Now that he’d taken a longer look, Teg recognized the pale mask. Its emotionless face seemed to stare at him, and the distance didn’t soften its malice.
“The mask,” Teg called to Xander. “Get rid of it!”
Either Xander couldn’t hear, or he didn’t listen. He raised his spear and stabbed it down to skewer the man at his feet like a pig.
In all his years, whether on the countless spheres of the Middle Stratum or in the nine pits of hell, Teg had never seen anyone or anything move like Xander’s intended victim did then. He flowed to his feet in a series of motions that hurt Teg’s eyes and pressed Vaun’s mask onto Xander’s face.
Xander clawed helplessly at the false porcelain face. It was his voice but Vaun’s words that boomed from the mask’s unmoving lips.
“You mocked me in Kairos, young Zadokim. I do not forgive your blasphemy, and there are none now to shield you from justice.”
Xander collapsed.
“Nobody listens to me,” Teg thought aloud.
A rising hum made Teg glance to his right. The Kerioth’s black spearhead of a bow swung toward him. A sudden sense of freefall threw Teg off balance, and he fell prone as the nexus-runner’s nose passed overhead. The concurrent feelings of weightlessness and massive downward force turned his stomach.
Both sensations passed and Teg raised his head, coming face-to-face with the second ugly man. Correction—an ugly corpse.
Lying next to a dead man didn’t disturb Teg; nor did the man’s ugliness. The fact that he’d clearly had considerable strength and speed, yet someone had killed him bare-handed, was another story.
Too bad, thought Teg. Here’s hoping Zadok makes you prettier if you come around again.
Astlin lay opposite the corpse, curled up on her side. A dark blotch stained the front of her jacket.
A shockwave crashed over Teg. He rose and turned to see the Kerioth blasting out of the hangar. It sliced through the cloud of corvette debris like a black trident and vanished between the stars beyond.
“Cross!”
The sound of his name reflexively drew Teg’s eyes toward the Theophilus. Ehen stood beside the habitat pod, where he’d manned the turret in lieu of Astlin. The gunner was stabbing a finger at something behind Teg as more debarking Nesshin gathered in the Serapis’ hangar.
Teg spun and found himself facing another ugly man—the living, naked one—who limped forward dragging Xander’s motionless body.
“Hi,” said Teg. “Where do you think you’re going?”
The ugly naked man brushed past him. “Not your concern.”
“It must be somewhere important,” said Teg. “And clothing optional.”
“Make way,” the rude, ugly, naked man said to the Nesshin congregating around the Theophilus. “Your ship now belongs to Shaiel.”
Teg fell in behind him. “No. Shaiel didn’t build this rust bucket. It would probably look much nicer if he did. But we built her, so she’s ours.”
The would-be thief ignored him, hobbling toward the Theophilus and her crew while dragging Xander behind him.
Teg leveled his gun a hand’s breadth from the back of the naked man’s grungy head.
If I miss at this range, I’ll take up drinking again.
The target didn’t turn his head, but his free hand shot out and twisted the gun from Teg’s grip with a deft motion that snapped his trigger finger like a twig.
Ehen lunged forward, but Saba held him back.
Teg clutched his wounded hand as his gun clattered on the deck. “Damn that hurts! I’d apologize to Deim if your boss hadn’t killed him.”
The ugly man stopped. “Your associate died at Shaiel’s hand?”
That got his attention! “Yeah,” said Teg. “Saw it myself.”
The naked man turned, showing his ugly face. “You have seen Shaiel?”
“Way too much of him,” Teg said. “He killed me, too. But he did a piss-poor job.”
The man’s blank expression never changed, which showed discipline. But when his arm struck out with no visible warning, Teg knew he’d picked a fight with something perverse.
Teg managed to twist away from the blow so it snapped his collarbone instead of crushing his throat. He tried to ignore the sharp explosion of pain, but his foe landed a kick that shattered Teg’s kneecap and sent him crashing face-first to the burnt deck.
It was hard for Teg to decide which hurt worse—his injuries or the infernal gift that drastically sped up his healing. The one certainty was that his enemy didn’t expect his unnaturally fast recovery, or he would have struck again sooner.
