”
Huon licked his dry lips. “You want me to meet her, seduce her, steal her information and use her to gain entry to Hopewood’s headquarters.” He glared at Tybor. “I don’t recall you including this in my training.”
“My orders were to train you to go up against Hopewood,” Tybor said through gritted teeth. He pulled himself off the wall and took a step forward, confronting the captain face-to-face. “No one mentioned that Gatekeepers now work in groups and I certainly wasn’t told about this insane plan for Huon to stay above ground and whore himself out to a human woman.” His grim voice reverberated in the room. “When I first saw the orders I thought sending a stripling like Huon up against Hopewood was doomed to failure, but he surprised me and turned out to be the best warrior I’ve ever trained. If anyone could kill Hopewood, he could.”
The unexpectedness of Tybor’s praise sent a wave of pleasure and pride through Huon but before he could say anything, Tybor went on, “But no one, no matter how good, could do all this on his own. It’s a death sentence. And expecting him to do it by seducing a human female… It won’t work.”
Huon agreed. The idea of him seducing anyone would be laughable if it weren’t so close to disastrous.
The captain took a step back, away from Tybor. “The circumstances justify it.”
“There has to be another way,” Tybor insisted.
“There’s not,” the captain said with finality.
Huon ignored the confrontation between the two men and tried to focus his swirling thoughts. “If I… Once I succeed in…ah…infiltrating the group, do I return here daily to report, or only when I’ve found new information?”
“No. That won’t be possible.” The captain ran a finger around the collar of his shirt. “Before you are taken to the surface your telekinetic abilities—including the power to transport to and from the Dvalinn domain—will be stripped from you.”
“What?” Huon and Tybor spoke in unison.
Tybor’s head snapped up, his color rising in his rage. “This wasn’t in the orders. You can’t remove his ability to transport.”
The captain’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down but he held his ground. “If he can’t transport Hopewood can’t use him to attack us, even if he does somehow identify him.”
“If he can’t transport he can’t escape. You have to leave him that ability.” Tybor looked hard at Huon for the first time. “I would never have agreed to train him if I’d known.”
Huon shook his head, unable to answer. There was more Tybor didn’t know.
The captain picked up his hat and put it on. “When his mission is completed, we’ll send a team to bring him back. Your task was to train Huon to be fit for that mission and you have done that. Nothing else is your concern.” He turned to Huon. “Come with me. You need to be provided with clothes, money, instructions on how to procure temporary accommodation and notes on ways to arrange an introduction to Judie Scanlon.”
He held out a hand, waiting for Huon to precede him out of the door. Huon walked into the corridor. Behind him he heard Tybor cursing. Huon stopped.
“I left something behind. I’ll be straight back.”
Tybor stood facing the cold rock wall but he turned when Huon reopened the door. His dark eyes looked troubled.
Huon gave him a shaky smile. “Don’t worry too much. I don’t think I’m ever going to meet Brian Hopewood.”
Tybor’s arched brow lifted. “No?”
Huon shrugged. “For this mission to succeed, I have to seduce Judie Scanlon into a sexual relationship.”
Tybor’s lips tightened and he nodded.
Huon wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know how that’s supposed to happen…because…well…”
He turned and started to walk out again, speaking over his shoulder as he pulled the door closed once more. “I’m a virgin. I’ve never had sex with anyone.”
Chapter Two
Tybor paced the room, up and down. He turned, measuring out the distance again, legs driving. He tried to stop, tried to sit still and think, but his body refused to obey. The only way to contain the rage, to keep from howling or tearing at the walls, letting the solid rock shred his fingers, replacing mental anguish with physical pain, was to keep moving.
The words in his head pounded out the same relentless rhythm as his feet. Too many men. Too many dead. Too young. Too young.
Over the years he had sent hundreds of young men to do battle against huge odds, knowing some of them would fail and die. The enemy Huon faced was the most dangerous Gatekeeper the humans had ever produced. Tybor had hoped that, with enough training, Huon would have some chance of going up against Hopewood alone and surviving. But once headquarters had made the homicidal decision to prevent Huon from transporting and to send him up against a group of Gatekeepers, nothing Tybor could have done would have been enough. Trapped on the surface, alone, Huon had no chance. He would be killed.
The image of Huon’s pale body, the glow of life dulled, all that beautiful, defiant energy snuffed out, pushed Tybor to his knees. He hunched over, hands clasped above his close-cropped head. Slowly, a conviction stole over him, sank into his skin, pounding through his veins with every beat of his heart. If Huon had to die, he should not have to die alone.
