Keir (10 page)

“This man must have been important to you,” he hazarded.

Quin sighed. “Ryan was the one sure thing I had when the world went mad.” She sat, staring into her beaker. “He told me he loved me once, even though I never felt the same for him. And yet he still tried to save my life. So it’s my fault he’s lost.”

Keir’s unease deepened, yet he could not quite comprehend why. He had no claim on Quin after all–how could he? Why did it bother him that she would put so much effort into finding this man? “Were you seeking this woman in Adalucien?”

Again, she evaded his gaze. “Kind of.” She leaned back into the plush seating, and twisted a strand of her hair around one finger. “She’s not exactly the same anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“Rulk wasn’t alone. She had a…companion is probably not quite the word. I think it was as much as slave to her as my people.”

An image flashed into his mind, a being that would have graced any tome on demonic creatures. Its skin was a shade of blue-black even darker than his own, its frail limbs tipped by black talons, and fine spines ran along the underside of its arms and down its back. The face was almost human, but without nose or mouth. As if an artist had begun to paint it but neglected to fill in those features. Beneath a domed skull covered in black hair, its eyes glowed with an eldritch blue light.

Fear shivered through him, but not his own. The image he saw in Quin’s mind was a thing that had haunted her nightmares, and would likely now invade his.

“Sentiac,” Quin whispered.

“A monster?”

“Of a kind, maybe. I’ve met a lot of different races on my travels and most of them are just people. Sentiacs are different.”

“How so?”

“They are, or perhaps were, a race that could open gateways by thought alone. They fed by absorbing the life-force of any being they encountered, and could take and manipulate the DNA from their victims to alter their shape. I don’t know if that was for camouflage or to help them adapt to other worlds, but it meant they could disguise themselves at will. Rulk brought one to Earth–my world–and used it to open gateways, to create her hybrids, and finally to enhance herself.” Quin drew up her knees and hugged them, a child hiding from a monster. “But in the end it turned on her and consumed her, just as it had so many humans.”

“Then Rulk no longer exists? Your blood feud is over?”

“Oh, I wish that were true! I think she’d merged so much of its DNA into herself that even when it absorbed her, her being dominated the Sentiac’s. What happened to her–to it–after that, I don’t know. But when I read the legend of the Blue Demon of Adalucien, I thought it might be her. I never realized it would be you.”

“Did the legend make me out to be such a monster as this Sentiac?”

“No,” Quin shook her head. “It was only a fragment of parchment that fell apart as I read it. All I had was the name, a place and approximate date, nothing else.”

Keir stared at his hands and recalled the image he had shared with Quin, of a creature with dark blue skin and eyes that glowed. Something growled at the back of his mind, a terrible suspicion he tried to suppress.

Blue-black skin.

He swallowed hard, forced the words to come. “I have always wondered why I was like this. Am I a demon, Quin? Am I under a curse, in truth?” He held up his hand in contemplation. “Once, when I was a child, I scrubbed my hands until they bled because I was trying to wash off the blue.”

Quin was silent for several moments. “Are you sure you want to know?”

Did he really want her to say the words? The truth he believed he already knew? His heart beat a painful rhythm of rising fear. “Yes,” he said. “All my life, I have been called a monster. I want to know why.”

Quin sighed and rose to kneel before him as if to ask his forgiveness. “Keir, I’m truly sorry. Five generations ago, the Sentiac was your ancestor.”

Horrified, he leaped to his feet and backed away. “Then I am truly cursed,” he breathed. “If it was not human, then neither am I.”

“You’re as human as I am, Keir.”

“You are mistaken!”

“You know I’m not.”

Keir drew a shuddering breath while part of him screamed in horror. “You sit there so calmly and tell me that I carry the blood of a creature that should truly be called a demon.”

“The Sentiacs aren’t demons, Keir. Just another race, with a different view of the universe and powers beyond our own. You have none of their abilities. Even unknowing, you would have used them by now to defend yourself.”

“Perhaps I would,” he said. “Perhaps I would have these powers indeed if it were not for these.” He pulled at the neck of his top, further revealing the hated tattoos.

“Keir…”

“When I was six, I was taken from my parents’ home.” Keir gasped, trembling. “I was locked in a room while they did this to me.”

“I know.” Quin rose and approached him carefully, removing his hands to smooth the crumpled material back into place. “I saw that memory while I was in your mind.” Her voice was soft. “It was a terrible cruelty enacted by ignorant people, Keir. It had nothing to do with you. You were just a child.”

“They did not see a child! They thought these symbols would prevent me from casting dark magic. And maybe they were right.”

“I’d know.” She traced the edge of one of the symbols and he shrank from her touch, raising his hands to ward her off as he backed against the wall. “If you had those powers, these would not prevent you from using them. Nothing could.”

“And then I would be as this Sentiac? A devourer of worlds? Your enemy?”

“No, Keir. No, you wouldn’t. You aren’t that. You could never be that.”

“How do you know? You have not lived my life!”

“No. But I’ve been in your mind and seen it. I’ve felt it. I can feel it still.” She moved toward him again, slowly, as if expecting him to bolt. “You’re not like them.”

Keir took a deep breath, still shaking despite her reassurances. All those years he had endured the hatred and malice of his own people and yet a part of him had not believed their torment of him justified. Now it seemed meager punishment for his ancestor’s crimes, for wrongs beyond redemption. He carried the blood of a true monster in his veins. A destroyer of worlds. A creature Quin both hated and feared. He wished suddenly that she had not saved his life, that he had died and been free of this shame. Of the certainty that he was born to do great harm. The constant gnawing fear that he would become the demon he had been named.

The only thing that had really changed was that he now knew it was not his destiny. It was his inheritance.

