Stargate SG-1: Sacrifice Moon (26 page)

For all the good it did him.

The lockpick broke with a sharp, cold sound about an hour later,
and the pieces tinkled down to the stone floor. Crap. At least he hadn't
jammed the lock. Jack got down at eye level to peer inside, but even
his penlight didn't give him much of a view, considering it was all
black iron.

He settled on his heels and rubbed his eyes. Damn, he was tired,
and his ankle hurt, and all he could think about was that half his team
was out there in the dark, running around killing because a Goa'uld
thought it was fun. Daniel would never forgive himself. Carter -

The thought crashed off the rails, because when Jack's eyes
adjusted again, he saw somebody standing in the shadows of the tunnel, about fifteen feet away from the iron bars. Not moving.

"Carter?" he whispered, because it was the last name he'd been
thinking. No response. "Daniel?"

The figure moved slowly forward, feet stumbling in the thin mud
of the tunnel floor. When it moved into the flickering curtain of torchlight, it was wearing a torn pale tunic and one sandal, and it was definitely not anyone from SG1.

Other than that, it was tough to tell. His face was a mask of blood,
his tunic stained with it. He held one arm close to his body, and there
was something not quite right about his leg, either.

"Pylades," Teal'c said, and the kid's face clicked into focus for
Jack. "Where is your sister?"

The boy lunged forward - or fell forward - and grabbed for the
bars; even that didn't help him stay upright. He slid slowly down,
still gripping the iron, and leaned his forehead against them. His eyelids flickered and for a second Jack thought he was going out, but he
seemed to pull himself back by main strength.

"Iphigenia," Pylades said. His voice sounded as raw as his wounds.
"They took her. They have her."

"They who?" Jack reached through the bars to shake the kid's
shoulder. "Pylades! Who took her?" He was mortally afraid it was
Carter. Daniel. The girl wouldn't stand a chance.

Pylades didn't speak, but he touched his fingertips to his forehead
and drew a circle.

"Jaffa," Teal'c said definitely. "Artemis's Jaffa have taken the girl.
O'Neill, if Eseios and his men are hunting - "

"Yeah, they'll smell his blood a mile away. Dammit. Briseis!" Jack
yelled the name back over his shoulder and kept his hand on Pylades'
shoulder. "Get that key over here, now!"

She came, sandals slapping the pavement at a run, and drew at
least a dozen people behind her. Some of them were her personal
bodyguards, Jack saw; one or two of them had daggers out, the better
to poke you with, Colonel O'Neill.

He pointed to Pylades, bleeding and wounded on the outside of the
bars. "Unless you want a ringside seat for the dismemberment...?"

She realized immediately what he was talking about, and he saw
something terrible pass over her face in a wave. Maybe it had happened before. Maybe they'd had to sit in here and watch someone die
out there, within an arm's length of safety.

"I can't," she said. "They're out, and they're hunting. Remember
Laonides and his starving children? He is not the only one capable
of baiting a trap, stranger. They could be waiting for us to open the
gate."

"If we're going to be locked up together, might as well call me Jack," he said. "Look, you've got two choices, and I thought you said
there'd been enough killing. What's it gonna be? Watch him die out
there, or take a chance to save his life?"

She looked hard at Pylades, then at Jack's face. Teal'c's.

Then pushed past Jack to fish the heavy black key out of the bodice
of her dress and jam it into the lock. The metal turned with a thick
clank, and the shriek the bars made coming open must have alerted
every hungry hunter citywide; Jack darted out, grabbed Pylades under
the arms and dragged him through the open gate.

"Hurry," Briseis gasped. Teal'c moved Pylades's half-bare feet
out of the way, and then, as she started to the swing the gate shut
again, caught the iron in one big hand and stopped it cold. "What are
you doing? Let go! You'll kill us all!" She tried, uselessly, to push it
closed.

He looked to Jack. "Captain Carter and Daniel Jackson should not
be alone."

"Shut the gate!" Briseis shouted, furious, and struck at him with
her fist. It had about as much effect as a butterfly hitting a brick wall.
He didn't even look at her.

