Pursued (51 page)

Just like my dream,
she thought frantically as Merrick's blood dripped onto the metal floor.
Oh God, it’s just like my dream!

And then the imps dragged her away and she could see no more.

* * * * *

“I’m sorry,
Talana
, but they’re going to have to close the fold.” Sylvan’s pale blue eyes were suspiciously bright and Sophie could feel the overwhelming sorrow brimming up inside him. This was about more than just closing the fold in space—Sylvan was admitting that he had lost his oldest friend. That Merrick was gone forever.

“Can’t they wait a little longer?” she pleaded. “Didn’t you say that sometimes ships get a little turned around in the fold and then come out later?”

“It’s been over an hour now.” Sylvan sighed and raked a hand through his spiky blond hair. “With each minute that passes, the odds they will return diminish. And the amount of energy the ship is expending just to keep the fold open is equivalent to the output of a super massive black hole. We simply can’t keep it up indefinitely.”

“Just five more minutes,” Olivia pleaded, joining in the conversation. Elise had been her patient, and Sophie knew her twin felt a special bond with her. “Please, Sylvan!”

“I’m sorry.” He shook his head regretfully and Sophie felt his grief grow even more intense. “I’m so sorry, but the ship can’t bear much more. We’ll have to shut the fold. We have to—”

“Look!” Kat’s voice was high and excited. “Look, you guys! Look at the viewscreen!”

All eyes turned up to the massive viewscreen, which showed the red gash in space located right between the Earth and the moon. Something was coming out of it.

Slowly but surely a tiny silver craft slipped from the fold and hovered in space, as though uncertain of what to do next.

“It’s them!” Kat shouted. “It has to be!”

“Thank God!” Lauren murmured, putting a hand to her chest.

“Merrick!” Sylvan shouted, grinning with relief. “Thank the Goddess—Merrick!”

Suddenly the picture on the viewscreen flickered and changed to an interior shot of the ship. Sophie saw with concern that only Elise was sitting there at the controls. When she looked up, her brown eyes were dull with grief.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice sounding numb and far away. “But it’s just me. Merrick is…gone. He’s gone.”

“Gone? Gone, where?” Sylvan demanded.

“Just gone.” Elise still sounded numb. “Can someone please help me? I don’t…don’t know how to fly this thing.” Suddenly her face crumpled and she put her head down and began to sob.

“Oh, no!” Sophie looked at her husband. “You’d better go to her, Sylvan—she’s stuck out there.”

“Yes, I suppose I should,” Sylvan said grimly. He looked at Olivia. “Get a room ready for her at the med station. I think she’s in some kind of shock.”

“I’m on it,” Liv assured him. She and Sylvan hustled out the door, leaving Sophie, Kat, and Lauren to stand looking at each other helplessly. Sophie’s heart ached for Elise and those words kept echoing in her head over and over…

He’s gone.

Elise woke with a gasp from another bad dream. She’d been having them every night since she got back to the Mother Ship, and they all featured Merrick.

Sometimes she saw him being tortured by the horrible silver-eyed man who had kidnapped them. That…that…
What was his name?
It started with a D, Elise was almost sure, but she couldn’t remember it. The vault might be broken, but it seemed like her mind was still trying to protect her by forgetting things.

Other times, she saw Merrick working feverishly, welding together pieces of metal and building some kind of device that looked like part of an engine. What was it? Whatever it was, Merrick was desperate to get it finished. He worked tirelessly, arming sweat from his forehead and never stopping to rest. The only time he paused at all was when he turned his attention to another, smaller device. It was tiny—small enough to fit in the palm of his hand—and so delicate Elise wondered if it was some kind of clock mechanism.

The dream she’d just woken up from had been the worst. In it, she saw Merrick lying on his back, covered in blood. He was surrounded by rubble and wreckage as though some kind of explosion had gone off. All around him were the dirty gray bodies of imps and the Tolkien-esque troll creatures. It was clear they were dead and it looked like Merrick was dead too—dead or dying. As she watched, she saw him gasp for breath and his lips moved, forming her name. Then his eyes fluttered shut and his chest rose no more.

