Voices rose and fell beyond the room, mystifying whispers that spoke a language both mysterious and impossibly familiar. They grew in volume until the whispers became rumbles and the rumbles became shouts. The pings and beeps and clicks of secretive machines rose with them in a dangerous crescendo until she cried out and pressed her hands to her ears.
Then everything went quiet, and she felt only the distant presence of a man. She could almost see him, could somehow feel him striding toward some purpose of import, his long legs cutting through the air, his broad shoulders pushing it out of the way. And for a moment, she had the sense that everything was going to be all right. Then he stilled, and she could have sworn his attention turned to her, and her breath caught.
Then he disappeared, and she told herself she was crazy. Just another hallucination to add to the growing list, another strange experience to disregard. But she couldn’t believe it, and her hands started to shake.
Because some part of her deep inside knew the truth: he was real, and he was coming for her.
Mikhél was on his way to the main processing center when his back tensed for no reason he could name. Without slowing he opened his sedfai. The air was still, the space quiet but for the drone of the processors. He heard no breath, felt no heat or movement that would betray the presence of another. He was alone.
His thoughts went to the girl. Valaer was set to watch her now, so he sent a signal to the palletar’s link. Valaer gave no response. His shoulders tight, he signaled Eithné to check on her patient. And then, with one quick check to make sure he was still alone, he took the quickest route to the med center.
The noise around Jane rose again, and through it she heard muffled footsteps. Her breath hitched and then doubled in pace, quick little pants that threatened to leave her lightheaded. She backed away jerkily in the darkness, her feet resisting the movement. The floor felt like glue, sucking at her bare toes, pulling on her heels with strange, cool slickness. Her gown was a soft float around her thighs, the swirl of the slip following her movements. She refused to think of who had changed her clothes and why, but her stomach churned.
Dim light came from a strip of window to her right, and there were lights over the bed blinking in dull, rhythmic red. There were no other furnishings. She turned in a circle, searching for anything she could use as a weapon, but of course there was nothing.
The walls were smooth, with the faint gleam of silver in the shadows. They offered no handles or levers she could break away and use in self-defense. They gave under her fingers like dense liquid, the material clinging to her skin. The sound and smell of it threatened to overwhelm, and she pulled her hands free. Grazing them with her fingertips, she made her way around the room, looking for some way out.
On her first pass, she couldn’t find a seam anywhere that gave way to a door. Her breath hitched, but she told herself she’d just missed it. With greater speed than grace, she searched the walls a second time, her fingers pressed against the slick substance with barely controlled revulsion. There had to be a door. How could there not be a door? But she couldn’t find one, and she couldn’t seem to draw in enough air.
She was trapped.
And he was getting closer.
She could hear him, the rhythmic thudding of his footsteps a clamor that pulsed physically against her, and her heart rabbited inside her chest. She pressed her hands against her ears, but she couldn’t drown out the noise.
And she could smell him. Her nostrils flared as she picked up the virile, potent scent, and her head went light when she realized it was familiar. The footsteps grew louder, and they seemed to sound in time with her own rushing pulse until she could barely tell the difference between them.
She leaped onto the bed and grabbed at the window. The footsteps stilled, and she ran her fingers around the edge of light. A voice sounded outside the room, and she yanked on the shutters.
Something swished behind her, and light washed over her, illuminating the room but for the large, dark shadow of a man. She gave the window blind one last desperate pull and gasped as it sliced her finger.
Then his voice ran over her skin like velvet.
“Feghí dahr.”
She froze, but the blind lifted. And the view before her eclipsed all thought. Stars filled the space from one edge of the window to the next, burning so brightly it seemed the glass should be hot under her hands. She could see nothing of the city below, but for the moment she didn’t care.
How had mere shutters blocked this radiance?
She pressed her fingertips against the brightest of them and exhaled, a slow, shuddering breath. She knew this sky. A memory teased at the back of her mind, and she strained to bring it forward.
“You are safe here.”
The exotic cadence of his voice sent the recollection flittering away, and she found herself longing to believe him. To finally feel safe.
But this was the man who’d taken her from her home. Maybe she was crazy, but she wasn’t crazy enough to trust him. Back stiff, she turned toward him, her face hidden in his shadow. With the light behind him, she couldn’t make out his features. He stood still, his palms up, and her body warmed in a way that was not entirely unpleasant.
And she felt an odd tugging sensation. As if something was trying to pull her toward him.
He repeated softly, with that accent she couldn’t quite place, “You are safe here. I will not harm you.”
She realized he was trying to allay her fear, and at once she knew how to defend herself. She needed no weapon. All she had to do was show him her face. In a matter of seconds, he would see what others saw in her. When he ran she would find her way home.
She stepped into the light.
His body went still, and at first she thought it had worked. Then she realized there was something in the way he watched her that had nothing to do with fear. When he spoke again, his voice wasn’t quite as smooth.
“My name is Mikhél. I will not hurt you.”
Her thoughts collided in a jumbled rush. He wasn’t changing. For the first time in over five years, she’d met someone who wasn’t afraid of her.