Jack got up, stepped through the gap to the other side, and nodded to Teal'c to shut the gate. The Jaffa followed him outside and
slammed it closed; Briseis lunged and turned the key to fasten the
lock, then stepped back to stare at them.

"You're mad," she said, and the key went back down the neck of
her dress. "You'll be tom to pieces."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Jack said. "Take care of the
kid. I'll want to talk to him in the morning."

"Jack!" Her voice echoed after him, and he glanced back to see
Briseis pressed against the bars, peering after them as he and Teal'c
walked back the way Pylades had come. "Be careful. Your friends
will not know you now."

"They'll know me," he said. "And I'm tough to kill."

Blood had so many scents.

Old, dried blood, days or weeks gone; that had a slightly crisp odor,
like burned leaves. Hours-old, tacky blood was like souring fruit. But
fresh - fresh had an aroma like burning pennies, hot and silky in the back of his nose. Daniel breathed it down and felt the seduction of it
spread through his body, urging him to run. The blood was in drops,
spatters, uneven and lurching through the street; someone wounded
had come this way, and recently.

The thick trappings he wore made him feel trapped and clumsy;
he ripped at the slick black fabric of the vest until he found the zipper
and shed it like a skin, then stripped away the shirt underneath. The
thin fabric beneath was acceptable, even damp with sweat as it was;
he kept it. The trousers and boots were too much trouble to shed. He
bent down to drag his fingers through a fresh red drop on the stone
of the street.

In the white blind moonlight, Sam's pale hair and bared arms
gleamed. She crouched next to him and fingered the stain as well,
then smelled the blood and tasted it. He tasted it too, savoring the
thick half-bitter tang of it.

She laughed, and some part of his brain said this is crazy, we can't
be doing this, but then she was running, and he was chasing, and
the blood glowed like beacons leading them on. Running released
ecstasy into his veins and made him breathe faster, deeper. The bloodsmell grew stronger, along with the taint of metal and oil and sweat.
He knew that smell, although he couldn't have said why.

It's your own smell. Humans. Earth.

Sam's smell, flavored with something extra, made him run faster.
He wasn't sure if he was chasing the prey, or Sam... either one would
do, here in the moonlight. Blood and flesh and hunger...

He lurched to a halt as he rounded a comer. Sam was nowhere in
sight, but someone else was. A tall woman, dressed in a short white
chiton that swirled in a wind he couldn't feel. Dark hair and dark eyes,
and eyes that pulsed whiter than the moon as she smiled at him.

Something in him screamed no, run, get away, but then she was
extending her hand and touching his sweating hair, running her cool
silver fingers down his cheek, and he realized that she was wearing a
hand device, like Ra and Apophis.

A Goa'uld hand device.

"Another stranger," she said, and tilted his chin up to look at him.
"Pretty." Her hand traveled down to stroke over the moonstone collar.
"And receptive. Something in you calls to me, you know."

He had never wanted to kill more in his life. The urge to rip, tear,
destroy was overwhelming, and if he'd had the chance...

But he didn't. The hand device was glowing an anticipatory
orange.

"You look like my wife," he said.

"Do I?" That smile, that terrible smile. "How lucky for her. And
you."

She bent forward and kissed him, and he could taste something on
her like poison, like madness. Something stirred behind those lips that
wasn't a tongue.

"Do you want to serve me, pretty stranger?"

"No."

She pushed him away. His foot caught a loose stone and he fell,
breathless, back on the rubble-strewn pavement. Her sandaled feet
walked slowly toward him as he crawled back, and then she leaped on
him, crouched over him, and threaded her fingers in his hair to drag
him back upright.

He gagged on the kiss, but something inside of him couldn't deny
her; she tasted like blood and violence and he wanted that, wanted it
so badly it was like starvation.

She's doing this to me. That couldn't stop it, just made it more sickening that he let it happen, let her hands move over him with jealous,
greedy excitement.

That he touched her in return.

When he opened his eyes, she was Sha're. Sha're's abundant curly
hair, veiling them both. Sha're's dark, challenging stare. That odd
glint of humor, as if she found everything he did funny, and wonderfully entrancing. He felt a kind of drugged, sluggish wonder. A need
to accept it, to believe the miracle...

