WarriorsApprentice (4 page)

Huon shrugged. “For this mission to succeed, I have to
seduce Judie Scanlon into a sexual relationship.”

Tybor’s lips tightened and he nodded.

Huon wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know how that’s supposed to
happen…because…well…”

He turned and started to walk out again, speaking over his
shoulder as he pulled the door closed once more. “I’m a virgin. I’ve never had
sex with
anyone
.”

Chapter Two

Tybor paced the room, up and down. He turned, measuring out
the distance again, legs driving. He tried to stop, tried to sit still and
think, but his body refused to obey. The only way to contain the rage, to keep
from howling or tearing at the walls, letting the solid rock shred his fingers,
replacing mental anguish with physical pain, was to keep moving.

The words in his head pounded out the same relentless rhythm
as his feet.
Too many men. Too many dead. Too young. Too young.

Over the years he had sent hundreds of young men to do
battle against huge odds, knowing some of them would fail and die. The enemy
Huon faced was the most dangerous Gatekeeper the humans had ever produced.
Tybor had hoped that, with enough training, Huon would have some chance of
going up against Hopewood alone and surviving. But once headquarters had made
the homicidal decision to prevent Huon from transporting and to send him up
against a
group
of Gatekeepers, nothing Tybor could have done would have
been enough. Trapped on the surface, alone, Huon had no chance. He would be
killed.

The image of Huon’s pale body, the glow of life dulled, all
that beautiful, defiant energy snuffed out, pushed Tybor to his knees. He
hunched over, hands clasped above his close-cropped head. Slowly, a conviction
stole over him, sank into his skin, pounding through his veins with every beat
of his heart. If Huon had to die, he should not have to die alone.

Rising to his feet, Tybor squared his shoulders and
straightened his spine. His feet resumed their relentless march, this time out
of the door, up a set of stairs, straight past a nervous sentry who saluted and
muttered a greeting, past a uniformed secretary and up to the captain’s office.
He knew he had been allowed to proceed only because of his reputation and
current position. He marched in to face the captain before the secretary had
time to remember he didn’t have an appointment.

Slamming open the door, ignoring the way it bounced back off
the wall, he strode forward, braced his hands on the captain’s desk and loomed
over him, threatening and determined. “Send me to the surface.”

The officer’s head tilted upward but his eyes skittered to
the side. “That is not in our current plans for you.”

“Fuck the current plans. Huon can’t take out the Gatekeeper
group alone.”

The captain leaned back, his hands behind his head, the taut
tendons in his neck and a gulping movement belying the casual pose. “You’ve
done your best to equip him for the task. If he succeeds…excellent. If he fails…he’s
expendable.”

Tybor reached over, grabbed the captain’s precisely knotted
military tie and jerked the man forward. “I’ve had enough! I’m a soldier and
you won’t let me fight. I refuse to cower in the safety of the Underworld while
you continue to send the men I train to the surface to die.” The man’s face
turned a mottled red but Tybor didn’t ease his grip. “Huon is the best warrior
I’ve trained in five hundred years, but no one could carry out this task alone
and have any hope of succeeding.”

The captain’s frantic gaze fixed on the tie clenched in
Tybor’s fist. Tybor opened his hand and the captain, pale and silent, flopped
back into his chair. Tybor swallowed his disgust. If the man had fought back—if
he’d threatened or even pulled rank—Tybor would have had more respect for him,
but this was a bureaucrat, not a soldier. Huon, with his slim build, pale skin
and strength, was a better man than the captain would ever be and yet he’d
called him
expendable.

“I’m going to the surface to help him,” Tybor stated flatly.
He no longer cared what the captain thought.

“You’ll go nowhere. I’ll have you locked up and stripped of
your
powers if you try.”

Tybor raised his eyebrows. “You’d have to catch me first.”

With a silver shimmer he transported himself back to his
quarters. By the time the captain had pulled himself together and called
someone to arrest him, Tybor would have stuffed a duffle bag full of the chemicals
needed to make the Dvalinn fireballs, escaped to the surface and melted into
the human crowd. He didn’t give a fuck if he looked like a Dvalinn. He’d take
the risk. Plenty of surface dwellers looked the same.

