Starfall

by neetha Napew

  "If she dies, how do you think it's going to affect Krysty?"

  "Not any more than the baron's men chilling her if they get their hands on her first. And she's going to die anyway, Ryan. No way to save her. Mebbe her dying will ease the hold she has on Krysty."

  Ryan drew the panga. "Guess it's time to find out." He glanced at the old woman.

  Phlorin stared back at him, a sarcastic smile somehow blossoming on the bloody lips through all the pain. "Come to me, man. Come ahead and do your worst. No matter what, I shall still survive!"

  FOR A LONG TIME, Krysty knew she'd been floating in some kind of prison. It wasn't the land of geysers and sulfur stench that Phlorin had first put her in when she took over her body and nearly killed Ryan. The place she'd been kept had been a white room almost ten feet in all directions. There had been no furniture, no decorations, no way to tell what was a floor, ceiling or wall.

  There hadn't been any gravity, either. At first, she'd run, slamming herself into the walls, the ceiling, the floor, what­ever side of the cube she could throw herself at. She'd hoped she'd break something, find some way out. The walls had all held, and she felt that she was teetering toward madness.

  In the background, always just within hearing, had been Phlorin's voice. And it had never sounded human again. The voice oozed words like an infected wound oozed pus into healthy tissue. Krysty was certain the voice was finding the weak spots of her mind, prying into every nook and cranny it could, then insinuating itself and taking root. At times she thought she could feel the voice actually inching deeper inside herself.

  She no longer understood the words consciously. But she could tell that some part of her subconscious mind under­stood them. She still felt the way she had on top of the building, the knife in her hand as she tried to kill Ryan: herself, but one step removed.

  Without warning, though, the voice became clear again.

  Come see, Phlorin said. Come see how your man plays into our little game. He's going to trap you forever, leave you to my mercy.

  Why are you doing this? Krysty demanded.

  Because it is necessary. I am of the Chosen. I must sur­vive. You have forsaken your birthright.

  I didn't even know of you people, Krysty argued.

  You knew that you were different. That alone should have started you on a quest until you found us, your sisters.

  You're not my sisters.

  Your mother was.

  Fear trembled inside Krysty then, and it reminded her of a moth's wings brushing frantically against her palms when she'd caught one as a child.

  My mother was many things, she argued, but she would never have been like you.

  You never really knew your mother. How can you be so sure?

  Because Gaia has told me. In truth, during some of her prayers while she was growing up, Krysty had asked the earth goddess about her mother. There'd never been any definite answers, but Krysty had never had any cause to feel sad or scared. She was certain that whatever other se­crets Mother Sonja might have had, she was a good person. At least at the time that she'd lived in Harmony ville.

  You use the goddess's name in vain. Such sacrilege would normally be punished.

  Then try. You've pushed me out of my own body, nearly chilled the man I love with all my heart. How do you think you can punish me any more?

  The woman didn't answer, and the silence that followed the question was almost deafening, trapped as it was in the small white room.

  Sensing the weakness, Krysty twisted in the air until she made contact with one of the walls again. The weightless­ness here was confusing, and getting herself set was hard. Still, she managed, finally able to get into a kneeling po­sition on the surface she'd chosen. Then she pushed herself outward toward the opposite wall. She put her bunched fists in front of her, screaming out her rage and frustration, tem­porarily blocking out that voice.

  The room's walls exploded before her hands, tumbling away in jagged shards. Then she was inside the fort where the companions had holed up.

  And she was looking down at her own body, her head in Mildred's lap.

  No, she thought, instantly afraid of the implications.

  Fool, Phlorin told her. It isn't you who has died. But I am about to so that I may live.

  Krysty called out to Mildred, but her efforts went un­heard. She reached for her friend, only to watch her hand pass right through Mildred's. Hastily Krysty turned her per­spective point, focusing on Ryan as he squatted beside Phlorin.

  Now it begins, the old woman said inside Krysty's mind. This man of yours is stupe, but he is determined.

  The panga glittered in Ryan's hand, the edge pointed up.