And he’d kidnapped her.
He spoke again, and bluish lights flickered on. The glow illuminated a face of rough-hewn angles and pale skin framing dark, watchful eyes. It was not a friendly face, and yet she felt that strange urge again, as if she should trust him. But she wasn’t an idiot. When he stepped into the room, she dropped back to the floor.
“Stay away from me.”
He stopped. “I will not harm you.”
“You’ll understand if I’m not convinced.”
She couldn’t stop staring at him. She’d seen him before, but the details were hazy. She caught a flash of his eyes growing warm on hers, of his fingertips grazing her cheek. She shuddered and glanced at the open doorway. He followed her gaze and spoke again.
“Cheghí dahrn.”
With his words the sides of the doorway expanded. In the time it took her to draw one breath, what had been an open doorway became a flat, seamless wall.
“What the hell is this place?” She took another step back and ran into the corner. Her hands splayed into the pliable wall even as she willed her voice not to shake.
“It is a safe—”
“Yeah, I know. It’s safe. Everything’s safe. You said that before.” She glanced around the space, looked down at the nightgown that wasn’t hers, and then met his eyes. “Bullshit.”
Eithné rushed alongside Leima and buried her frustration at the faulty equipment that had failed to notify her of Seirsha’s awakening. It was one more worn-out device on a ship filled with them. When she saw Valaer striding toward them, her throat tightened.
“What happened? Is she well? Is she worse?”
“Nothing happened. I had to fix a generator.”
Eithné’s palms slicked. “You left her alone. How could you?”
“She’s fine. She’s sleeping.”
“She’s not sleeping,�
�� she hissed. “She’s out of her bed. If anything happens to her—”
“What could happen? She can’t get out of the room; she doesn’t know how. As long as no crew have gone in, she’s fine. Just scared.”
“Just scared.” Eithné’s body flamed, and she wondered that her breath didn’t steam from her lungs. When Valaer opened his mouth again, she held up a hand. “Not another word. If you—”
She stopped and grabbed Leima’s arm. When the girl looked at her, she shook her head, her finger over her lips to signal silence. Then she glanced at Valaer, who nodded and pulled Leima back.
Seirsha wasn’t alone. Eithné and Valaer both felt the presence of another, but Eithné could detect no movement or voice that would betray his identity.
Valaer whispered, “Mikhél.”
Eithné shook her head as her limbs went numb. “It can’t be. He was farther away than I when he signaled.”
Then the man in the room shifted, and she realized that somehow it was Mikhél. She let out a breath and shot Valaer one last reproachful look, and then she called open the door.
Jane’s eyes shot to the door as it opened again, and her whole body started to shake when a man and two women walked in. Four kidnappers, each of them towering over her. One was bad enough, but how would she ever escape four?
The man who’d called himself Mikhél said, “Define ‘bullshit.’”
She thought he was talking to her, and she wondered if he actually thought she’d follow such a ridiculous command. Then the other man lifted a burnished brow over pale-blue eyes.
“It depends. What did you say?”
“That she is safe.”
Blue Eyes smirked and said with a nearly flawless accent, “She does not believe you.”
Over their voices she heard a strange whimpering sound she barely recognized as coming from her own throat. She tried to study their faces, to get some sense of her kidnappers, but it was getting hard to focus. The room had grown too bright, the air too thick. One of the women spoke, and her voice warbled in a sickening ebb and flow.
“You must trust us, child. We are trying to help you.”
The woman’s bright-green eyes began to glow against the brown of her skin. Jane squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, but when she opened them the woman’s hair was vibrating. A halo of burgundy spirals that Jane would have thought lovely in another setting now sent her stomach into knots.
“If you want me to trust you,” she managed, “let me out of here.”
“I am sorry, but I cannot do that. But I can tell you why you are here.”
The woman wanted to talk. They’d kidnapped Jane, and the woman wanted to explain, as if there could possibly be a good reason for the crime. Jane almost laughed, but then she realized if they were talking, at least they’d be distracted.
“Fine.”
“Good. We should sit.”
The woman smiled, and her face crinkled like rice paper. Jane’s head went light at the sound, and she dug her fingernails into her palms to try to hold herself together.
“No.”
“Very well. Fu shen.”
A small piece of the floor separated and rose into thin air. The old woman pulled close the metal and sat, her back firm and straight.
And Jane had an idea.
“I’d feel safer if you opened the door,” she said. When they hesitated, she added, “I won’t try to run. I just need a little air.”
The last was no lie. Her lungs were a dead weight in her chest. When Mikhél called open the door, her shoulders sagged, and she almost lost her balance. She wondered who she was really fooling, but she didn’t have a choice.
She took a wheezing breath and copied the old woman’s words: “Fu shen!”
A metal plate rose at her feet. Moving through air that felt like water, she grabbed it and threw it at Mikhél. She tried to run, but the floor had turned to quicksand. Their shouts slammed into her with the weight of a thousand fists, and she sobbed and stumbled into a slow, drugged fall. Huge hands wrapped around her waist and propped her against the wall. She pressed her palms over her ears and shut her eyes against the bright of the light. But she couldn’t find the dark, and quiet eluded her. She heard a voice rumble over the racket, and she whimpered. If she hadn’t been held up, she would have sunk down into a ball.