1.       
   Chapter 5
   

Beneath a moonless night sky, the white walls of the Lyagnius base shone in ghostly splendor against the blue-gray rock of the eroded impact crater. Built in stepped tiers against the remaining wall, it nestled within the curves of the ancient depression, the bright, interior lights spilling out across formal gardens. Keir crouched in the shadow of the huge boulders that separated the well-tended grounds from the wilderness, outside the circle of artificial light. He watched, pulse racing, as a wraith-like figure dressed in gray dashed across the rooftop of the lowest level at unnatural speed. As it reached the edge it jumped, landing on the rough ground beyond the wall of jumbled rocks and dropping out of sight.

Keir waited, eyes fixed on the stone barrier, until the figure finally emerged. He pounced and they tumbled across the ground together. As he struggled to pin the haemovore down, Sky shrugged him off and broke free, rolling to his feet. Long blue hair tied back, Sky retreated as Keir confronted him, braced for a further attack. His blue skin and black clothing had made him almost invisible in the darkness, but it was no longer an advantage. Sky crouched lower, baring his fangs in a display designed to keep his prey paralyzed with fear. Keir merely took another step back in preparation, eyes fixed on his adversary.

“You can’t win,” the haemovore snarled as they circled one another. “I’m stronger and faster than any human.”

Keir knew the truth of that, had taken the bruises to prove it. A haemovore’s composition was far denser than a human’s, making them heavier and tougher than someone even twice their size.

“We shall see.” Keir said nothing more, but held his hands at the ready, waiting.

As Sky made a feint toward him, lashing out with one foot, he countered the blow by shoving down with both hands, but failed to avoid the punch that knocked him to the ground. Despite the jarring pain, he jumped to his feet. The haemovore had vanished. Keir spun, searching for him, certain the battle was not yet over. This could only be another ploy to trick him into lowering his defenses.

With no sight or sound for guidance, and no possible hiding place, Keir tried to reach out with his mind, putting his uncertain telepathic ability to the test. Distorted sounds filled his mind as he tried to focus. Fragments of words flashed in and out of his head, some booming harshly before fading to incomprehensible whispers.

He touched one hand to his forehead as he concentrated, sensing someone nearby. Despite the warning, he reacted too late as something hit him from behind and he sprawled face first into the damp soil of the garden. He rolled aside and leaped up, but froze in shock as he found himself confronting Quin, dressed in the same close-fitting black with her red hair pulled back. Without warning, without the slightest hesitation, she attacked him.

He did nothing to defend himself, could do nothing but take the full force of the kick to his chest. It knocked him to the ground and left him winded with a symphony of pain playing along his ribs. Forcing himself onto hands and knees, he looked sidelong at her, feigning a more serious injury to catch his breath. As small as she was, she did not lack the strength and agility necessary to equal him in a fair fight. He had learned never to underestimate her.

“You shouldn’t have hesitated,” she rebuked him, still poised for attack yet graciously giving him time to recover.

He struggled to rise at last. “I have no wish to hurt you, Quin.”

The now-familiar grin of mischief lit her face. “You won’t.”

He held up his hands in surrender. “I will not fight you.”

“Why, you patronizing–” Fury wiped the smile from her face and she rushed at him.
 

Keir barely had time to blink before her fist smacked into his face and he fell back, the faint tang of blood in his mouth. Shock and a fragment of anger coiled in his chest, but he had no chance for reflection as Quin punched him a second time. He ducked the third blow and scuttled backward with her in pursuit, then turned and ran.

“Don’t you dare run away from me!” she screamed, and the edge of her rage lashed at his thoughts.

He ignored her and kept going, skirting the border of the formal gardens. Speed and cunning had often saved him a beating in the past and he used them now. Cutting back around the huge chunk of stone that formed the ornate waterfall, he scrabbled up the rock face and flattened himself out on the top. He tried to ease his rapid breathing to silence.

Seconds later, Quin followed and stopped below him. “You can’t hide forever, Keir.”

He pushed himself up on his hands, poised to jump. Excitement quivered through him.
If he could surprise her, he could end this without a fight and each of them with their honor intact.

Quin took a step, and another, as if she sensed his presence nearby but not his exact location.

A little closer…

Perhaps he made some miniscule sound, or perhaps it had been too obvious a hiding place. The instant before he leapt, Quin glanced up. They hit the ground together, Keir on top, and Quin shrieked.

Horrified, Keir jerked away, and Quin’s knee caught him hard in the groin. Agony stabbed through him. Bright sparks flared across his vision, and he rolled away with a groan.

Oh, Gods!

Laughter answered him. Her cry of pain had been fake. “Don’t ever refuse to fight me again, Keirlan de Corizi. It’s all very noble, but I could beat you with one hand tied behind my back.”

Keir forced himself onto his hands and knees even though pain still pulsed through his lower abdomen. “Is that my next challenge?” he gasped. He risked a sidelong glance, watched her rise to her feet and stand, her posture relaxed.

She laughed again, and in that fleeting instant of distraction, he launched himself at her. As she raised her hands in defense, he grabbed her right arm and twisted it behind her back, pulling her against him and sending them both crashing to the ground. Pinned beneath his weight and with one arm trapped, Quin went limp. The fight was over. They lay face to face, hearts pounding in unison and panting from their efforts.

“Nice move,” she said, a smile curving her lips. “Now you’re learning.”

“Thank you.”

Keir stared down at her for a moment. With his own arm trapped beneath her, they lay locked together in a tight embrace, Quin acquiescent in his grasp. The sparring had added a warm flush to her skin. and the heat and softness of her body beneath his crowded into his awareness. Even through the coarse fabric of their combat gear, he felt the rapid flutter of her heartbeat.