  Krysty crossed the room, having no sensation of walking, just suddenly appearing at Ryan's side. Lover!

  Ryan stared at the woman. Krysty read in her lover's movements that he was there to kill the old woman. "Time's come to shit or get off the pot. You're only one step away from catching the last train headed West. Release Krysty."

  Krysty reached for her lover, trying to cup her hand un­der Ryan's head and force him to turn to look at her.

  Ryan froze, then slowly his head came around. His single eye widened, showing the full blue of the iris. "Krysty," he whispered.

  Don't, Krysty tried to tell him. You're playing right into whatever she's doing, lover. Before, she'd managed to reach Ryan through some aspect of her gift. She guessed that it could happen again if she tried hard enough.

  Ryan shook his head.

  "What is it?" Mildred asked.

  "I thought I heard Krysty call my name," he said.

  Mildred shook her head. "Your imagination, Ryan. I've been with her the whole time and I haven't heard a word."

  No! Krysty screamed. She reached for Ryan again, more determined this time. Her hands and arms passed through her lover's body as if he'd been made of smoke.

  Ryan turned his attention back to the old woman. "Last chance," he told her in a flat voice. "Let Krysty go, or I'll chill you as you lay."

  See how sure he is of himself, Phlorin taunted. So brave, so demanding. Men are pathetic. And they have the gall to think that every problem can be answered with physical violence. She smiled in disdain, and Krysty didn't know if the smile was meant for her or Ryan.

  Then Ryan struck, as fast as any mountain cat back home in Harmony that Krysty had ever seen. Despite his harsh tactics, she knew her lover took no pride and no pleasure in death. He struck to kill, plunging the panga deep into the woman's heart.

  Krysty felt the blade as though it entered her own body, cold steel suddenly invading hot, pulsing flesh. She screamed, but the pain in her voice paled beside the screech that echoed in her mind from Phlorin.

  The woman convulsed from the floor, grabbing at Ryan's arm. Krysty watched, trapped by whatever bound her to the old woman, and felt her lover's flesh through Phlorin's hand.

  Then the woman died, spitting blood onto Ryan as she fought to hang on to her existence and bite him at the same time. He caught her hair up in his free hand and shoved her head back. Gradually her muscles relaxed, and she fell away from him.

  But Krysty felt the growth inside her own mind, more deeply entrenched than ever. She screamed, realizing that even though she'd escaped the cage she'd been confined in, she was more trapped now than ever.

  Before she could move, before she could think, she felt something pulling at her. She turned to face it, then realized that she was being drawn to her own body. In an eye blink, she was back inside her own flesh. But she wasn't alone. She also realized that she wasn't breathing.

  RYAN GAZED DOWN at the corpse, his hand still gripped around the panga thrust into her chest.

  "You shouldn't oughta done that," Mary wailed from the side of the house. "You shouldn't oughta done that to a witch."

  "Shut her up," Ryan told the woman's husband. In truth, in the moment before he'd killed the woman, he'd felt an eldrich chill thrill through him, seeming to come through the knife handle itsel
f. He believed in Krysty's premoni­tions, but he was no doomie himself. That feeling, though, had felt as close to any experience his lover had ever told him about.

  "Ryan," J.B. called.

  Ryan yanked the panga free and glanced at his friend, grateful for the distraction.

  "Got a man out here waving a white flag at the end of a stick," the Armorer stated. "Want to hear him out, or do you want me to chill him where he's standing?"

  Chapter Ten

  "Step him back," Ryan said, gazing at the baron's man waving a piece of white rag from a wag antenna. "Gets close enough, he could heave a gren through the window if he's got one."

  J.B. rattled off a quick 3-round burst that ripped through the acid-laced mud at the man's feet and threw clods back in the direction he'd come from.

  Thinking he'd been shot, the man hurled himself to the side, dropping the makeshift white flag and himself into the mud. He started flopping and screaming at once as the acid residue from the chem storm ate into his flesh.

  "Come get him if you want him alive," Ryan yelled out.

  "How do I know you won't shoot them?" a man roared back.

