WarriorsApprentice (19 page)

“Tybor?” Huon spoke quietly.

From the bunk on the other side of the room, the sound of
Judie’s breathing, which honesty would have compelled him to call a snore,
rasped in a regular rhythm.

“What?” Tybor replied.

“What’s wrong with Judie?”

Tybor paused until another soft exhalation of Judie’s breath
sounded in the room.

“She’s asleep,” Huon said. “I wouldn’t have asked if she
weren’t.”

“She had some misconceptions about what was happening here.
I set her straight,” Tybor murmured, his voice a low rumble.

“Oh.” Huon’s sigh was as quiet as a breath. “Why did that
upset her?”

“How do I know? She’s human. They’re strange.” Tybor
grunted. “She asked for some fireballs of her own so she could fight alongside
us if the police came after us.”

“She’s amazing,” Huon said.

A long moment of silence stretched out. Then Tybor spoke,
his tone grim and determined. “Adrenaline helped her do things she never
thought she would, but once it drained away, she crashed. You and I are trained
to cope with that. She’s not.”

“We should help her,” Huon said.

“No. She has to get through this on her own. As soon as we
get to the portal spot, we’ll be gone. I don’t want her to depend on us for
anything.”

“But we’re here now. We should—”

“She’s asleep. That’s the best thing for her,” Tybor said
firmly.

Huon smiled to himself. “I really like her, Tybor.”

“You’re as bad as she is. Dvalinn do not believe in love or
emotional commitments.” A note of something that sounded impossibly like panic
colored his voice. “She thought I… That you… She imagined a shitload of crap. I
don’t need you to do it too.”

Huon lay on his back in the darkened room and looked toward
the ceiling he couldn’t see. He wondered who exactly Tybor was trying to
convince. Images of a hard, brown body bending over his, smoothing on lotion,
of the same body stretched out over his, cock to hardened cock. Tybor’s
dedication to his training, to keeping him alive, pushing him further and
further, then admitting with grudging respect how far he had come.

Then he thought of Judie’s soft body and her fierce courage,
her quickness and her strength. He thought of the incredible three-way sexual
encounter on the train and he felt his heart kick. Tybor and the rest of the
Dvalinn might be unable to love, but Huon was afraid that in this, as in
everything else in his lonely, isolated life, he was different.

And that difference made him yearn for closeness with both
Tybor and Judie. Judie perhaps would understand, might even reciprocate, but
Huon knew, with a certainty that suffused his entire being, what he wanted,
what he needed. The triangle was the strongest geometric form. The three
angles, three sides, balanced out the forces and held together with stability
beyond the individual strength of the components. Without Tybor to balance out
their triangle, Huon knew they would never reach the heights of which they were
capable. The forces of destruction that surrounded them would beat them down
and destroy them.

* * * * *

The first rays of dawn gave Tybor the excuse he needed to
get out of bed, away from the sleepless night. The boy worried him. Although he
had proven himself time and time again as a warrior, proven his strength and
his courage, there remained an edge of softness, some sense that Huon’s
physical differences translated into emotional differences as well. His concern
for Judie confirmed that.

Tybor knew the way of his people. Sex was an outlet, a
biological need, a drive that demanded to be fulfilled. Once satisfied, his
people moved on. No guilt, no bond, no sorrow and no weakening of the hard
shell they needed to survive their dark lives.

Their romp with Judie posed no problem. Sex, no matter how
enjoyable or intense, could do no harm. But Huon showed signs of a developing an
emotional dependence. How easy would it be for the admiration he so openly
expressed for Judie to turn to something else? The best way to curtail this
unprecedented bout of emotion was to let Huon indulge in as much sex as
possible with Judie—hard, fast and kinky—until he had her, and that word “love”,
out of his system.

He didn’t need to be so careful himself. Unlike Huon, Tybor
had experienced sex before, lots of sex. Maybe not in a long time and maybe not
with a human who had proven herself to be brave and daring and very capable,
but there was no danger of him falling into some disgustingly sticky emotional
mess. He had no soft feelings to control.