Elise wrapped her arms around herself, trying to stop the shaking.
Merrick,
she thought as the tears leaked from her eyes.
Oh, Merrick…
She missed him so badly she couldn’t even express it in words. Losing him hurt…hurt so much she didn’t know how to stand it. Didn’t know what to do except curl up in a ball and die…

“Hey, can’t sleep?” Olivia poked her head in the door of her room and gave Elise a worried look. Elise had been put in the med center when she returned to the Mother Ship and three days later, she was still here for “observation.” Which was a nice way of saying suicide watch, she was pretty sure.

“Not very well,” she admitted but she didn’t say why. She never told anyone about the dreams—she didn’t want to make them more worried about her than they already were.

“Want me to give you a sedative?” Liv asked.

“No, thanks.” Elise ran a shaky hand through her hair and looked at the bedside clock. “It’s almost time to get up, anyway.”

“Yeah, I know.
Some
people are already up and around.” Olivia came to sit on the side of her bed. “If you know what I mean.”

Elise groaned. “Did he call
again?”

“I’m afraid so.” Olivia shook her head sympathetically. “He was on the viewscreen early this morning, demanding that I go get you to talk.” She ran a hand through her hair. “I told him you’d been sedated and I couldn’t disturb you, but I’m afraid I can’t put your fiancé off much longer, Elise. He’s threatening to come up here and get you if you won’t at least talk to him.”

“Crap.” Elise put her face in her hands. She didn’t want to deal with James right now, but it was becoming clear that sooner or later, she was going to have to come out of her shell of isolation and do exactly that.

“I know you’re miserable over Merrick, hon.” Olivia rubbed her back soothingly. “And I totally don’t blame you—once you let a Kindred into your heart, every other man in the universe just pales by comparison. But—and please don’t think I’m siding with the enemy here—”

“But James
is
my fiancé, the wedding is this week and I still haven’t told him it’s off,” Elise finished for her dully. “I know, Olivia. I know I’m wrong to keep him hanging on so long. It’s just…I feel like if I go back to Earth and go back to my normal life, it’ll be like admitting to myself that Merrick is really g-gone. G-gone for…for g-good.” The tears started again and she blotted them hastily on a corner of the sheet. “S-sorry. I don’t mean to be so emotional.”

“Don’t apologize.” Liv gave her a hug. “What you’ve been through—what you’re going through—you deserve to cry all you want. You won’t get any arguments from me about that.”

Elise hugged her back tightly. “You know, you’re hands down the best and nicest nurse I’ve ever had.”

“I want to be more than your nurse.” Liv pulled back and looked at her seriously. “I want to be your
friend.
Listen, Elise, I know it might sound crazy to you right now, but I think you should consider coming up to live on the Mother Ship.”

“Live
here
?” Elise frowned. “I
was
going to live with Merrick—or he was going to live down on Earth with me. We hadn’t really decided but now, well, I don’t know. My career…”

“You can practice up here,” Liv hastened to assure her. “The Kindred mostly go through mediation to settle their problems but you could train as a mediator. I mean, if I can get the hang of Kindred medicine, I know you could get the hang of Kindred law.”

“I don’t know…” Elise said doubtfully. “I mean…why?”

“Because you need something you don’t have on Earth—a
support
system. I know you don’t talk to your family and I’m guessing you don’t have a lot of close friends either.”

Elise frowned. “What makes you say that?”

“Because, well…no one came forward and reported you missing when the AllFather snatched you.” Olivia patted her hand. “Please don’t be mad, I’m just saying if you were on the Mother Ship, we could all be here for you. Sophie and Kat and Lauren and I—we all want to stand beside you during this difficult time.”

Elise sighed. “I’m not mad. And you’re right—I
don’t
have any close friends. I tend to keep people at a distance because of, well, because of some things that happened in my past.” She blotted her eyes again. “In fact, Merrick is—was—the first person to get through that…that
barrier
I’d put up around myself. He made me feel again, forced me to think about things I didn’t want to think about. He…” She shook her head and Olivia rubbed her back some more.