Teg rolled sideways, favoring his injured shoulder and leg as bones and ligaments knitted themselves back together. The momentum helped propel him to his feet—one foot, actually. His right knee still couldn’t support his weight.
His enemy stood right there facing him as if neither of them had moved. Teg did take some satisfaction from noting that his foe had dropped Xander. The masked Nesshin lay unmoving several paces away.
Without warning, vicious blows crushed Teg’s jaw and ribs. He used all his willpower to stay focused on Xander, draw his knife, and fling it underhand at the porcelain mask.
Shaiel’s toady sprang into the knife’s path with inhuman speed. The blade imbedded itself in his forearm.
Teg reached into his pocket, pressed a handful of loose bullets between his knuckles, and hammered his enemy’s floating ribs. Or what would have been ribs if some strange reflex hadn’t moved the bones away. Nevertheless, the bullet tips left bloody wounds that punctuated the recent cut in his foe’s side.
A blindingly fast elbow to his already broken jaw sent Teg reeling. But Saba had given in or been pushed aside, because Ehen bull rushed their common enemy. The edge of the ugly man’s hand slammed into Ehen’s neck, toppling him in mid-charge.
Teg saw an opening and leapt in, locking arms around his foe. The ugly man wriggled like a sack of eels, but Teg held on despite bursts of agony from his mending bones.
“Get the gun!” Teg grunted. Ehen didn’t respond. His limbs jerked feebly.
“If he dies,” said Teg, “I’ll get real grouchy.”
With a nauseating series of pops, the ugly man’s wrists, elbows, and shoulders bent in ways that no god intended. A startling burst of strength reversed Teg’s hold and caught him in his opponent’s loathsome grasp. Ropy arms and burned fingers constricted Teg’s neck while his own knife slit his throat.
I recognize that sword, Teg thought when his foe twisted his head to the left. The white scimitar was the last sight he saw before a sound like green wood snapping filled his skull, bringing oblivion.
12
“…still breathing,” a feminine voice said in a familiar lilting accent.
Teg’s sight returned, showing him blue eyes staring from a fair-skinned face framed by blood red hair.
“There was five, six of ‘em,” he mumbled. “Jumped me in the park.”
“Keth is gone, Teg,” Astlin said softly. ‘We’re on the Serapis. Can you remember?”
The distant lights partly eclipsed by skeletal catwalks and the smell of char and ether jogged Teg’s memory.
“I shot you.”
Astlin’s eyes narrowed. Her lips formed a crooked frown. “Yeah. You did.”
The dull aches that attended Teg’s efforts to rise told him that enough time had passed for his wounds to mostly heal.
“Sorry,” he said through gritted teeth.
Astlin helped him sit upright on the deck. “You were trying to help. At least now we know I can take a bullet.”
Teg’s clearing vision alerted him to the absence of Astlin’s jacket and the pristine skin beneath the bullet hole in her dress.
“What happened to your chest wound?”
“It’s like knowing you’re in a dream,” Astlin said at length. “I can influence things, including my body.”
“You can’t die?”
Astlin wore the expression of someone watching the horizon for storms. “I
f I’m hurt bad enough, I’ll wake up. Short of that, I can conform my body to my soul.”
Teg laughed. “Kind of like how Sulaiman’s body turned back into mine.”
Confusion clouded Astlin’s face. “What happened between you two?”
Teg’s aching knee protested as he stood. “After you disappeared, I went to hell.”
“I never knew I meant that much to you,” joked Astlin.
Teg fixed his eyes on hers. “No. I went to the actual Nine Circles. You could ask Jaren if he weren’t a vegetable.
“We killed one Circle’s lord. Doing that sprung three even worse demons, each of whom gave me a curse. I pledged myself to another demon for a cure. He switched me and Sulaiman’s souls; Worked my new body—or something—so it heals ungodly fast. Over time it did like you said; made my flesh conform to my soul.”
As he spoke, Teg rubbed his midsection and felt box-woven cotton. A downward glance confirmed that he wore only his long underwear.
“Where are my clothes?”
Astlin shrugged. “They were gone when I came to.”
