Gates of Hell (22 page)

She glared up at him from where she lay on the ground. She’d made some progress, but he was still able to block her out. “Fine. Go ahead. Die. I’m trying to help.”

“I know.”

“Stop saying that.” She was on her feet now, and furious. “What do you mean children’s game? You want a game, big boy?” She backed away from him, beckoning angrily.

“I’ll give you a game, little girl,” he snarled, and followed.

And they were in the paint. The hoop loomed above them, and Roxy had the orange sphere in her hands. It was very nearly dark on the court, but she didn’t need a glaring spotlight to find her way in here. This was her place. Her heart. She dribbled the ball, slowly, as slow as the dying heartbeat of the man glaring at her a few feet away. They were wearing shorts and jerseys, gray and colorless, with the number 23 on hers. Saints Michael’s and Chamique’s number. Out in reality she would never dare such blasphemy, but they were at the center of her now.

“What? Where?” His voice was gruff and furious, and weak.

She ignored all her inbred and highly trained compassion in favor of staying sharp and angry. And bounced the ball from hand to hand, half-crouched, making sure she stayed just out of his reach. “This is called one on one. All you have to do,” she told him with a smile like a shark’s as he looked around the dim basketball court in confusion, “is stop me from putting the rock in the hole.”

As she spoke, she drove forward, and he moved instinctively to block her way. She swerved and slithered past, keeping the ball bouncing, down low. Another swerve, a shoulder bump. He was obviously not a post-up player and they were down under the hoop. Of course, he wasn’t a player at all, that was the bloody point! She’d told him all he needed to know. He didn’t like to lose. He gave her all the attention he had left, and played.

She faded back. He had enough smarts to wave his hands in the air, but not enough to watch how she set up. Not enough to block her shot. The ball sailed up, over his head in a beautiful, perfect arc. He turned to watch it. It didn’t even touch the rim. The swoosh as the basketball dropped through the hoop was the most beautiful sound she’d ever heard.

He turned back to her, eyes full of momentary confusion. Vulnerable. Open.

“Nothing but net,” she murmured, and slid down deep inside his mind, blood, bones, chromosomes, and being, where they both wanted her to be.

“What is your name?”

Though the woman he’d spoken to was beyond hearing, Pyr heard his own voice, deep, strong, the strain of controlled pain washed out of it. He opened his eyes and saw the blue wall first, then he felt the weight in his arms. Then he looked at the cold, limp woman he was holding. The boy was called Martin; Pyr remembered that much about his argument with the koltiri. That, and his promise. He remembered a great deal, and very little. He had learned much, but very little of it made sense. It had all been so—subjective.

Martin stood nearby, and that was not very far at all inside this small cell. Pyr had just come back from a vast and glorious place to the claustrophobic confines of the outside world. He remembered being on his knees, but now he stood, with the koltiri a dead weight clasped to his chest. He took in a deep breath of recycled air and felt no triumph or joy as it filled pain-free lungs. The absence of pain was a disturbing sensation, like being naked. He felt good, alive, healthy, but mostly he felt sad. Almost annoyed.

“Captain?”

Pilsane stood in the corridor outside the cell’s open door. Pyr ignored his anxious navigator for the moment. Death no longer hovered, but the boy did, trying to get at the woman Pyr held so close. He did not know if she lived, but he would not let her go. Martin’s eyes were large and dark when Pyr glanced his way, full of desperate worry. “Her name?”

Martin said, “Put her down. Let me look at her. I can help her.”

Pyr was aware of the young man straining to stay calm, reasonable, non-threatening. His concern for the woman was genuine, if complex, and of no interest to Pyr. “I will know her name.”

“Captain!”

Pilsane’s shock, however, was amusing. He savored the momentary pleasure at Pilsane’s reaction as a man of The People. Pyr had not been amused for a—
Is that subjective reality in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me
?—while. Her thought flitted across his mind, and the memory of having found the words amusing, but he couldn’t recall now why the words had been funny. He only knew that the thought was the koltiri’s. While they had been together they had understood each other. Now they were strangers.

“Her name!” he snapped at Martin.

“Roxanne,” the boy gave up her identity at last.

