Enemy Games (10 page)

It felt as if every muscle in his body tightened.

“I know a little bit about your mother’s people,” he said, his tone considering. “Your file makes it clear you didn’t complete your training with the Swovjiti Temple.”

That part of her personnel file was public, perhaps because the circumstances behind her expulsion from the program had been humiliating. Jayleia opened her eyes and shrugged.

He sucked in an audible breath that sounded as if she’d given him the missing piece of a vital puzzle. “Claugh data on the Swovjiti healing trance are so sparse that we assumed the technique was the pinnacle of Temple training. If it isn’t, what is?”

“I won’t answer that. Help me to the medi-bay?”

“No,” he said, tucking an arm around her waist, pulling her to her feet, and then down the companionway. “Come on. The cabin. The diagnostic bed is suited for torture, not for sleeping.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she murmured as the cabin door opened and he ushered her into the tiny room.

He swept the covers from the bed and eased her to sitting.

The throb behind her eyes subsided when she sank onto the edge to kick off her shoes.

“Teleport,” she said.

Damen studied her, his expression set in patently noncommittal lines.

“I can’t sleep until you do,” she ground from between clenched teeth, her breath coming in short rasps. “Your health is my job. Open the room com so I can hear, then lock me in. If you teleport out and then right back, I won’t have time to hijack or sabotage your thrice-damned ship.”

“All right,” Damen said. His tone, pitched to placate, didn’t quite mask his amusement. “You win.”

“You lie badly.”

He chuckled.

She smiled, knowing he’d realized she wasn’t a threat in her present condition. Too bad it was true. She heard Damen move, then the musical cadence of a piece of equipment activating.

What did it mean that the Claugh valued the beauty of music even in the most utilitarian applications? Not even TFC luxury liners were equipped with gear that switched on with anything more than a click.

“Com is live,” Damen said. “Stand by to teleport, V’k. This will be a rapid shot. Out and back, confirming infection status only.”

“Understood. Resetting teleporter to the
Kawl Fergus
cockpit. Synch your biofilter over to match, please,” V’kyrri’s voice replied over the open link. “Standing by.”

Damen strode out of the room.

“Biofilter synch confirmed. On your mark, Captain.” Damen’s words echoed, coming both through the open cabin door and via the open com link.

“On my mark, aye,” V’kyrri said. “Three, two, one, mark.”

“Teleporting.”

Ship’s speed lagged. Jayleia collapsed back into the bed in relief. No alarms. Damen was safe. The engines ramped, then slowed and revved again.

“Gods,” Damen grumbled. “Give me a systems failure any day over disease. Best speed,
Queen’s Rhapsody
. My regards to Her Majesty.
Kawl Fergus
out.”

He strode into the room and into her limited line of sight. His chest expanded as he drew a deep breath. Tension mounted in the set of his shoulders.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

“You’ll heal now?”

“Yes. You’re safe.”

That brought a surprised and pleased smile to his face.

“You’ll be more comfortable without this.” He unclipped her equipment belt, draping it over his arm. “I’ll pull data on your father and load it on your handheld while you sleep. Translation, too.”

Jay settled deeper onto the mattress. It responded to her weight and heat, conforming to her body. Even before she began the trance triggers she’d been taught from childhood, her eyes closed.

Damen pulled the blankets over her. With the bed and covers saturated with his scent, she couldn’t keep her imagination from enclosing her in Damen’s arms. Had he intended that? The uncomfortable pounding of her heart eased. She thought she smiled as she sighed and snuggled into the bed.

He smoothed hair away from her face. Warm lips lingered on her forehead.

“Get better,” he murmured. “I need you.”

 

JAYLEIA
woke to the distinctive
snick
of a neural cuff closing around her left wrist. She tried to frown and realized she felt like someone had neural-locked her entire body. What was going on? Where was she?

Mental processes sputtered, stalled, then kicked and restarted. Ah. She was coming out of a healing trance. Memory provided a rapid-fire replay of events. Chemmoxin. Infected kuorls. Her rescue/kidnapping courtesy of the Claugh nib Dovvyth. Damen. Safe. Her father. Missing.

Anxiety sat on her chest. Her dad. What more had come apart while she’d slept off her infection?