Rising to his feet, Tybor squared his shoulders and straightened his spine. His feet resumed their relentless march, this time out of the door, up a set of stairs, straight past a nervous sentry who saluted and muttered a greeting, past a uniformed secretary and
up to the captain’s office. He knew he had been allowed to proceed only because of his reputation and current position. He marched in to face the captain before the secretary had time to remember he didn’t have an appointment.
Slamming open the door, ignoring the way it bounced back off the wall, he strode forward, braced his hands on the captain’s desk and loomed over him, threatening and determined. “Send me to the surface.”
The officer’s head tilted upward but his eyes skittered to the side. “That is not in our current plans for you.”
“Fuck the current plans. Huon can’t take out the Gatekeeper group alone.”
The captain leaned back, his hands behind his head, the taut tendons in his neck and a gulping movement belying the casual pose. “You’ve done your best to equip him for the task. If he succeeds…excellent. If he fails…he’s expendable.”
Tybor reached over, grabbed the captain’s precisely knotted military tie and jerked the man forward. “I’ve had enough! I’m a soldier and you won’t let me fight. I refuse to cower in the safety of the Underworld while you continue to send the men I train to the surface to die.” The man’s face turned a mottled red but Tybor didn’t ease his grip. “Huon is the best warrior I’ve trained in five hundred years, but no one could carry out this task alone and have any hope of succeeding.”
The captain’s frantic gaze fixed on the tie clenched in Tybor’s fist. Tybor opened his hand and the captain, pale and silent, flopped back into his chair. Tybor swallowed his disgust. If the man had fought back—if he’d threatened or even pulled rank—Tybor would have had more respect for him, but this was a bureaucrat, not a soldier. Huon, with his slim build, pale skin and strength, was a better man than the captain would ever be and yet he’d called him expendable.
“I’m going to the surface to help him,” Tybor stated flatly. He no longer cared what the captain thought.
“You’ll go nowhere. I’ll have you locked up and stripped of your powers if you try.”
Tybor raised his eyebrows. “You’d have to catch me first.”
With a silver shimmer he transported himself back to his quarters. By the time the captain had pulled himself together and called someone to arrest him, Tybor would have stuffed a duffle bag full of the chemicals needed to make the Dvalinn fireballs, escaped to the surface and melted into the human crowd. He didn’t give a fuck if he looked like a Dvalinn. He’d take the risk. Plenty of surface dwellers looked the same.
Hopewood and his cabal were welcome to take him on. Smashing the Gatekeepers to pieces would not only save the rest of the Dvalinn, it might calm the rage blistering Tybor’s guts. Once the Gatekeepers were dead, everything would be back to normal and Tybor could forget about stupid, reckless, vulnerable trainees.
On the table, Huon’s briefing papers lay curled up in a disordered scroll. Tybor picked them up, smoothed them out with a sweep of his hand. His lips curved in a humorless smile. Hopewood could have set up his cabal in any of the teeming modern metropolises of the upper world, where Tybor’s five-hundred-year absence from the surface would be a severe handicap. But by some astonishing act of providence, Hopewood had made his headquarters in the one human city that had barely changed in half a millennium. Venice.
* * * * *
Narrow black boats bobbed on the clear, bright turquoise of the ocean. Platinum sparkles bounced off the wind-rippled surface into Huon’s dazed eyes. He lowered his lids to shield himself from the vast sense of space and light and airiness. He stepped backward into an arched portico, the shadows and solid walls restoring his sense of equilibrium, making him feel enclosed and safe. Cool stone at his back stopped him and he slowly lifted his eyelids. He sidled into a dark corner and took stock of his situation.
The last thing he remembered was wrenching, tearing pain as the drug he’d been ordered to swallow worked through him. He’d slammed into unconsciousness on a wave of agony and woken standing on the promenade, staring out toward the islands of the Laguna di Venezia.
Rolling his shoulders, he centered his weight evenly on the balls of his feet, took a deep breath and waited for his head to clear. Everything felt normal. His lungs filled and emptied with efficient regularity. He’d already discovered that his legs worked and here in this sheltered corner, his eyes took in all the details he needed. Things looked flat and to his Underworld-accustomed eyes, the distance blurred into a mosaic jumble of colors, but he’d expected that and knew it would pass.
The drug that had stripped away his ability to dematerialize had apparently left no other lasting symptoms.
Tybor’s demanding training regime had prepared him to operate when he was tired and disoriented. He could push through this, do what he had to do. His inability to transport home was a greater worry, but he shoved it aside. If he succeeded in his task, someone would come for him. If he failed to infiltrate Hopewood’s group, as long as he survived, he hoped they would eventually bring him home. If he confronted Hopewood and died, it didn’t matter what happened to his body. If it rotted, neglected on the surface, he’d never know.
