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"Ordinary men. I like that." He thumped his chest. "I am not an ordinary man."

Cree snorted. "No, you are a conceited buffoon."

Lares grinned widely. "So you have not used your fists for anything other than playing

with yourself then?"

"I did not say that," Cree snapped, ignoring the vulgar insult. "As a matter of fact, the last man I hit, couldn't hit back and I regret that very much."

"Why did you do it, then?" Lares didn't think much of men who picked on weaklings.

Cree stared off across the compound. "I found the prick in bed with my woman," was

the terse reply.

"Ah," Lares said, understanding. "Being cuckolded makes a man do strange things I'm told."

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"I should have killed him," Cree said, "but she would never have forgiven me had I done so."

"And it means much to you for her not to think ill of you," Lares stated. "I am familiar with the predicament."

"I am not."

Lares shifted his position so he could better see the Reaper in the gathering darkness.

"You are the one they call the Iceman, are you not?"

"Not to my face, they don't."

"Why do they call you this?"

Cree shrugged. "Who the hell knows? Or cares?" He thought about it for the first time in his life, and then shrugged again. "I suppose it is because I have no warmth in me. My soul is as cold as the glaciers of Chrystallus."

"You have more fire in you than most of your race. But there's warmth and then there's

warmth, eh, Jackal?"

"Aye," Cree agreed, thinking of Bridget.

The dark man sensed where Cree's mind had gone by the look on his face. "Are you

warm with your woman or do you treat her the way those Rysalian pigs treat their

womenfolk?"

The Reaper flinched. "I have yet to find out," he admitted, surprising himself that he would say such a thing to a complete stranger.

Lares nudged his companion with a heavy shoulder. "I have a woman," he whispered.

"A fine woman." He put up his hands and drew lush curves in the air. "Big breasts; small waist; superb ass; and legs that go all the way up to that shapely ass!"

Cree grinned. "And are you warm with your woman, Taborn?"

Lares put his right hand in his lap and cupped his member. "I am as hot as, and have

the cutting edge of, Ionarian steel with my J'Bai!"

"Her name is J'Bai?"

The dark man shook his head. "No, Jackal, no. A J'Bai is a man's betrothed." He held up his reed necklace. "She made this for me when we were but bantlings. It is dear to me and I am never without it. I would rather die than allow it to be broken. She and I will be

joined—" He stopped, his face clouding. He corrected himself. "I was to be joined with her one week before I was sent to this hellhole."

"What did you do to be sent here?"

"A small matter," Lares complained. "Only murder. I shall be here two years."

"Who did you swat?" Cree asked in the terminology of his kind.

Lares scowled. "A pesky priest of that gods-be-damned order that sent my great-

grandfather here when this pest hole was called Labyrinth. They call themselves the

Brotherhood of the Domination." He ground his teeth. "They are a damnably hard insect to squash, those bastards."

"Those bastards of whom you speak are a branch of the Empire, the rulers of my

homeworld."

"More's the pity for you, then." Lares looked the Reaper in the eye. "And just like Necroman, the Rysalian Empire has resistance fighters who are trying to swat their own

insects."

Cree tore his gaze from the big man. "Aye," he sneered. "I've the Resistance to thank for being in this pest hole as you call it. They've singled me out to torment."

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Lares smiled, rubbing his hands together as though he were about to be given a juicy

bit of gossip. "And what did we do to be sent here, Jackal?"

The Prime Reaper let out a long breath. "I did nothing but garner their gods-be-damned

notice, is all." He jerked his head around and fixed Lares with a steely glare. "They've been trying to get my ass for the last year. Thanks to their tender mercies I spent two

weeks of a living hell inside a Behavioral Modification Unit having my mind altered!"

He clenched his jaw. "When I find out who is responsible for that piece of work, I'm

going to strangle her."

"The Multitude," Lares mumbled.

"The Multitude?"

"You have never heard of them?"

"Aye, I have heard of them, but what have they to do with what we're talking about?"

"I believe the Resistance on both our worlds are being run by them."

"It does not matter," Cree drawled. "I am sworn to fight any and all enemies of the Empire, sorceresses or not, and the women of the Rysalian Resistance have gained my

undivided attention!"

"What if your woman is one of them?"

Cree's eyes widened and he turned a fierce face to his companion. "She would not be!"

"How do you know she is not?"

"I know!"

Lares looked at him for a long moment, and then lowered his voice to a forceful

whisper. "But
how
do you know?"

The Reaper opened his mouth to defend Bridget, and then snapped it shut. The

Necromanian was right; how did he know?

SWEAT RAN down Cree's face and salt trickled into his eyes, blinding him. He

stopped, rested the handle of his pickax against his thigh and armed away the sweat,

leaving long dirty streaks on his forehead and right cheek. Breathing raggedly from his

work breaking rocks, he hunkered down on his haunches and let his head drop from the

sheer exhaustion. He was hotter than he could ever remember being; tanned as deeply

bonze as the three Diabolusian prisoners who were glaring at him from the entrance to

the cave. It hadn't taken him long to discard his black jumpsuit that first day three weeks

earlier. Aye, he thought tiredly: he was hotter than he had ever been, but in far better

shape, too. He had developed muscle groups that he had not even known he possessed.

His biceps were rock-hard, bulging, from the steady day-to-day application of pickax to

rock. You could bounce a Serenian gold piece off his thighs, they were so tight with firm

muscle tone. The thick calluses on the palms of his hands were the only drawback to the

hard labor, but he had earned them; worked through the blisters that had formed, broken,

ran, dug deep into the tender flesh, then formed again until there was a horny layer

covering the once-soft pads of his palm heel and fingers. His chest had begun to bulge

after the second week and he doubted seriously if he could even fit into the jumpsuit

when it was time to leave this hellhole.