Hopewood and his cabal were welcome to take him on. Smashing
the Gatekeepers to pieces would not only save the rest of the Dvalinn, it might
calm the rage blistering Tybor’s guts. Once the Gatekeepers were dead,
everything would be back to normal and Tybor could forget about stupid,
reckless, vulnerable trainees.

On the table, Huon’s briefing papers lay curled up in a
disordered scroll. Tybor picked them up, smoothed them out with a sweep of his
hand. His lips curved in a humorless smile. Hopewood could have set up his
cabal in any of the teeming modern metropolises of the upper world, where
Tybor’s five-hundred-year absence from the surface would be a severe handicap.
But by some astonishing act of providence, Hopewood had made his headquarters
in the one human city that had barely changed in half a millennium. Venice.

* * * * *

Narrow black boats bobbed on the clear, bright turquoise of
the ocean. Platinum sparkles bounced off the wind-rippled surface into Huon’s
dazed eyes. He lowered his lids to shield himself from the vast sense of space
and light and airiness. He stepped backward into an arched portico, the shadows
and solid walls restoring his sense of equilibrium, making him feel enclosed
and safe. Cool stone at his back stopped him and he slowly lifted his eyelids.
He sidled into a dark corner and took stock of his situation.

The last thing he remembered was wrenching, tearing pain as
the drug he’d been ordered to swallow worked through him. He’d slammed into
unconsciousness on a wave of agony and woken standing on the promenade, staring
out toward the islands of the Laguna di Venezia.

Rolling his shoulders, he centered his weight evenly on the
balls of his feet, took a deep breath and waited for his head to clear.
Everything felt normal. His lungs filled and emptied with efficient regularity.
He’d already discovered that his legs worked and here in this sheltered corner,
his eyes took in all the details he needed. Things looked flat and to his Underworld-accustomed
eyes, the distance blurred into a mosaic jumble of colors, but he’d expected
that and knew it would pass.

The drug that had stripped away his ability to dematerialize
had apparently left no other lasting symptoms.

Tybor’s demanding training regime had prepared him to
operate when he was tired and disoriented. He could push through this, do what
he had to do. His inability to transport home was a greater worry, but he
shoved it aside. If he succeeded in his task, someone would come for him. If he
failed to infiltrate Hopewood’s group, as long as he survived, he hoped they
would eventually bring him home. If he confronted Hopewood and died, it didn’t
matter what happened to his body. If it rotted, neglected on the surface, he’d
never know.

Kill the enemy or be killed himself. He knew it and accepted
it. And yet when he held his hands in front of his face, a fine tremor shook
them and he knew it was a sign of fear. He had to get to know Judie Scanlon,
convince her to trust him. And once he did, he had to seduce her, find out what
she knew, then kill her. Huon swallowed the acid rush of bile that rose in his
throat.

The Dvalinn were not a vicious people—they did not kill
indiscriminately. With sick certainty he knew it was not only his pale
appearance that had singled him out for this mission. The authorities would not
ask a true Dvalinn to soil his spirit with this task. Instead they would let
the despised loner kill the first person who ever gave him a soft or tender
touch.

The memory of hot sun and the gentle stroke of a hard hand
made his skin tighten and his pulse race, but he thrust it away. The gesture had
meant nothing more to Tybor than a final salute to one who was about to die.

The man who had given it had driven him beyond what he’d
believed he could endure, pushed him, made him rise above himself. He expected
Huon to do what he was trained for. No matter who he had to kill, who he had to
have sex with, he would not let Tybor down.

He blinked again to clear his vision and looked around at
the city he and Tybor had studied in maps and drawings, night after night,
theory lessons going on until his eyes had ached and his throat rasped with
tiredness.

With his head resting against the warm stone wall he ran the
information through his mind once more. He knew where he was. The island
directly in front of him was Murano. If he followed the tortuous twist of
canals, bridges and cobbled streets he would reach the Piazza San Marco and the
Basilica. In the other direction the Grand Canal wound sinuously, lined with
decaying but hauntingly beautiful
palazzos
…in one of which Brian
Hopewood had set up his headquarters.