It sang inside him. “I recognize the truth of it. Her father spoke it at her birth. I acknowledge Roxanne.” The words were ritual, spoken before two witnesses, though a court of the clans would not have agreed. Martin did not understand their significance. Pilsane let out a long, low whistle. And, because he had made a promise to the koltiri Roxanne, he looked at Pilsane and said, “The boy is called Martin. He belongs to the
Raptor
.”

Pilsane stared at him, looked him over minutely, and finally nodded. “As you say, Captain. You’re looking—How are you feeling?”

Pyr hefted the unconscious woman in his arms, and said casually, “I’ll live.” He stepped forward and Pilsane hurriedly backed away from the door and out of his way. Pyr snapped out orders. “I’m going back to the
Raptor
. Finish stripping the ships as quickly as possible and divide the booty. Make sure all caches of Rust are turned over to you. Space the slaver scum. Let Kith send the ships to the League. It’s up to him to pick any crew he thinks he can trust to do the job. Once you’re finished with all that, lay in a course for Robe Halfor’s base. Linch has command. “

“Yes, sir. Where will you be?”

“Taking a nap.” Almost as an afterthought as he walked away from the cell and the protests of Roxanne’s companion, he added, “Put Martin in one of the empty crew quarters. He’s our guest.”

———

Pyr didn’t want to sleep; he didn’t need to sleep. He put the woman down on his bed and then very nearly danced around the cluttered cabin in joy and triumph. He did shed the heavy leather coat and tossed his hat away while he spun around gleefully a few times. He had all the energy in the world; it belonged to her. He knew that she had given herself freely, that even the small price of her companion’s life did not begin to repay her for the gift of his life. It was just that, wasn’t it? A gift. A bounty handed down from her superior place on the tree of life. That chaffed him, more than being under obligation to this strange creature.

Who are
you
calling strange
?

There were places he needed to be, much to do, worlds to conquer, enemies to kill.

A son to rescue.

The
Raptor
had to reach Halfor’s base before he could do that. Healthy once more, he had the will and control to put his worry for Axylel into a compartment where it could not interfere with his taking necessary action. Axylel would be found, his captors dealt with. In the meantime, Pyr needed to call a staff meeting, plan strategy, call in reports from his own network and every spy on Tinna’s deep-cover string.

The first thing he did was extract the needier from the pocket of the coat that was now draped across the end of the bed and return the foolish, forbidden weapon to its hiding place. He looked at it a moment before he put it away, almost embarrassed at why he’d carried the thing onboard another ship with him. He’d had some fever-driven notion of getting Kith alone somewhere near the slaver ship’s outer bulkhead, breaching the wall with the needier, and blowing the Leaguer and himself out into space. He’d have died swiftly. Kith, with shield intact, might have drifted in space for a few hours before he succumbed.

“Maybe days,” Pyr murmured with a feral smile. Ah, well, the League representative’s death would still be convenient, but was no longer such a high priority. He still couldn’t trust the crew not to balk at invading Halfor’s stronghold, but they were less likely to mutiny with Pyr firmly in command once more. He supposed that it was a good thing he’d survived, as he’d never gotten around to making those notes for Linch.

He came to stand over the sleeping woman. She was sleeping, wasn’t she? He was reluctant to touch her, even to check for a pulse. The deepness of the mindtouch they had shared disturbed him. He did not want to initiate any further contact.

It’s a little late for that, now isn’t it?

“Who the hell are you?” she demanded. She rolled over and opened her eyes as he took an automatic step back. Her glare caught him like a stunner bolt. “You almost got me killed, you know that, don’t you?”

“You almost got us both killed.” She sat up and pointed at her head. “Get out of here. Right now.”

“What?”

His surprised reaction to her snarling anger wore off quickly. He crossed his arms and glared sternly back. “I am in command here. You will do as I—”

“You have anything to eat?” The koltiri swung her legs over the side of the bed. “And a shower. I could use a shower. And a cup of coffee. Where’s Martin?” she added, and rose unsteadily to her feet. He was somewhat disconcerted to realize that she was perhaps two inches taller than he was. He was six foot two.