“That murdering snake took them,” said Marse. She and the rest of the Nesshin stood nearby—except for one of their number who lay under an oily drop cloth. “And that’s not all he took.”
“Xander!” Astlin said with a quick indrawn breath. She cast frantic glances around the hangar. “There’s just…nothing where his mind should be. Where did Izlaril take him?”
“Wherever they went,” Teg said as he glowered at the empty space where the Theophilus used to be, “they took my ship.”
He rounded on the Nesshin. “And you people just stood there?”
“Easy, Teg,” a masculine voice, scratchy from disuse, said from across the hangar. “We already lost one man. No sense losing more.”
Teg spun to face the voice’s source. Jaren stood, disheveled but alert, in the Kerioth’s former landing site. His green eyes were fixed on the white sword at his feet.
“Besides,” Jaren added, “that old death trap already got us where we need to be.”
Teg’s jaw dropped. “You’re awake? What the hell is going on?”
Jaren gave him a sidelong glance. “I was hoping you’d tell me. The young lady must have jarred something loose, but the dam only broke a minute ago. Besides that, the last thing I recall is pulling the trigger.”
“You mean firing your front-loaded rodcaster at Mephistophilis?”
“No.” Jaren frowned. “Firing my zephyr at Zebel.”
Teg exhaled sharply. “That leaves a lot of ground to cover.” A thought occurred to him. “Astlin here could probably transfer my memories to your head.”
Jaren held up his remaining hand. “No, thanks. I’ve had my fill of telepathy. And in case you forget that, the telepath who raised me taught me how to block it. Just tell me what I missed—the old-fashioned way.”
“Fine,” said Astlin. She visibly fought to keep her composure, but her voice broke. “Everything burned. Teg and his crew spent years flying from one dead sphere to the next. He landed on Keth to find the sky burning and everyone dead; not that they stayed in the ground.
“A few days ago, I died and came back to free my husband and everyone else from the Nexus. We helped the Theophilus escape and fought our way onto the Serapis. But a necromancer god’s minion killed my friend and Teg’s friend and kidnapped Xander!”
“And he stole all my stuff,” said Teg. “She forgot that part.”
Astlin wheeled on Teg. “Are you always this selfish?”
“Mostly,” Jaren said. “But it looks like Vaun’s cutthroat—I assume he’s the necromancer you meant—left the sweetest plum behind.”
Jaren tapped the white sword’s hilt with his bare foot and winced.
Teg approached the scimitar, bent down to pick it up, and dropped it with a yelp as pain shot through his hand. The mirrored blade rang against the deck like a chime.
“The bastard’s hot! Must’ve been cooked when the nexus-runner took off.”
Astlin glided over and took up the sword. “I don’t think that’s the problem.”
“That’s the same blade Sulaiman used on Elena,” Teg told Jaren. “He came out of nowhere; nearly killed her. You remember seeing the sword again after that?”
Jaren rubbed his shaggy chin. “Honestly, no.”
“Me either,” Teg went on. “Somehow it vanished from the Exodus and ended up here.”
“Xander took it.” Astlin stared at the blade. Unlike everything else cast in its white surface, her reflection was normal; not purple-hued. “He went through Kairos and stole Elohim from Vaun’s room.”
Teg’s brow furrowed. “Who’s Elohim?”
“It’s one of God’s names,” Saba called out from where he sat beside a shipping container.
“That’s what Xander called the sword,” Astlin said. “Sulaiman talked about a weapon that could kill gods. I think this is it.”
“It should come in handy then,” said Jaren.
“This is your interim captain, speaking,” an older man’s voice boomed over the intercom. “Now that security’s back online, I’m looking at a dozen or more stowaways having a tea party in my hangar. Care to explain before I blow you into space?”
“And then he took my stuff,” Teg told Gid.
Gid sat at the head of the small gathering, set in relief against the star field framed in the window behind him. The elbows of his grey jacket rested on the table’s darker matte surface. His hands in turn supported his chin. He eyed Teg over round glasses whose gold rims threatened to slip off his hawkish nose.