Huon knew Venice, knew it with a deep and intimate knowledge
he’d gained from Tybor, who had long ago made prolonged visits, rejoicing in
the polyglot mix of the populace. If the Venetians Tybor met at that time had
known he was other than human, they had not denounced him. Five hundred years
later, deep in the Underworld, Tybor had recounted his personal experiences and
vivid memories to an attentive Huon, bringing the city to life far more vividly
than the maps and diagrams he had memorized.

When Huon pushed off the wall and out into the tourist-crowded
streets, heading toward the railway station, he walked with the confidence of
familiarity. Fondamenta Santa Lucia offered a range of cheaper hotels and once
he had settled into his room he could prepare to enact his plan to meet Judie
Scanlon.

In the cool, early-morning air, the smell of coffee overlaid
the salt tang of the sea and the slight scent of mud and rotting seaweed.
People were beginning to pour into the streets, going about their business or
heading to cafés for leisurely breakfasts. Someone jostled him, muttered a
swift apology and moved on without sparing Huon a second glance, as if his pale
slenderness were nothing out of the ordinary. And it wasn’t. Although he’d been
told, although he’d been specially picked for this mission because of it, he
hadn’t truly understood until now.

The press of humans that swirled around him—men, women,
children—possessed a range of skin colors. Some were brown, like the vast
majority of his kind, some darker, some paler, but many were as pale as Huon
himself, with the same straw-blond hair, the same blue eyes. These people
laughed and walked and greeted others and were greeted in return. No matter
what else he discovered about humans on this mission, this one fact made him
see them in a positive light. Humans not only came in a range of shades, they
seemed to accept them all.

Huon shook his head. How could be they be so accepting of
this, yet give rise to a group determined to kill the Dvalinn—every last one of
them?

There ought to be a way to bring the two races together, a
way that avoided the massacres of the past and the killings Huon was required
to commit. There ought to be a way…but Huon’s role was clear. Until someone
found a way to a peaceful solution, he and other warriors like him had to be
prepared to fight to the death to protect his people from destruction. He had
Gatekeepers to kill.

The route he’d memorized took him over arched stone bridges,
across narrow waterways where he had to duck under rows of washing spread from
one side to the other, and finally across a white bridge over the Grand Canal
leading to the railway station. He followed the instructions he’d been given
before he left and diverted inside, walking up to a bank of lockers for left
luggage. Taking a key from his pocket, he opened a locker and pulled out a
large suitcase. Still following orders, he stuck his hand in a zipped side
compartment and extracted a bundle of currency and a key with the address of
his hotel and room number written on it. He shoved them in the side pocket of
his pants and, with the suitcase clasped in one hand, he left the station.

The Fondamenta Santa Lucia wound along parallel to the canal.
Cafés, souvenir shops and stalls lined the sides of the street. Bright masks
caught his eye, painted in clear colors, decorated with feathers and sequins.
He leaned in close to inspect one, then jumped back. Another mask, dark-red
with a long, hooked nose, seemed to glare at him. The effect was evil, ugly,
and once again he wondered at a species who could accept and even celebrate
such distortions of facial features and yet could not bring themselves to
coexist with his kind.

At the hotel he made his way up the narrow staircase to the
second floor. Once inside his room, he locked the door, tossed the suitcase
onto the bed, opened it and inspected the contents.

Several sets of neatly folded clothes acted as padding for
six plastic-wrapped packets of explosive chemicals, the two components of the
fireballs kept separate by a dividing wall that ran lengthwise through the
suitcase. He picked up one packet and tossed it from hand to hand while he
examined his stock. It didn’t seem like much, not if he had to take out an
entire Gatekeeper cell.

Pushing aside the remainder of the explosives, he unfolded a
pile of clothing and shook it out. Shirts, suits with labels proclaiming the
designer sewn into the back. One set of clothes looked much like another and he
pulled on a silky gray shirt and darker gray suit. He picked up the next item
of clothing and shook his head.