Her respiration rate increased and by virtue of memory, she knew where she was, aboard the
Kawl Fergus
, in Damen’s cabin. In his bed.

While she was conscious, it would take her several minutes of concentrated effort to regain control of her body. She resented the cuffs, even though she hadn’t heard them activated.

She groaned.

“Jay?”

Damen. Sounding uncertain. Off balance.

“Can you hear me?”

Of course she could. She simply couldn’t answer.

“Damn it,” he grumbled. “I hope this means you’re waking.” He closed the other cuff around her right wrist, but he didn’t secure it.

Why not?

“I’m taking you to the station medical facility,” he said, “so the cleaning team can get aboard.”

Jay realized she didn’t feel or hear the engines. Apparently, they’d made Silver City. What had Damen said? They’d been twenty hours out when the
Rhapsody
had intercepted them?

Twenty hours of healing trance. Good. The infection had barely established a foothold in her system, then. She’d be up and causing trouble in short order.

“Station authorities require that you be secured for transport,” he said. “If you’re cured, and you’d better be, it’s a needless precaution. You’ve been so amenable since I picked you up, and I can’t work out why. I kidnapped you with the intent of using you to flush your father from hiding.”

He paused, whispered a curse in a language she didn’t recognize, and shifted.

“In your place,” he went on, “I’d have cooperated long enough to get to Silver City, knowing it represented the perfect opportunity for escape.”

How fortunate. She didn’t have enough physical control yet to laugh at his oh-so-accurate calculation. Or, more troubling, to indulge her growing inclination to warn him that he’d made a mistake in not cuffing her properly.

His compassion and her attraction were going to get both of them into trouble.

Damen lifted Jayleia from the bed and eased her onto the stretcher he’d found in the
Kawl Fergus
’s medi-bay. Long strands of shiny black hair spilled over the edge. He tucked it up beside her and found he had to resist stroking the silky tresses.

He studied the exotic cream and chocolate cast of her complexion and searched for any further sign that she might be waking. She had warned him he wouldn’t be able to rouse her. It hadn’t troubled him the first few times he’d looked in on her. The fourth time, and every time thereafter, it had.

To distract himself, he’d pulled up the log files of her most recent conversations with her parents, hoping to catch a hint of what had happened to her dad.

Since he’d helped Pietre break an IntCom lockdown of the
Sen Ekir
last year, he’d had a back door into the ship’s systems. That they hadn’t detected him, much less shut him out, made him uncomfortable. He couldn’t decide if the scientists were simply too trusting, or if he was somehow betraying the friendships he’d developed with them.

It didn’t matter. Admiral Seaghdh recognized the strategic importance of the unassuming science ship. He’d ordered the surveillance.

Damen had loaded and run Jay’s last message from her father. He detected a pinched look at the corners of Zain Durante’s hazel eyes.

“I want you off that ship,” Jayleia’s father had said. “You promised you’d come back. You’re a fine scientist. Any research facility would be glad to have you. Come home.”

In the video, she’d stared at him before shaking her head. “I’m flattered, Dad. What home were you referring to? Yours? Mom’s? I’ve carved out a life of my own and you want me to give it up?”

“Your mother had you most of your childhood and I didn’t interfere,” her father had replied.

Jayleia’s bitter-sounding laugh made Damen resolve to pull up her file again.

“I’d like a turn at knowing the person you’ve become, Jayleia,” her father had noted. “Take some time. Think about it. Your mother won’t like that I’ve asked you to return to Tagreth, but you’re an adult now. I know you’ll make the right decision. The
Sen Ekir
was pulled from the Ioccal project and repurposed as an outbreak first response vessel. What kind of future are you building out there?”

“My own,” she’d said.

He’d shaken his head as if disappointed. “I love you. I want you to be happy. You can’t be happy if you don’t lay the framework for it. Come home. I’ll help you examine your options, maybe open a few doors that would otherwise be closed to you,” he’d said before signing off.

A message from her mother had followed. Margol Durante, a slender woman with delicate features and skin a shade darker than her daughter’s sat rigid before her camera, rage etched in the lines around her mouth.

