by Nya Rawlyns
The overhanging ledge that should have sheltered them from their pursuers
loomed into view, though there was little definition between the solid rock object and the rest of the pond, merely a matter of shading. The tornado of debris moved along the bottom erratically, first toward, then away from her position. She wasn’t sure she cared enough to investigate, though a ping of energy, a poking in her gut, aroused her curiosity. By the time she decided to look in the direction she’d last seen the
disturbance, the debris had settled.
Caitlin swam easily to the area, though leaving the current and entering the
morass of sludge was uncomfortable, distasteful even. She increased speed, loath to allow the particles to lodge in her throat. The debris dispersed slowly, with
concentrations of smaller bits, then larger, layering down through the levels, perhaps a differentiation by viscosity. She was no scientist but this watery grave fascinated and compelled in strange and wonderful ways.
A dark mass lay below her position. She hadn’t been aware that she’d risen so
high above the pond’s bed. She would need to take care. Comfort lay at lower levels so she angled down toward the bed of reeds and the thing that lay in a crumpled heap atop them. Whatever it was, it seemed alive, still flailing and twitching, fighting the light current. She brushed her hand across it, trying to anchor the form in place so she could investigate further. Weak electrical current passed from the dark mass into her fingers, the spark settling in her midsection.
Trey. She’d found him. Was he alive or was he as dead as she? Surely even he could not have lasted so long without oxygen. The link was still active, of that she was sure. He hung on. How she didn’t know, unless he’d fallen into stasis. He’d confessed that his body sometimes took over—a survival instinct. Perhaps that’s what happened.
She suspected he’d been frantically searching for her—that would account for the vortex as he’d blindly reached in all directions. She was losing him, the energies dissipating.
Caitlin turned him over, cradling him in her lap, as she breathed into his mouth, watching the rise and fall of his broad chest. Perhaps this is why the angel of death hadn’t come for her. She had one more task before she exited this dimension for the hereafter—save the demon, save the world. She smirked. God had a strange sense of humour.
Caitlin looked to the surface, but shadows flickering in the dimming light
indicated the machines still circled above her position. There had to be another exit. The current must lead somewhere. She would follow it, taking Trey with her, breathing for him.
He seemed light as air, his bulk giving him buoyancy as she swam, trailing her
burden into the cavern. Bioluminescent creatures clung to the mirrored walls, so similar to the outer monoliths that they had to be part of the same geologic formation. The cavern narrowed quickly into a tunnel. The current picked up speed and she no longer 92
had to expend energy pushing their bodies through the turgid fluid. She counted, “One, two, three, four and breathe!” They were comfortably suspended in a sluice racing them to God only knew where. She sensed the turbulence before they fell headlong out of an opening and plummeted into space.
****
“I wish I had better news, Gunnarr. I am sincerely sorry.” Eirik watched his
brother with concern. The man seemed to be aging exponentially, his concern over his sons consuming his spirit.
“They are sure?” Gunnarr sat heavily on the stool. He looked out the window and
watched the scene play out far below. Absently he remarked, “New Yorkers go about their business, totally unaware.”
Eirik tried to keep his voice as matter-of-fact as possible, hoping his brother
could hold it together long enough for them to find a solution to the mess they were all in. “The choppers found the body at the base of a cliff.”
“Did he fall?”
“Uh, not exactly.” Eirik hesitated to give his brother the final blow. The man held his grief in tight, his hands clenching until blood trickled from his palms. He had an unhealthy pallor that had Eirik ready to call in his medics in case his brother suffered a heart attack or worst.
“Tell me. I have a right to know. What did your people discover?”
“Bryn apparently found Trey and the woman. They’d taken shelter in a cave for
the night. They found panniers and supplies. It looked like they left in a hurry.” Eirik sipped his coffee and reviewed the memo from the captain of his retrieval squad. “Lothi said there was evidence of a scuffle.”
“And?”
“Bryn was stabbed. Gut wound. Somehow he ended up at the base of the cliff,
pushed or fell, we can’t know that.”
“Trey.” It was a statement.
“Yes. I’m sorry. But if it was as you said, there was bad blood there. What was the likelihood Bryn intended to bring them back alive?”
Gunnarr rubbed his eyes and stared at his brother. “What do you think?”
“I’m not much of a betting man, but I’d say he went in to kill, not retrieve.”
Gunnarr nodded sadly. “I agree. It was his way.”
“What now, Brother?”
“There will be a blood price to pay, Eirik. You know this as well as I do. Brother killing brother? This will reverberate through all of our clans. I have no choice.” He rubbed his palms on a wad of napkins leaving streaks of blood on the rough paper.
“You can’t be serious. If you go after Trey, you will seriously compromise our
ability to reacquire the asset.” Eirik grasped his brother’s hand and squeezed. “You aren’t thinking clearly right now. Don’t be foolish. Let my men continue the search.
We’ll bring them both in and then decide the best course of action.”