She tried to speak, but she couldn’t make a sound. She tried again. Please.
“Quiet,” the voice said, and the room fell silent. But it didn’t matter. Machines strobed through the air. Whispers slithered through the walls. All around them people walked and spoke and cried and breathed, and she heard it all. Then the voice spoke again, and it seemed to resonate through her until her entire body vibrated with the sound of it.
“It’s the gevenfaen. Her sedfai is overloaded.”
And those huge hands ran up her body to cover her ears. The sounds of the room were replaced by the WHOOSH-WHOOSH-WHOOSH of her pulse, and it felt as if the blood rushing through her could not be contained by such delicate organs as the brain and the heart.
She opened her eyes. She wanted to see the man who’d done this to her. She needed to force him to watch what was happening to her, so if she died here he would never be able to pretend it wasn’t the result of his criminal act.
But it was Mikhél whose hands were on her face, and she still found herself wanting to trust him. He’d told her she was safe, and she wanted to believe him. She wanted to be safe.
And more than anything, she didn’t want to be alone.
Tears ran down her cheeks, and he brushed them away with his thumb. There was something in his eyes that wouldn’t release her gaze, and she realized she did believe him. If she let him, he would help her. Something shifted inside her, and her breath backed up in her lungs.
Then, slowly, quiet descended. The air stilled and softened; the noise faded. The light dimmed, and the glow at the edges of her vision disappeared. Her pulse calmed, and breath came easily once again.
She asked, “How did you do that?”
Her knees buckled, and he caught her. Though his hands left her ears to pick her up, the blessed quiet remained.
He’d given her peace.
And she suspected, for no reason she could name, that he’d done far more than that. “Thank you,” she said, and she smiled.
Then she passed out.
CHAPTER 10
Mikhél caught her as she slumped, and he pulled her into his arms. He’d forgotten how light she was. She gave an impression of fortitude he had to assume was mostly show. When she’d faced him down, he’d had a moment when he thought she could handle anything.
Then she’d asked him for help, that simple “please” he almost hadn’t heard. And something had shifted inside him. Some knowledge long buried at his core had awoken in recognition of…something.
Bravado or not, he suspected there was more to her than any of them had realized.
“The gevenfaen…” Eithné said. “Her sedfai must be very strong. How did you know?”
He had no answer for her. He laid Seirsha down on the bed and stepped back. “She’ll live?”
“With proper treatment,” she muttered, rummaging through her supplies.
Mikhél nodded and allowed himself one deep breath. Then he grabbed the back of Valaer’s neck and shoved his face into the wall. He held him there until he was sure Valaer’s lungs were aching for air, and then he glanced at Eithné, his meaning clear.
She hesitated, but she didn’t argue. She touched Valaer’s wrist and looked at Mikhél, and he pulled Valaer’s head back by the hair.
“Tell the truth,” he said softly. “Lies will earn you pain. Where were you?”
“A generator was broken. They called on me to fix it.”
Eithné nodded, but Mikhél didn’t loosen his grip. “Who called you?”
“Endíett Bavoel. I had no reason to question the call.”
“You left her alone.”
“I thought she would sleep.”
>
Mikhél’s jaw tightened, and with it his grasp. “You were wrong. Do you understand what could have happened to her?”
“She could have been discovered. It was a mistake, Endeté. My apologies—”
“She was overloaded,” Mikhél growled. “She woke to a fully developed sedfai with no understanding of what it showed her. Her fear made it worse. Without immediate treatment, she would have died.”
“Treatment I have yet to administer,” Eithné said with a pointed look.
“You’re still here.”
The voice came from behind them, soft but clear, and the hair rose across Mikhél’s body. He turned to see Seirsha crouched on the bed, her back pressed into the corner of the room, her skeletal frame poised for flight. Her eyes darted between him and Valaer, and he realized he still held the palletar against the wall. He said softly, in their native language, “You will get no second chance.” Then he released Valaer and turned to the woman who’d almost died as a result of the older man’s mistake.
She leveled those muddy eyes on his and frowned. “You’re not afraid of me.”
“No.”
She glanced at each of them, checking, he knew, for signs of the valfaen. Her eyes narrowed, as if she couldn’t quite believe him, but her pulse and breath were steady. He realized she was no more afraid than he, and he wondered how she could have beaten the gevenfaen.
“Where am I?”
Eithné said, “A hospital.”
Mikhél barely recognized the English word. The alna must have included medical terminology in her language training. A week ago he would have thought it a waste of time.
“You’re a doctor?”
“Yes.”
Seirsha swallowed and looked down, and her arms crossed over her ribs in what must have been a pitiful defense against the cold of the ship. The Meijhé allowed only a life-sustaining level of heat, even in the deep of space. “What’s…” Her voice caught, and she cleared her throat. “What’s wrong with me?”
Spyridon (The Spyridon Trilogy Book 1) Page 7