The stealthy crunch of rock nearby brought Cree's head up and set off an alarm in the

back of his killer's mind. He looked behind him, saw no one, but realized there were no

longer three Diabolusians glaring at him. He pushed up to his feet and reached for the

pickax. The worn smoothness of the thick handle was comforting.

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"On your left," he heard Raine say in a low voice as the young man sidled toward him from the other side of the garden plot where he had been pulling weeds. The young

Serenian nobleman was carrying a hoe in a practiced grip; fighting for his chance to be

left alone among the murderers and rapists of Helios 12 was nothing new to the

handsome political prisoner.

"What the hell do they want?"

"Who knows?" Raine returned in a bored voice. "Do those dogs have

to
want
something, Cree?"

As the three Diabolusians began moving toward the rock pile, Lares showed up as if by

dark magic. Oblivious to the Necromanian's presence, the Diabolusians parted: one

heading for Raine, two making their way toward Cree.

"I do love a fight," Lares said beneath his breath and smiled. The white of his teeth against the ebony of his skin looked like the gaping maw of a Viragonian. His opponent

never knew what hit him.

Raine held his own against a Diabolusian knife-wielder who did his level best to

skewer the Serenian. McGregor danced just out of reach of the gutting blade. A well-

aimed and savage swing of the Serenian's hoe handle nearly caved in the man's chest and

left him in agony, gasping for breath where he fell. Raine hawked up a gob of phlegm and

spat on the man then stood back to watch Cree.

"I kill you, Iceman!" the Diabolusian hissed in broken Rysalian.

"You can try."

Lares joined Raine and draped a friendly arm over the young man's shoulder. "I like

the way this Ry-Chalean jackal fights, son of the McGregor!"

"He's good. There's no doubt about that," Raine agreed, flinching as a particularly brutal uppercut caught the Diabolusian under the chin and slammed him against the wall

of the Indoctrination Hut. "And he enjoys it, too."

"Men were born to fight, my child," Lares sighed dramatically. "If not for our little pissing contests, where would we be? We must size our cocks against one another else we

—"

"McGregor! Taborn!"

Raine and Lares turned to find the Warden waving them to work. They thought of

ignoring him, but Cree was only moments away from defeating his opponent. It was a

foregone conclusion. With a look and shrug at one another, they headed to their assigned

tasks. Neither of them saw Raine's adversary come slyly to his feet, his dagger clutched

in his fist.

From the window of his quarters, the Commandant watched with appreciation as the

Reaper crashed a powerful fist into his enemy's face to send the hapless man tumbling to

the hard-packed ground; but out of the corner of his eye, he spied movement and swung

his gaze that way. His eyes widened. Frantically, he rapped on the window. "Cree!" he shouted, not realizing he couldn't be heard through the thick solar reflective glass. "Cree, behind you!"

Having been absorbed with the fight up until then, Cree did not hear or see the man

sneaking up on him. He had no idea of the danger he was in until it was too late.

Commandant Jahannum saw the Reaper start to turn, finally sensing something was not

quite right. It was at that moment—already far too late for Cree to save himself—that the

wicked six-inch long serrated blade of the stiletto drove deep into the Reaper's back,

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barely missing the spinal cord, but slicing open Cree's right kidney, and the warrior

collapsed like a broken toy.

REAPERS NEVER dream; they are programmed not to. Dreams can be deadly

enemies to a warrior, for in that unconscious state in which a day's, a year's, a lifetime's

mistakes and worries dwell, lay mystical answers the Empire would rather the Reapers'

not have. The symbolic nature of a dream—with its hidden meanings and vague,

ambiguous inferences—can undo the strictest regimen of Behavioral Modification. Even

in drug-induced nightmares—the substances of which are part and parcel of what

happens during reinforcement therapy—the relevance and implications are controlled so

the warrior experiences only what he has been instructed to experience. His dreams, in

other words, are controlled. In reinforcement therapy, those controlled dreams mirror

only the warrior's worst fears; there are no pleasant thoughts allowed to interfere with the

protocol.

But in uncontrolled dreams, one of which at that very moment Kamerone Cree was

passing through on his way back to consciousness, the relevance and implications were

being stimulated by the Resistance implanted device in his hypothalamus.

SHE WAS waiting for him at the door when he returned home.

She was smiling, her arms open wide to welcome him.

Her body was warm and soft and infinitely satisfying as she slipped into his arms and

pressed her cheek to his.

"I have missed you, Kam," she whispered. Her arms went around his waist and she
held him tightly to her. "I have been so lonely without you."

He heard himself groan: a savage, possessive sound meant to convey to her his urgent

need. Swinging her up into his arms, holding her high against his chest, his mouth came

down on hers in a kiss that took away both their breaths. He plundered her mouth with

his tongue; she met his thrust for thrust with her own.

"You are my beloved," she breathed against his mouth. "The only man I shall ever
need."

Though he had traveled the universe over many times; sped through the stars to distant

worlds and returned unscathed; the few steps into the bedsuite were the longest trip he

had ever taken. He could hear his ragged, excited breathing; listened with blatant male

pride to hers. Her body in his arms was an exquisite torture, the likes of which he would
gladly suffer for the rest of his life.

"Kam." she spoke his name over and over again as he laid her on their bed. Her green
eyes were liquid emeralds as he tore away his jumpsuit to reveal to her the extent of his
need.

"Make me truly your woman, Milord," she begged him. "Lay claim to what you want."