Gunnarr lowered his gaze, clearly reluctant to follow his brother’s advice. As
elder, he’d always dictated terms, and even Gunnarr admitted that frequently his advice was sound. Whether or not he would listen this time was anyone’s guess. The odds were better than good that Gunnarr would say or do whatever it took to buy him enough time 93
to come up with a plan more in keeping with Greyfalcon’s mission.
In a rare admission, Gunnarr said, “You were always the better tactician of us all.
All right, we’ll continue as you suggest.”
Gunnarr stood and gathered up his cup and the bloody napkins and threw them
into a waste container. He returned to the table and leaned over the table threateningly.
“But he will be mine, do you understand? He is my son and it is my right, and my duty, to see that justice is served.”
Eirik pushed away from the table, the weight of their culture a heavy burden to
bear. He had to pay more than just lip service in this matter. It was effectively out of his hands. Trey had made his bed. The boy would finally learn to appreciate that actions had consequences. It fell to Gunnarr to determine the facts of the matter.
“Just remember. Innocent until proven guilty, Gunnarr.” Eirik picked his cane off the back of the chair and limped out the door without looking back.
Gunnarr waited until his brother had crossed the busy intersection and turned
left to head down Eighth Avenue. He flicked his cell phone open and hit speed dial.
“They found him. Yes. No, the fool got himself killed. Uh-huh. Send in the other pair of choppers. The asset is still in play, but she has a protector now, so take care, and don’t fuck it up.” He flipped the phone shut and strode through the door.
The situation with Trey had the potential to derail more than just a few
sentimental old fools holding tight to tradition. His organization was under fire and his position shaky. The woman’s father had set the hounds of hell on his track: journalists sniffed around his business holdings, senators stood ready to bail for better offers from the Chinese and new players threatened to horn
in on his monopoly on the drug trade.
His youngest son stood to lose no matter what. When it came down to it, he was
the one who left his family, a cardinal sin in the clans. Better to dispose of that problem off world, even if it meant losing the asset. He had sufficient DNA. They would work with that. Another opportunity would present itself. It always did. After all, he still had Kieran.
Gunnarr headed up 36th Street, deep in thought.
****
“Caty, hon, please wake up.” Trey rocked her thin body in his arms, terrified he was losing her. Pinkish foam flecked her lips, her breath coming in rasps. He feared she’d punctured a lung. They’d fallen into a shallow pool at the base of a thousand foot cliff. She’d hit first, on her back. The impact had driven them both to the bottom where they’d landed hard.
Trey couldn’t begin to fathom what had happened back in the pond at the oasis.
All he remembered was his frantic search for his mate, time ticking off his desperation and then nothing. His body had slipped into stasis in one last attempt at survival. How Caitlin had managed to bring them to this spot was a mystery. He stroked the odd slits in her neck. What in the worlds had happened to her body? She’d gone through some transformation that he couldn’t fathom. Whatever it was, it had saved their lives but now it threatened to end hers. He had to repair her body but had no clue how to go about it.
Nothing in his bizarre existence had prepared him for the rush of emotion and
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the desperation, the flood of hate and anger, the fear and panic that consumed him. He bargained with his gods, threatened and cajoled, pleaded and demanded, offered his life for hers if only she could live. Nothing else mattered.
He bent over her neck, tears streaming down his face, knowing he would take his
own life if he lost her. He could not, would not, continue on without her. He set his ear against the slits and listened to rasping gurgles growing weaker by the second. Her mouth gulped for air like a fish out of water.
“Damn it,” he shouted, “fish!”
He lunged to his feet, ignoring the pain shooting down his hip and leg. He’d deal with the broken bones later. He gathered Caitlin in his arms and limped to the water’s edge. Sliding down a bank into a shallow pool, he laid her down so that her neck and the slits were under water.
“Come on, Caty. Breathe. For me.”
Caitlin sputtered and coughed up blood, but she opened her eyes and stared at
Trey in horror. “You’re not dead,” she gurgled.
“No, and neither are you. Caty, hon, don’t talk. I can barely understand you.” She looked perplexed and opened her mouth to speak but he placed a finger over her lips.
“You may have punctured a lung. Now that I know what’s wrong with you, I can fix it but you have to help me.”
She mouthed ‘how’ and gripped his arm, trying to pull herself out of the water.
“No, no, you have to stay in the water.” He wasn’t sure how to tell her that she’d shifted, let alone the particulars. “You transformed and saved us. Now be quiet for a minute while I think how best to do this.”
Caitlin grew aware of a hollowness in her chest, almost an absence of feeling. She couldn’t detect a rise and fall, yet she sensed the oxygenated blood rushing through her arteries. Horrified, she rasped, “Oh my God, I’m a fish?”
Trey smiled. “Not exactly, hon. You didn’t grow scales anywhere I can see, but
you have gills.”
“G-g-gills?”
“Yeah, that’s how you’re breathing. Let me fix the rib and get it back in place. I can heal the tear, but you have to work with me once I do that, okay?” She looked at him quizzically. “You have to shift back once I get the lung inflated. Can you do that?”