She was so unsteady on her long legs that Pyr fought down the urge to hold her up. He
would not
touch her.

You don’t have to. You’re no more a touch telepath than I am. What kind of telepath are you, anyway? Where’d you get that shielding
? She was yawning widely and loudly as she asked these questions. “Where’s Martin?” she asked when she’d finished yawning.

“Safe. You’ll have to be satisfied with my word,” he added as she looked toward the door to his quarters. “You’re not going anywhere.”

He expected to her to argue and strengthened his shields against her thoughts, though it had felt like she’d been speaking from inside his mind rather than into his mind. It was a subtle but frightening difference, and he understood the implication very well.

“With any luck it will wear off,” she said—rather than thought—but in response to his suspicions. She pointed a finger at him, then sat down abruptly, as though the gesture used up all the energy she had left. “I was about to point out dramatically that it’s all your fault—and hit you if you dared to say ‘I know’.” She winced, and pressed fingertips against her temples. She had big hands, long-fingered, and wore a simple gold ring. “Basketball hands,” she said.

He remembered how she had defeated him. For a moment he was back in that alien place, his feet planted on the smooth, light wood of the floor, saw the oddly painted lines marking some sort of territorial divisions, the open-ended mesh basket looming like a hungry mouth overhead. Basket? Ah. “So that is what you call that game.” He remembered her moving around him, lithe and quick, laughing and sure-footed. He remembered the brush of contact, muscle to solid muscle, and the sharp perfumed tang of her sweat as though he’d tasted it. He remembered the way she’d teased him, played with him as she moved the silly orange ball around and around him, and the triumph that had flowed around and into him as well. “You will not do that again.”

The statement was flat and hard, and she looked at him in confusion. “What? Play basketball?”

“Win.”

She did not seem to recognize that he was being intimidating. “Sore loser, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” Then he smiled without meaning to. “I’m ungrateful.”

Her smile brought a flash of real beauty to her skull-thin face. “And you like to win.”

“I always win.” He shrugged at the tilt of her head and her long, sarcastic glance. There was no hiding from the honest assessment in those eyes. “Rhetoric,” he admitted. “Attitude. It’s an easier shield to maintain than telepathic ones.”

She nodded. “At least you’re not a complete jerk. Healing jerks is such a waste of energy.”

“I can see that.”

“And you shouldn’t remember being healed.” She glanced up at him. Nervous, curious. “Neither should I. It’s unethical and rude to go that deeply.”

“My fault. As you already pointed out.”

“It
will
wear off.” She sounded as if she was trying to reassure herself more than she was him. “And I shouldn’t be awake, or lucid, either.” Her voice cracked on the last word, and Roxanne pressed her fingers harder into her temples. “Shit!”

Pyr sucked in a sharp breath as her pain burst through him and throbbed around his eyes and across his forehead. He concentrated, and the flash of contact ebbed quickly enough, and he tried not to be disturbed by it.

“Thanks.” She gave him a grateful look that he did not want to understand.

When she reached down to the end of the bed and dragged his heavy coat around her, he said, “I’ll get you some coffee.”

“And something to eat,” she called after him as he went to the comm unit to call Kristi.

“Meat,” he told the ship’s cook. “Lots of it. Rare.” He wondered how he knew. “And a pot of black coffee.”

“What are you?” she asked when he came back to the bed. “Who are you?” The words came out in a jittering staccato from between chattering teeth. She curled up in the coat, shivering. “And why am I conscious?” Her eyes were very large and dark as she looked him over. He watched as an understanding that he did not share slowly filled her gaze. “Oh.” The word came out soft, and bitter. “I get it.”
Oh, goddess, no
.

“What?”

“You don’t want to know.”

She was right. He didn’t. He didn’t even want to guess. He wanted no more contact with the alien woman than necessary. “You will heal my men,” he told her. “And anyone else I choose. That is all that is required of you.”

She was still unimpressed by his tone of command. “I don’t want to talk about it either. Do you have any blankets?” She curled up inside the coat, her head resting on the pillows, disturbing eyes closed. He did not like those eyes on him. He did not like them to look away. He could still see her shaking beneath the leather. “I am so sick of being sick.”