"I am here," she whispered to him. "You see? I can be here for you,
Dan'yel. If only you will let me."

She released her painful hold on his hair and let him drop back flat.
His hand was next to the M9, still backward in its holster. His fingertips brushed it but it felt cold, alien, part of another life...

And he clearly heard Sha're - not this Goa'uld copy, but Share,
real and immediate as the sweat on his skin - whisper, now, do it now,
don't let her take you away from me.

As Apophis had taken Sha're, with Teal'c looking on. Taken her
screaming, fighting to hang on... fighting to come back to him.

He fumbled the pistol out.

"You're not my wife," he gasped, and fired blind.

The sound of the shot was muffled but still deafening, and the smell
of her was wiped out by the hot bum of cordite. The shell ejected and
burned as it struck his throat; he yelled and fired again, two more
times, and the weight on him, the weight that looked like Sha're but
wasn't, moved away.

He was blinded by orange pulses of light, and when he blinked
them away he saw that Artemis was herself again, standing, not a spot
of blood on her white tunic. Her eyes were wide and dark and furious.
No, no, I couldn't have missed, I couldn't have... ! But he wasn't even
sure now if he had fired at all. Maybe that was a dream, maybe it was
all a dream... nothing was clear now, except the wrenching agony
pounding behind his eyes. His forehead felt charred.

"You will be punished for that! Run for me, little fool," she spat. "I
will have your blood hot as I drink it!"

He scrambled to his feet, and ran.

She wasn't alone, he saw; dark shapes in the moonlight, loping
after him, and no matter how fast he ran they closed the distance.
Moonlight glinted on armor. Jaffa. A staff weapon blew the night
open and exploded a pile of rubble to his right; he used Jack O'Neill
strategy and darted toward the explosion, not away. The smoke would
cover him, and they'd expect him to dodge away...

Sure enough, more staff blasts destroyed columns to his left. A tottering building rumbled and collapsed in a thick, choking blanket of
dust; he used the cover and kept running.

Jack...

He was alone. Nobody was coming to help him this time.

Carter paused, frozen, by the alien sound of weapons fire in the
night. She'd paused to taste blood again; she knew the prey was close,
probably hiding, but her attention was caught by the noise behind.

Daniel. Less a name than an image, a feeling, a sense of connection. He'd been behind her. No sign of him now.

Carter rose, looking back, and saw fires burning. Someone was running, many chasing; she felt her blood catch and bum with the
desire to join the hunt.

But the fresh blood was better. More immediate.

She slowly padded forward. The heavy, ugly metal around her
neck felt awkward, but she kept her hands on it, holding it steady. It
would serve, she knew. Not as good as the knife, not as sure, but it
would bring down prey for the kill.

She heard a dry rattle of rocks ahead, and froze to crouch in the
shadows. Wind brought the smell of sweat, metal, oil... male.

She raised the MP5 to her shoulder and flowed forward, keeping
to shadows.

He stepped out into the full fierce glow of the moon, and she went
motionless again. Did he sense her? Would he run? Anticipation of it
caught in her throat...

No. He didn't sense her. She could take him, take him with such
ease and speed, crippling him first, then closing with the knife, to rip
and tear the flesh from his bones.

He moved on, limping awkwardly. Now. Now. NOW! It beat wildly
in her temples, but somehow she held on, trembling, sweaty, poised
on the knife-edge of violence with the taste of terror and blood thick
in her mouth.

And then she saw the child.

It crept out of the shadows in his wake, a ragged shadow with a
moon-white stone in its collar marking it as prey. The sight of it made
her blood boil in her veins.

The child was following her quarry for comfort and protection.
One of Laonides's starving, hollow orphans, sent out to gather food.
Lost in the dark. The boy was rank with fear, sweet-hot with despair,
and she breathed in his scent and felt saliva fill her mouth and the
hunger was like nothing she'd ever known.

She let the MP5 slide out of her hands to hang heavy on the strap
around her neck, drew her knife, and glided forward to take the prey.

It saw her and screamed, high and thin, and scrambled backwards
for the shadows. She grabbed it by one thin, dirty leg and pulled the
boy into the cold glow of moonlight, and brought the knife down,
screaming out her victory -