Caitlin paled, her body rigid, in full panic mode. In truth, she had no clue how she’d changed, or even when it happened. Apparently, her lover wasn’t the only one whose body took over in a crisis, but that didn’t help her now. She realized if they didn’t get her lungs functional, she’d be spending the rest of her life in an aquarium.
Trey busied himself pulsing energy into her rib cage, then he laid his hands on
her breasts and kneaded gently. Caitlin murmured ‘pervert’ as he gave her his best leer.
Satisfied that the lung would hold air, he told her, “Now it’s your turn. Just concentrate.
That’s my girl.”
Caitlin tried holding her breath but the proto-gills seemed to function
independently. She groaned, “I can’t.”
“You can and you will, or by the gods…”
Caitlin husked, “Choke me.”
“What the hell?”
“Shut off the air to the gills. Please.” She lifted her head out of the water and 95
guided his hands to her neck. “Do it. There’s no other way.”
Reluctantly, Trey pressed the narrow openings closed as her body jerked
spasmodically, struggling against the pressure. When her eyes rolled back in her head, he knew he’d lost, that in the end, he’d been the one to destroy the only good thing in his life. He moaned his agony as he stroked her neck, now smooth, free of the slits but still she did not breathe.
He pulled the limp body into his lap, silently cursing the fates and his gods, and pinched her nose shut, breathing life into the only creature he’d ever loved.
“Looks like you’re too late there, mate.”
Trey looked up at the three men holding Uzis inches from his head and wondered
again why his life and his beliefs were built on lies. Resigned, he set Caitlin on the ground and prepared for his last battle.
The one nearest his position stared intently and said, “Hey.”
“Shut up.” The man on his right glared at the interruption. “You. Up. Hands
behind your head. You know the drill.” He pulled Trey off the ground and slapped handcuffs over his wrists. “Okay, move it. I’m sick and tired of chasing you all over this fucking hellhole. You’re going back to Daddy. Alive or dead. Don’t make any difference to me.”
Trey twisted away and swung his good leg in an arc but the other leg gave way as his bones separated. The man swore at the near miss. Trey went down in a red haze of pain and anger. The last thing he remembered was someone spitting out ‘shut him
down’ as his head exploded and he sank into darkness.
“Uh…”
“Now what?”
“This one isn’t dead.” The leader stomped over and stared at the haggard woman
lying on the ground, then up at his man who said, “Don’t look like much of an asset.”
The leader muttered, “Pick her up and carry her back to the other chopper. We’re not being paid by the hour and it’s getting dark. I want off this rock today.”
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Chapter Sixteen
“Trey, welcome back. You had us concerned.”
“Father.”
Trey settled himself on the leather couch in his father’s spacious office. He held back a grunt of pain as the medic arranged his damaged leg onto an ottoman set nearby for his use. The cast encased his leg from ankle to upper thigh, leaving him little range of motion. The medic placed a pillow behind his back and fussed with an IV feeding
morphine into his system, then nodded to his capo and left the room.
He avoided making eye contact with his father. The young boy desperate to please the patriarch and prove himself to his older brothers warred with the fortress of spite and hatred he’d carefully constructed as a man. Instead he focused on his leg, pondering why anyone had bothered to go to so much trouble to save his miserable hide when all he wanted to do was crawl into a hole and die. Why did they care when he was no longer any use to any of them?
He struggled to contain his emotions for he understood that his father would
view any incapacity with disfavour. The elder would automatically assume it would strip away his will to live, that
the loss of warrior standing would be a burden too great to bear. Such had always been their way. However, the old man had already lost one son in this debacle so it was possible he might do whatever was necessary not to lose another.
“I apologize, boy. There was too much damage and you were in no shape to self-
heal, even in stasis. Our people opted to take you to the hospital. Good thing.”
“Tell me about this ‘good thing’. How bad is it?”
“Compound fracture, severed artery, torn soft tissue and other things. You’ll need rehab. The best our healers have to offer.” Gunnarr settled onto the couch, leaving a wide space between them, a measure of respect for his son’s still lethal abilities. “This wasn’t all due to the fall, was it?”
“Let’s just say they were less than gentle in handling me.” An involuntary shiver ran down his spine in remembrance of the savaging he’d suffered. “I wish you hadn’t bothered. Why didn’t those apes just let me bleed out? It would have saved you a hell of a lot of trouble.”
Gunnarr ignored the implication and continued, “You might lose some range of
motion. I’m told there are still issues with your hip. But we’ll see.”
“Issues.”
“Hip replacement is an option. But let’s get you through the rehab first and then let our medics decide the best course of action.”
Trey muttered, “Dammit.” He stared at the cast on his right leg, eyes unfocused
as the drugs cascaded through his system. He’d need time to formulate a plan for escape, not that he had anywhere to go. He would be nothing but a liability to his uncle, if indeed Gothi even wanted him back. He thought it odd that his father’s men had been the ones to pluck him out of that hellhole of a dimension. How had they accomplished that little feat of legerdemain? Did Gothi know it was possible, and if he did…? Trey would let that question air for a while. It had too many implications that led down paths that could turn his world on its ear, even more so than it already had. It was likely his 97