Huon gave a soft, snoring grunt and Tybor turned. Huon might
object to being called boy, but with the soft skin of his pale face relaxed in
sleep, his mouth slightly open, his full lips a rosy pink, his long lashes
shadowing his cheek, he looked young and vulnerable.

A strange ache tunneled its way through Tybor’s chest. He
clenched his teeth and ignored it, angered by the insidious way sentimentality
infected the very atmosphere.

He cleared his throat and ordered, “Wake up. Both of you.”
Then he stomped into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

When he came back, Judie sat at the small table.

Huon turned from the door, carrying a tray that had been
left outside by the landlady.

“We’ve got coffee, rolls, butter and cheese.” He smiled at
Judie. “You must be hungry. You didn’t eat last night.”

The warmth in Huon’s voice made Tybor grimace. “Eat now,” he
snapped, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “I have no patience with your
ridiculous human feelings. If the police are looking for you, you do what is
necessary to survive. Anything else is self-indulgence.”

“Self-indulgence?” Judie gasped.

At the same time, Huon shouted, “Tybor!”

“I found my co-workers dead, I killed my own boss and I’m on
the run,” she growled. “Of course I’m upset. If that strikes you as
unreasonable, maybe Brian was right and you
are
some kind of monster.”

Her shoulders heaved and Tybor shuddered. One of the least
appealing characteristics of humans was their emotional excess and tears were
the worst of it. He sneered when Huon leaped up and put his arms around Judie,
turning to Tybor, defensiveness in his jutting chin and knitted brows. Huon’s
voice when he spoke to the human woman was soft and reassuring and made Tybor
feel nauseated.

“We’re not monsters,” Huon said emphatically. “Not in any
sense of the word humans mean. Hopewood called us demons but if demons exist,
our people do not know of them.”

“What
are
your people?” Judie asked.

Huon shook his head. “We are of the same class, order and
family as humans. We may even be the same species, just a different subset.”

“Really?” Judie’s brows lifted. “The same species?”

Though wide-eyed innocence and interest seemed to have taken
the place of the wailing-fest, Tybor looked at the two of them clinging to each
other and he felt edgy, his guts tied in knots that had no reason to be there,
his temper raw and rasping.

“Maybe we are and maybe we’re not. They tell me the
offspring of different species are sterile, like mules. Maybe we should fuck
and find out. We might create a new specimen you can put in the zoo for humans
to laugh at. Or how about a game park where you could hunt it down and kill it?
Humans enjoy that sort of thing, don’t they?”

The hurt look on both the others’ faces told him how cruel
he’d been. Tough. Huon had to get up to speed and Judie had to know there was
too much bad feeling, too much history between their two peoples to ever
forget.

“We don’t have time for this crap. We have to work out what
in the fuck to do next. Huon and I have to get to a portal point, and you…you
have to make some decisions.” Tybor slammed the coffee cup onto the table, the
brown liquid sloshing over the sides, and he began to pace. “If Huon could
still transport, we’d be home by now.”

“Well I can’t. Complaining about it won’t help,” Huon
replied

Judie’s eyes widened and Tybor knew what she was going to
ask.

“You can just transport yourselves? What other powers do you
have?” she asked, confirming his premonition.

“Compared to humans, extraordinary longevity, some of us are
telepathic, all of us are able to move any object by telekinesis, we have the
power to transport ourselves—well, I did until they removed it,” Huon answered.

“Why would anyone remove your power to transport?” she
asked.

“To prevent Hopewood using the device
you
built for
him to use Huon’s power to invade Dvalinn cities,” Tybor said grimly. “That’s
what he did last time. He found a young Dvalinn, used your device to trap him
and then forced him to take him back underground. He killed hundreds of our
people. Of our men. Of our women. Of our children.”

Without another word, Judie stood up and walked to the
bathroom, closing the door behind her.

* * * * *

Judie sank onto her knees next to the shower stall. The
chill from the tiles rose up until it penetrated her entire body. The device
she’d created for Hopewood, the device she’d thought was a joke, had been used
to commit a massacre.

She had dismissed Brian Hopewood as a harmless eccentric.
Then she’d discovered his capacity for torture, but she hadn’t imagined the
scale of his monstrosity. Any regret she had for her part in his death faded
away. She had reacted to a situation in the only way she could. Now she had to
live with the consequences, whatever they were.

