Gates of Hell (21 page)

Pyr took a step toward the cell door, caught between exaltation and terror that he was imagining it all. “Slim fare,” he recalled Pilsane’s judgment of the slave ship’s cargo. “Most valuable property in the galaxy. Mine.”

The door was a thick slab of metal with a lockplate and codepad set in the right of the frame. Fire licked through every part of him not numbed by the poison. Breathing hurt. Telepathy hurt, but Pyr couldn’t figure out how to use the bracelet.
Pilsane! Door 833. Open it now
.

On my way, Captain.

No! The code must be in the manifest. Remote open the thing and leave me alone!

He waited, hunched over and shaking, counting seconds of his life tick off while Pilsane fiddled with the ship’s computer.

There finally came a click and the door slid silently open. Two pairs of eyes stared at him from the cots. The male lunged to his feet. Pyr knocked the dark-skinned boy away. The boy fell back across the room’s second cot. Pyr grabbed the female.

He felt thin bones beneath fragile yellow skin. The shocked face was a skull with too-big eyes, covered with a blanket of matted yellow hair.

A koltiri. A living legend, even in the border territories. Goddesses of great beauty and compassion, miracle workers, able to heal any sickness and injury with a touch. The beauty was a lie. He hoped the healing ability wasn’t.

Help me
! He demanded with all the mind he had left.
Heal me. Now
!

Her mind was ravaged, her body weak and broken. He felt her wanting to flinch away, wanting to deny him. She said, “All right.”

The man in the doorway didn’t speak, though his desperation came across loud and clear. Roxy spoke to him in Hebrew. The two didn’t seem to have any trouble communicating.

The cell was small and the man was big, and hellishly strong. Martin hit the cot with bone-jarring impact, hard enough to knock the air out of him. He was up in an instant, wheezing and fighting dizziness, launching himself at the intruder who’d grabbed Roxy. A closed-fisted backhand knocked him down again. Pain sang through Martin as his head hit the bulkhead with a sharp crack. The intruder threw back his head and howled in pain as Martin forced himself to his feet again. The sound vibrated around the small cell and through Martin’s aching head, but that didn’t stop him from pulling Roxy away and getting between her and the stranger.

He got a needier leveled at his chest for his trouble.

Martin held his breath and stared at the black and silver thing in the other man’s shaking right hand. He slowly raised his gaze to look into the man’s eyes, and saw that he was going to die. He took what he was certain was his last breath.

“Don’t you dare!”

Pyr had no idea how the scrawny woman put herself between him and his target just as he depressed the needler’s trigger. He had less idea how he managed to jerk his hand up as the weapon fired. The ceiling disappeared, as did the deck above that. The energy wave spread out in a bright flash, lighting the scene in stark white and crisp black shadows for a half dozen heartbeats, while the three of them stared at each other in the fading glow.

“Good thing the battery’s low on that thing,” the koltiri commented, with fearless, irritating sarcasm. “Or we might be breathing space right now.”

He had almost killed her. She was all he had and he—had—almost—And she was joking!

Martin put a hand on Roxy’s shoulder. He definitely did not like the way the big, mean bastard was glaring at his sister-in-law, or the way she was glaring back. “Honey,” he said quietly. “That’s a needier.”

“I know.”

The big bastard did not look good. He certainly did not look stable. There were strictly enforced treaties banning the use of the particularly nasty energy weapon Big Bastard held in his trembling hand. It was said that the sole thing a needier couldn’t penetrate was a Trin personal shield. This was only the second one Martin had seen, and he was a Sector security chief. That the other one belonged to his wife Betheny only served to illustrate how dangerous and deadly a needier was.

“Get back,” Pyr ordered the boy. “Get away from him,” he ordered the woman.

“No,” she replied. “Not to let you kill him just so there’s no witness to your weakness.”

Pain poured through Pyr, but anger flared even stronger than the pain. He glared at the koltiri, or would have, if a wave of blindness hadn’t overwhelmed his vision as the last of the white light from the needier shot faded. No time to argue now.
You said you’d help me
.