  "If I wanted you to think that," Ryan growled, "I'd have shot this poor stupe bastard. Didn't think he'd be fool enough to throw himself into the mud like that. And you're only risking two men."

  "I got two men coming out," the man replied.

  "I see any more than that moving," Ryan warned, "I'll chill every one I see."

  Two men bolted from hiding among the wrecked wags. Neither carried weapons except for side arms. Both, how­ever, had canteens. Cursing the man on the ground, they emptied their canteens over his face and hands. His skin pinked up from the caustic acidity left trapped in the ground. Once the man had control over himself, his two companions dragged him back to shelter. He never quit moaning.

  "You cost me some water," the man yelled to Ryan.

  "If we were on more friendly terms," Ryan said, "mebbe I'd feel bad about that. But it isn't anywhere close to that."

  The man laughed, his voice sounding confident and loud in the canyons between the mounds of wrecked wags. "The way you sound, you'd think it was me between a rock and a hard place instead of you."

  "I'm in here," Ryan said. "You're out there with the coldhearts and the dogs. Mebbe another chem storm the way the sky looks."

  "Man can starve to death in there."

  "Not with the rations we found," Ryan lied. "Figure we can wait in here, see whether we have to take on you or the coldhearts. Doesn't matter to us." His words drifted away into the ensuing silence.

  "Ryan," Mildred called.

  Glancing over his shoulder, Ryan watched as Krysty opened her eyes and looked around.

  "HOW ARE YOU FEELING?"

  Krysty looked up into Ryan's ice-blue eye, noting the worry that was in it. Her hand and arm felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds as she lifted it. She touched his face, dragging her fingertips across his mouth, across the scar that covered half his face. "Like I was hit by a wag," she said.

  Ryan took her hand in his. "What about Phlorin?"

  Krysty shook her head and regretted it immediately. "Don't know, lover. Mind's all a jumble right now." In­wardly she was cold, and she didn't know if that really was the answer or if Phlorin's presence was making her say that. Was the woman really dead and gone, or was she somehow still around? Krysty hated not knowing. The thing that Ryan had always had with her was trust—even when things were at their worst.

  "We'll worry about that soon enough," Ryan told her. "Soon as we get out of here."

  "When's that going to be?" Krysty wanted nothing more than to put the ville behind them. Then a meal from a self-heat and a night sleeping in Ryan's arms.

  "Working on it now," Ryan told her.

  A man called for attention from outside.

  "Got to go," Ryan said.

  Krysty nodded, then gazed around the room, seeing ev­erybody that she'd seen earlier when Ryan had killed Phlorin. She didn't know how they'd come to be inside the building, or even where it was, and that inability to remem­ber scared her. She trusted Ryan and the other companions, but she needed to be independent, too. Lying there like an invalid wasn't helping. She tried to sit up, but her stomach turned sick on her, revolving in wicked flips. She groaned.

  Mildred put her arms around Krysty, helping her get steady. "Easy does it," the black woman said. "You've been through a lot. Don't rush it."

  "Water," Krysty gasped, wanting to get rid of the sick taste in her mouth.

  Mildred brought up a ring-pull and popped the top. She held the container as Krysty drank. "Go easy with that. Too much and you might make yourself sick."

  Krysty sipped the contents, then settled back into the woman's arms. She glanced at Dean, who was lying with one ear pressed to the ground for some reason. She thought she'd ask him, but she didn't have the strength.

  "WHAT'S YOUR NAME?"

  "Cawdor," Ryan answered. "And yourself?"

  "My name's Naylor."

  Ryan scanned the terrain, watching the baron's men slither between the stacks of dead wags. Maybe Naylor was giving the appearance of stepping down his hostile actions, but he wasn't wasting any time in shoring up his position. The man had experience. "You a baron's man, Naylor?"

  "Yeah. Working as sec chief for Baron Curtis Shaker."

  "Don't know him," Ryan called back.

  "Got a ville down south. Mebbe two weeks ride from here as the crow flies."

  "You got a reason for being in Idaho Falls?"

  "I was sent here to find somebody."