Kill the enemy or be killed himself. He knew it and accepted it. And yet when he held his hands in front of his face, a fine tremor shook them and he knew it was a sign of fear. He had to get to know Judie Scanlon, convince her to trust him. And once he did, he had to seduce her, find out what she knew, then kill her. Huon swallowed the acid rush of bile that rose in his throat.
The Dvalinn were not a vicious people—they did not kill indiscriminately. With sick certainty he knew it was not only his pale appearance that had singled him out for this mission. The authorities would not ask a true Dvalinn to soil his spirit with this task. Instead they would let the despised loner kill the first person who ever gave him a soft or tender touch.
The memory of hot sun and the gentle stroke of a hard hand made his skin tighten and his pulse race, but he thrust it away. The gesture had meant nothing more to Tybor than a final salute to one who was about to die.
The man who had given it had driven him beyond what he’d believed he could endure, pushed him, made him rise above himself. He expected Huon to do what he was trained for. No matter who he had to kill, who he had to have sex with, he would not let Tybor down.
He blinked again to clear his vision and looked around at the city he and Tybor had studied in maps and drawings, night after night, theory lessons going on until his eyes had ached and his throat rasped with tiredness.
With his head resting against the warm stone wall he ran the information through his mind once more. He knew where he was. The island directly in front of him was Murano. If he followed the tortuous twist of canals, bridges and cobbled streets he would reach the Piazza San Marco and the Basilica. In the other direction the Grand Canal wound sinuously, lined with decaying but hauntingly beautiful palazzos…in one of which Brian Hopewood had set up his headquarters.
Huon knew Venice, knew it with a deep and intimate knowledge he’d gained from Tybor, who had long ago made prolonged visits, rejoicing in the polyglot mix of the populace. If the Venetians Tybor met at that time had known he was other than human, they had not denounced him. Five hundred years later, deep in the Underworld, Tybor had recounted his personal experiences and vivid memories to an attentive Huon, bringing the city to life far more vividly than the maps and diagrams he had memorized.
When Huon pushed off the wall and out into the tourist-crowded streets, heading toward the railway station, he walked with the confidence of familiarity. Fondamenta Santa Lucia offered a range of cheaper hotels and once he had settled into his room he could prepare to enact his plan to meet Judie Scanlon.
In the cool, early-morning air, the smell of coffee overlaid the salt tang of the sea and the slight scent of mud and rotting seaweed. People were beginning to pour into the streets, going about their business or heading to cafés for leisurely breakfasts. Someone jostled him, muttered a swift apology and moved on without sparing Huon a second glance, as if his pale slenderness were nothing out of the
ordinary. And it wasn’t. Although he’d been told, although he’d been specially picked for this mission because of it, he hadn’t truly understood until now.
The press of humans that swirled around him—men, women, children—possessed a range of skin colors. Some were brown, like the vast majority of his kind, some darker, some paler, but many were as pale as Huon himself, with the same straw-blond hair, the same blue eyes. These people laughed and walked and greeted others and were greeted in return. No matter what else he discovered about humans on this mission, this one fact made him see them in a positive light. Humans not only came in a range of shades, they seemed to accept them all.
Huon shook his head. How could be they be so accepting of this, yet give rise to a group determined to kill the Dvalinn—every last one of them?
There ought to be a way to bring the two races together, a way that avoided the massacres of the past and the killings Huon was required to commit. There ought to be a way…but Huon’s role was clear. Until someone found a way to a peaceful solution, he and other warriors like him had to be prepared to fight to the death to protect his people from destruction. He had Gatekeepers to kill.
The route he’d memorized took him over arched stone bridges, across narrow waterways where he had to duck under rows of washing spread from one side to the other, and finally across a white bridge over the Grand Canal leading to the railway station. He followed the instructions he’d been given before he left and diverted inside, walking up to a bank of lockers for left luggage. Taking a key from his pocket, he opened a locker and pulled out a large suitcase. Still following orders, he stuck his hand in a zipped side compartment and extracted a bundle of currency and a key with the address of his hotel and room number written on it. He shoved them in the side pocket of his pants and, with the suitcase clasped in one hand, he left the station.
The Fondamenta Santa Lucia wound along parallel to the canal. Cafés, souvenir shops and stalls lined the sides of the street. Bright masks caught his eye, painted in clear colors, decorated with feathers and sequins. He leaned in close to inspect one, then jumped back. Another mask, dark-red with a long, hooked nose, seemed to glare at him. The effect was evil, ugly, and once again he wondered at a species who could accept and even celebrate such distortions of facial features and yet could not bring themselves to coexist with his kind.