Promise first
. She was adamant. Cold as a dead star. She knew what he intended. Weakness had everything to do with it, but it was nothing personal. It wasn’t that kind of pride that made him decide to kill her companion. Telepath or not, she read him wrong in this. It was simple policy that decided the boy’s fate. No witnesses. He could afford to take no chance of letting any word get out that he owned a koltiri. The boy posed only a small security risk—his ability to escape was slim—but Pyr never left anything to chance.
I’ll let you die, she warned. Do anything to Martin, now or later, and I’ll let you die
.

She was a healer, sworn to save lives. She had to be bluffing. He had no time to find out. No one dictated to Pyr Kaddani without paying a very high price for it. He and the koltiri would discuss her presumption later. In this instant, he conceded to her demand.
He lives. Now. Later
.

Thank you.

Roxy had barely formed the thought when the big man in black leather dropped to his knees in front of her. His hands reached out, huge grasping claws seeking to trap her in her promise. There was such a predatory, forever quality to the trap that Roxy’s initial reaction was to bat them away, but she stayed put, closed her eyes, and let him touch her once more. There was one way out for her. She was koltiri, and had said she would help. Martin’s life depended on keeping her end of the deal.

“I’m an idiot,” she muttered. Then all the air went out of her lungs at the shock of contact. It was worse than she’d thought it would be, worse than anything she’d ever felt.

“Jesus, Roxy! Don’t!”

Martin’s voice was miles and miles away. The stranger’s pain was vivid against her skin, along her nerves, and in her mind. She was used to pain, but not like this. Pain wasn’t supposed to be complicated. Pain wasn’t supposed to be so strong that it communicated with a touch, but this was. That the man could move and speak and think impressed her, briefly. Then her gaze met his and the small space their bodies occupied went away.

The fight began.

She stood naked with a stone knife in her hand as lava rained all around. A river of fire was eating the ground from under her bare feet. The knife was a long tooth of shining black glass. Lightning ripped across a bruised purple sky over her head.

“This,” she said, turning around slowly, “is decidedly weird.” ,

Oh, and there was the pain. Everything was made of pain. There was nothing that was not pain. The air, the sky, the burning landscape, her.

“
Jesus H. Christ,” she muttered
—
and her a good Jewish girl from Koltir. She looked at the long black knife. He was going to make a game out of it, wasn’t he? “Idiot.” There was nothing worse than healing a telepath. Nothing. Worse than trying to treat a sick doctor. Telepaths and doctors all made terrible patients. She knew, being both. Well, she was used to fighting at this point, even if her adversary was usually the mindless hunger of disease. She tossed hair away from her face
—
it wasn’t hair, but long trails and streamers of orange and gold flame, searing her fingers at the touch. “Just what I always wanted,” she muttered. “A bonfire for a hat.” She squinted through the heat haze that roiled up off the lava. There. A large, dark shape. Movement? Yes, definitely. Hiding from her? Stalking her, more likely. He was a hunter, a warrior. Of that much about him she was certain. “An idiot. Here, kitty kitty.” More of a wolf, or some great, arrogant bird of prey, she decided, as she stepped into the bright, sluggish flow of lava. Because everything was pain, she accepted and ignored the burning hair, and the fact that she was wading through a stream of molten rock. She allowed that she was real, that the weapon in her hand was real, that the man was real, and most of all, that the illness killing him was real. To get through the man’s defenses to get to the disease was her true objective. This was all just symbolic imagery
—
that hurt like hell. Never mind that her impulse was to plunge the stone knife into the naked, red-haired warrior who loomed suddenly up before her rather than get past him and on with her job
.

Beyond him was the mouth of a cave, but there was no darkness beyond the opening. A blinding, white-hot glow pulsed within. It was a heartbeat throb, slowing, fading.

“Reality is subjective,” she reminded the naked warrior as he raised a blade identical to her own. His teeth drew back in a vicious snarl as he threatened her with the long shard of flaked obsidian. She ignored the knife, but her gaze was drawn elsewhere for a moment. “Is that subjective reality in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

The question didn’t distract him, but his snarl did turn into a deep, dirty laugh. Then he sobered, and went into a crouch before the cave mouth, blocking it. “Get back.”