  "Can't be me," Ryan replied, looking back over the men and women assembled inside the building.

  "Man I'm looking for owes the baron some blood," Naylor said. "If you stand in the way of me getting it back, there's going to be trouble."

  "I don't like getting threatened," Ryan growled, but he cut his eye over the four men in the room. He automatically discounted Clete, the husband. If Naylor had been looking for a man with a wife, the sec chief would have said so.

  "I'm not threatening, Cawdor," Naylor said. "Just lay­ing the ace on the line so we all know what we're looking at."

  Ryan kept his gaze on Elmore and the two other suspect men. "How do you know the man you're looking for was here?"

  "Trailed him," Naylor replied. "Got a man here with me who knows him by sight."

  "You don't?"

  "No."

  "How do you know you can trust him?" Ryan asked.

  "I choose to," Naylor replied. "And me trusting him, that's pretty much my own lookout now, isn't it?"

  "He's right about that," J.B. said quietly. The Armorer gave the appearance of being relaxed, but Ryan knew his friend was as tight as a bowstring, able to move faster than an eye blink.

  "You don't owe them people in there anything," Naylor pointed out.

  "No," Ryan replied, "you're right about that. But I gave them my word if they threw in with us, I'd see their way clear of this bastard situation."

  "You're drawing to a hard hand if you think you can live up to that," Naylor said. "Fuck, I don't think you're going to get past those coldhearts. And I saw the woman you carried in myself. Been a stranger, you wouldn't have done that. Means you got one of your own wounded. Hate to see you hard up against it like that after all the chilling you did against these coldhearts."

  "I usually do what I say I'll do," Ryan said.

  "Mebbe we can cut a deal," Naylor said, "because I don't set too well with losing any more of my people, ei­ther."

  Ryan kept watching the three men. "I'm listening."

  DEAN LAY QUIET and still on the ground. He heard his fa­ther's voice and the exchange with the sec chief outside, but he also thought he heard something moving around inside the ground below the building.

  At first, he'd thought it was just a vibration, maybe something settling outside after all the rain. Then, when it had kept up, he thought it could be something else.

  He kept the Browning H
i-Power in his fist, and took out his turquoise-handled throwing knife. Holding it butt down, he slammed the heel of his hand against the ground. The knife's hilt plunged into the packed earth again and again, making him doubt what he'd heard.

  Then the next blow he struck brought the hollow sound he'd been expecting to hear.

  Rising to his knees, his heart thumping faster, Dean plunged the knife blade into the ground, searching.

  "My dear boy," Doc said, his attention diverted for a moment from the three men he was watching, "whatever are you doing?"

  "Hollow space under the ground, Doc," Dean said. "It's not natural." The knife blade slid deep without warning, running along the ground in a straight line for an instant. The knife's passing left a thin groove cut into the earth. As Dean watched, small bits of dirt fell into the groove and disappeared.

  The vibration he'd been feeling grew stronger as he hooked the fingers of his free hand into the groove.

  "GIVE ME THE MAN I'm looking for, and I'll provide you safe passage out of this ville."

  Ryan gazed across the intervening space, aware that the sec chiefs men were still moving. "Calls for an awful lot of trust on my part."

  "Don't see any other way you're getting out of here alive."

  "Who are you looking for?" Ryan asked.

  "A man calls himself Ethridge."

  "You want him alive or dead?"

  "Living would suit the baron better. Don't want to have to explain how that man got himself chilled."

  Ryan swept the three suspect men with his gaze, waiting to see which of them broke eye contact first. "Anybody want to step up and claim this one?" he asked.

  None of them answered.

  "Can you give me something more to go on?" Ryan asked. "None of the guys I've got in here appear to willing to fess up."

  "Man's got a tattoo," Naylor called back. "On the in­side of his forearm you'll find a big blue dot with lighter blue rings around it. Then there's two twisted lines of or­ange running through it."

  The one-eyed man lifted the SIG-Sauer to point in the general direction of Elmore and the two other men. "One of you is lying, and I intend to have the man who is. Bas­tard quick."