“Let me make sure I understand the situation.” Gid’s eyes passed to Astlin, Jaren, and the aging security officer at the back of the conference room before he pointed at Teg.
“You rode out the Cataclysm on Tharis, cobbled a ship together from spare parts with a band of Nesshin, and went searching for a new home. You found your old boss on Crote and brought him aboard.”
Gid’s finger moved to Jaren. “Even though he was a feral amnesiac.”
The arc of his gesture ended at Astlin. “Then you made it to Keth, where she and her husband saved you from a horde of dead cannibals.”
Gid laced his fingers. “Your jury-rigged ship somehow fought off the small fleet pursuing mine, and you boarded us for a showdown with a homicidal maniac who serves a self-styled god. He wiped the floor with you—including a couple of demigods—before making off with one of them.”
Teg raised his hand. “And all my—”
“Your stuff, yes,” repeated Gid.
Teg pulled at the sleeves of the dark green, ill-fitting jacket he’d stripped from a dead Night Gen and tried to ignore the itchiness of the matching pants.
“You got it,” said Teg.
“If that wasn’t enough,” Gid continued, “somebody hijacked the Kerioth.”
“It was Smith,” said Astlin. “Izlaril was after him, too.”
Gid’s chair hissed softly on the carpet as he slid back from the table. He stood and paced the room, rubbing his shock of white hair.
“And now, you want asylum—along with your whole ragtag crew.”
“You’re undermanned,” said Jaren. “We’d be useful.”
Gid stopped beside Jaren and leaned down next to him. “Really? You weren’t much use stopping the killer of four security officers and the cook!”
“Was he a good cook?” asked Teg.
Gid straightened his back and pushed his glasses up. “Exquisite.”
“Be serious,” said Jaren. “Me and Teg are worth ten of him.”
“If you are who you say,” Gid shot back, “then two decades ago you sicced an unholy terror on this ship. Thanks to that little stunt we lost half our crew and spent twenty years stuck up a tree. I should shove you out an airlock!”
Jaren met Gid’s gaze. “That would be a mistake. Vaun lost seven ships and scores of men today. He might have let you off if you’d given him what he wanted. Now you’re on the wrong side o
f his warped honor code. He’ll keep coming till he gets satisfaction.”
“Don’t forget who rattled the hornets’ nest,” said Gid.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jaren said.
Gid scowled. “Let’s be clear. The only reason you’re not spending the rest of this voyage in the brig is because I can’t spare the security staff.”
Astlin leaned forward, her eyes pleading. “You’re right to be angry, Gid. Maybe Cook’s death—every death today—is our fault. But there’s still a chance to save Xander.”
“I didn’t mean to sound dismissive.” Gid took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s good having you back. But excuse my bluntness for pointing out that you’re supposed to be dead. Did you just need a few days to get over it?”
Astlin’s eyes wandered across the starry panorama behind him. “To you, I just died a few days ago. But it’s been years for me.”
“Xander pulled a reappearing act, too,” said Gid. “Though you put a novel twist on it. Can we expect Cook to come strolling in next?”
“He rejoined the Nexus,” Astlin said sadly.
“What about my security team?’ asked Gid. “Rendon was fourteen, but the Night Gen slaughtered him like a calf. Doesn’t he deserve another chance to live?”
Astlin sighed. “It’s not about deserving. You’ve had dreams that you knew were dreams?”
“It’s called lucid dreaming,” said Jaren.
“Escaping the Nexus when you die is like making yourself have a lucid dream when you go to sleep,” Astlin said.
“That’s rare, I’ll grant you,” said Gid. “But there are people who say you can learn.”
Astlin shook her head. “That’s just getting out. Coming back is like picking up exactly where you left off in a dream you had years ago.”
Teg whistled. “How can anybody do that?”
“I had someone to come back to,” said Astlin. “I want to help everyone. But right now, nobody needs me more than Xander.”
“I get it.” Teg reached over and squeezed her hand.
Gid’s face softened. “We’d never have left Mithgar if not for you and Xander,” he told Astlin. “So believe me when I say that we’re just not equipped to mount a rescue. Let’s get to Temil and see if anyone there can help.”
The Secret Kings Page 11