Roxy stayed very still, her own knife lowered to her side. The pulsing white light outlining the crouching man’s large form was growing dimmer. “You invited me here.”

He nodded. “I know.”

“I’m trying to help you.”

He didn’t move. “I know.”

“You’re a stubborn moron, aren’t you?”

He cocked a sharply arched eyebrow at her. “Stubborn. Yes.”

All right, not a moron, but the strongest, most elaborately shielded telepath she’d ever encountered. Defenses so strong he couldn’t even unconsciously lower them. This was going to be a very big problem. “I’m not interested in your secrets,” she told him.

“I know.”

She’d had way too much frustration lately to deal well with this. His shields were amazing, frighteningly good, and very alien. She’d never encountered a talent like his before, nor had any other koltiri, or the knowledge of how to settle into the healing would be a part of her. Besides, she wasn’t used to meeting resistance on her way to treating a patient, even in a new and talented mind. The man wanted to live, she knew it. More than anything in the universe, this man wanted his life, but he didn’t know how to give up the control that kept her from saving him. His eyes pleaded with her, but his hand still tightly gripped the knife, and his muscles were tensed to pounce if she moved. Meanwhile, the world burned around them and the light faded. Ashes rained down around them.

This was so fucking unfair!

Roxy stamped her foot. It was her subjective reality and she could be petulant if she wanted to be. She moved forward and he shot to his feet. “Get out of my way you…” She tried running through him, and was stabbed in the gut for her trouble. He caught and held her
as
she fell to the ground
.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

He was crying.

Thanks a lot.

His tears touched her skin, branded it, and burned on into her soul. His grief flowed through her, not at his own death, but hers and at the death of…

Wait a minute. She looked around the burning countryside. This was most definitely not her subjective reality. “Damn. You’re good.”

“I know.”

“Shut up.”

She thought about it and the world moved.

“Much better,” she said, and looked around.

It was cool here, familiar, though she’d only been to this place once, many years ago. A clear dome arched high overhead, letting in night sprinkled with only a few stars. She was dressed now, in elegant draping white, slit up to there and cut down to there. He was there with her. Opposite to her white, he was dressed all in black. The alien was just as big, smart, and dangerous clothed in the garments of her imagination as he had been buck naked and carrying a primitive weapon. The gaze he turned on her was a dark, intense blue. She noticed an elaborate jeweled brooch on his collar, and knew it was nothing of her imagining. The man’s control was impressive, even when she drew him into her mind. Impressive, and fatal for both of them, if she couldn’t get past his defenses quickly.

A cool breeze stirred their hair and the supple silk of their clothing. They stood before a stretch of white wall and an elaborate gate, its twisting design carved of ivory inlaid with ebony. The light was hidden beyond the gate, deep in the core of the Maze.

“What is this place?” He pointed toward the gate.

She ducked beneath his arm and sprinted toward the gate, the entrance to the Maze. She’d run it only once, but had memorized the path to its heart. She knew the dangers, and they held no terror for her. She heard him pelting up behind her. She held her breath when she hit the first firewall, but kept right on going through the thin blue energy barrier. You lost points for hesitating. She heard his gasp when he hit the barrier half a second behind her, but didn’t glance over her shoulder to see if he’d made it through. She turned right at the first cross corridor, left at the second, went through another barrier. The barriers and the twisted, confusing paths were his own mental barriers, really, but she made herself believe they were something else, and as long as he believed it as well, they’d be fine. He’d be distracted by playing inside her imagination and she’d save his life.

She didn’t hear him behind her now. She’d be at the center of the Maze soon. At the Heart. Him. All she had to do was
—

He was waiting for her around the next corner. She ran straight into him and went down hard, flat on her back, the wind knocked out of her. He stood over her with his hands on his hips. “I know this game. Maze. From the underground culture of the Terran asteroid Belt. It’s one they let the children play.”