She pushed herself to her feet and stared at herself in the bathroom
mirror. Apart from the lines of tension bracketing her mouth and an
understandable pallor, the image reflected back at her looked the same as it
always did—nothing special, nothing to suggest the extraordinary adventure that
had overtaken her. Nothing that screamed out, “I am a murderer.”

Since she’d stumbled on the confrontation between the two
Dvalinn men and Brian, her life had lurched from crisis to crisis and her
emotional state had lurched, swung, climbed and rocketed downward along with
it. She had to get back some control, do something to stop herself from feeling
like a lump of driftwood tossed and tumbled on waves that threatened to roll
her under. She slumped down onto the closed toilet seat, propped her elbows on
her thighs and dropped her head into her hands.

“Think,” she whispered to herself. “What’s the use of being
a certified genius if the first time I find myself in a difficult situation my
brain goes on hold while I run on primitive responses and reactions?”

“Judie?” Huon’s voice came through the door. “Are you
talking to someone in there? Is everything all right?”

“I’m fine,” she called.

She heard Tybor’s lower rumble, but he seemed to be talking
to Huon and not to her.

She splashed water over her face. If Huon and Tybor were
going to decide what to do, she’d better get back out there. The two men were
so damn confident in their abilities. They would make all the decisions
themselves if she let them, and expect her to go along with them without
comment or amendment. She couldn’t change the past but she would have some say
in her future. She flung the door open, strode over to the table and sat down.

“Time we planned what to do next,” she said.

“Last plan I heard, I was supposed to make my way back
across the lagoon to San Michele, once I wiped out Hopewood and his
Gatekeepers, and wait for someone to come to the portal to transport me home,”
Huon said with a shrug. “You can see how that worked out.”

“You mentioned another portal.” Judie swung to face Tybor.

“There are a few,” Tybor agreed, “But most of them are not
as strong as the one on San Michele. It took five Dvalinn to conduct Huon and
his equipment to Venice. It would take at least two, preferably three to bring
him home.” His lips twisted. “Hopewood’s black box gave him the extra power
he
needed to piggyback in, but without it, most of the portals are as good as
closed to us.”

“I have copies of the plans for the device I made,” Judie
said, “but it would take me a while to put one together.”

“No!” Huon shuddered. “There has to be another way. I never
want to see one of those black boxes again.”

“Couldn’t we get to whichever portal is nearest?” Judie
asked. “Tybor transports back, gets as many helpers as needed and takes Huon
home.”

“It’s not as simple as that,” Huon put in. “Tybor is AWOL.
When he goes back home, the authorities are likely to arrest him on sight.”

“Because Huon and I completed the mission and Hopewood is
dead, any punishment they dish out won’t be too serious,” Tybor said. “But it
will take time to sort it out and arrange to send back a rescue team—time we
don’t have.”

“The police aren’t that efficient.” Judie couldn’t believe
the men who had already faced down such danger seemed to be so concerned.
“We’ll keep a low profile. We’ll have time.”

“I have plenty of time,” Tybor said, grimness tightening his
face into a rigid mask. “Huon doesn’t.”

“I don’t…?” Huon’s relaxed posture straightened and his
light gaze fixed on Tybor. The air between them quivered with tension. “There’s
been something you’ve kept from me all along. What do you know that I don’t?”

“When they took your powers,” Tybor rasped out, “they took
your connection to the earth.”

There was a moment’s silence broken only by the soft intake
of Huon’s breath.

Bands tightened around Judie’s chest, making it hard to
breathe, while she waited for what was to come next.

“How long?” Huon asked.

“Another three days, four at the most,” Tybor said softly.

“I don’t understand,” Judie whispered. Talking out loud
seemed somehow sacrilegious.

Huon picked up her hand and held it. “Without a connection
to the earth, to our life source, a Dvalinn cannot survive.” The hand holding
hers tightened its grip, becoming painful. “They didn’t tell me.” He squeezed
harder, grinding her knuckles together, but his attention was focused entirely
on Tybor. “
You
never told me.”