“Your father had no right to say what he did to you,” her mother had said. “You grew up here, surrounded by family, trained in the ways of our people. You’ve shirked your responsibilities to the Temple and to the people who love you long enough. When you enlisted against my wishes, I said little.”

In the log replay, Jayleia propped an elbow on her panel and rested her forehead in her hand.

“Young women deserve to make their own way in life for a little while before the dictates of duty and obligation weigh upon them,” her mother had continued. “I wanted that experience for you, even if I disapproved of your decision to endanger your life to get it. You’ve made remarkable contributions to the people of Tagreth Federated and to the war effort, Jayleia. It is time to pass that burden to a new generation. All I have to offer is my love and the adoration of your extended family. Come. Take your place . . .”

“Mother,” Jayleia had finally burst out. “I was exiled!”

“You would give up so easily?” the woman had asked. “That misunderstanding can be remedied with a tactful apology. Or is this your way of telling me your father has won you away from me with promises I cannot hope to match?”

Suspecting that Jayleia’s official file didn’t tell the real story regarding her banishment and disturbed by the emotional blackmail her mother employed, Damen had finally shut off the replay. While he’d seen signs of strain in both of Jayleia’s parents, he hadn’t seen or heard anything to help him find Zain Durante.

He’d gone to look in on Jay yet again. He’d lost count of which peek at her it had been, but he’d realized that the subtle, sickly scent of decomposing flesh he’d smelled when she’d collapsed had vanished.

That had been hours ago. Why wouldn’t she regain consciousness?

He craved another shot at her defenses. Shoving aside a surge of anticipation, he activated the stretcher’s anti-grav unit and reminded himself he didn’t have time to indulge his appetites. His first order of business would be verifying her cure.

The sooner she was healthy, the sooner he could strip her defenses and find out what she didn’t want him to know. And get to her father.

The makeshift bed, bearing Jayleia, rose to his hip. Damen took the head of the unit and steered the stretcher out of the
Kawl Fergus
’s cargo door, out of the docking bay he’d been assigned, and through the halls. Miners and stationers passed with little more than a glance at his passenger. A turn into a main corridor leading to the station hub meant more noise and more people. Jayleia didn’t flinch.

He frowned, concerned, and sped his steps.

“Hold the lift!” he commanded a group of four miners as they piled into the elevator.

They ignored him.

“Medical priority, damn it,” he shouted, sprinting the last distance. He stuck a foot into the closing door, drew his gun, and shoved it into the closest gap-toothed grin.

“Baxt’kal. Medical. Priority,” he gritted.

The doors opened. Damen gestured. “Out.”

The men glowered at him. “You got balls of solid Isarrite, boy,” one of them grumbled.

Damen didn’t bother answering. He backed into the lift, his gun still trained to ensure their safe passage. The lift doors closed on the miners’ anger-reddened faces. Only then did Damen relax, punch in a destination, and turn to his prisoner.

“Jayleia?” he murmured, holstering his gun. “Please tell me you’re awake.”

She opened her eyes, and squinted, discomfort in the crinkles in her forehead. Her eyes closed again.

“Jayleia?” he said, leaning closer, and brushing her hair from her face.

She drew an audible breath and turned into his hand, a faint smile on her lips.

Heat skittered down his body. He froze, caught off guard by the strength of the response. He cleared his throat and dismissed his taut nerves as nothing more than concern for his prisoner’s well-being.

“I need you to wake up,” he said, opening the cuff he’d never locked, and smoothing the skin of her right wrist.

She sighed in response to his touch.

Twelve Gods he needed her to regain consciousness, to remember that he was the enemy, and to erect her defenses between them, again. Every breath he drew flooded him with her intoxicating wine and chocolate scent—no longer tainted by any hint of illness.

He hadn’t had anything like professional detachment regarding Jayleia Durante from the moment, a year ago, that he’d surprised her prepping experiments in the shadow of the
Sen Ekir
and taken her prisoner. Her crewmates had been angry and scared. She’d done an impressive job of masking her fury. She’d studied the team of four men who’d taken the ship as if making plans to take them all on single-handedly. She’d looked like a Myallki bitch poised to protect her spawn, all shining black hair and supple beauty, but hiding poisonous fangs.