“It’s okay. Get it out if you need to.”

“No.” Elise sniffed and sat up straighter. “No, I have to stop wallowing in misery. It’s time to go back to Earth and straighten things out with James. After that…”

“You’ll give notice at your work and come back up here. Right?” Liv looked at her hopefully.

Elise managed a small laugh. “You’re certain the Kindred Council would let me? I mean, without…without Merrick?”

“I’ll have Sylvan speak on your behalf,” Olivia said firmly. “And my husband, Baird, too. They have friends on the Council—you won’t be denied.”

Elise sighed. “All right, I promise I’ll think about it. But right now, first things first.” She forced herself to get up on shaky legs and shrugged into her robe, wrapping it tightly around her. “Um, can I borrow some clothes? I can’t go back to Earth looking like this.”

“Sure thing.” Liv hoisted herself off the bed. “Ugh, I’d get you something of mine, if we wore the same size. It’s not like I’ll be wearing anything cute for the foreseeable future.”

“I think you look beautiful—glowing.” Elise smiled at her. “Have you thought of a name yet?”

“Nothing Baird and I can both agree on.” Olivia hooked her arm through Elise’s. “Come on, let’s find you something nice to wear. Would you like me to go down with you for moral support when you talk to James?”

“You really
are
a good friend.” Elise smiled and squeezed her arm, touched at the offer. “But no, this is something I have to do on my own.”

The way I’m going to have to live on my own the rest of my life,
she thought but didn’t say. She could break down and cry some more later. Right now she had business to attend to and the sooner she got it done, the sooner she could come back to the Mother Ship.

* * * * *

“This had better work, hybrid.” Draven gave him a threatening look as they stood together on the bridge of the prototype wormhole ship. It was made of some new material—semi-sentient plasma-steel or something like that. Draven had been bragging about it ceaselessly, talking about how the ship itself could handle most of the steering and how it had uncharted capacity for self-healing.

Merrick didn’t buy the self-healing bullshit but he supposed having a ship that could steer itself
would
make Draven’s army more effective—especially considering most of them were dumber than dirt. His troll soldiers were strong and loyal but they weren’t big in the thinking department. Having a ship that could chart its own course and deposit them on whatever unlucky planet Draven wanted to invade would be a real plus.

Of course, all that was assuming the wormhole generator he’d cobbled together worked.

Merrick was pretty sure it would—but it wasn’t going to be taking Draven and his monstrous army anywhere. The tiny but lethal bomb he had in his pocket would see to that.

It had been difficult to find the time to build the delicate little device, but Merrick had done it anyway, taking time from the wormhole generator despite the pain words Draven spat at him when he felt he was falling behind schedule. He’d been very careful to work on it only when his guards were all trolls. The imps weren’t super smart but they were clever enough to spot something wrong if he gave them half a chance. He’d hidden the bomb in the fuselage when he wasn’t working on it, and now he had it in his pocket, ready to detonate when the time was right.

“It’ll work, all right,” he growled at Draven, who was still staring at him. Behind him were half a legion of trolls—apparently Draven didn’t trust him. Go fucking figure.

“If it doesn’t, I’ll have you skinned alive.” Draven gave him that charming, empty smile that never quite reached his solid silver eyes. “
Slowly
.”

“And if it does work, you’ll do me the favor of killing me quickly. Yeah, I got it.”

Actually, Merrick already had the quick death thing covered. He didn’t expect to survive the blast once he activated the bomb. Even if he wasn’t initially torn to shreds, the explosion would blow a huge hole in the space ship, sucking out all the air and letting in the freezing vacuum of space. That was the reason he’d decided against detonating the bomb while they were still on the planet's surface. If he survived the blast, Draven would be able to get away on the ground. But once they were out in space, no escape would be possible. Merrick was fine with dying himself as long as he took the silver-eyed bastard out with him.

Or I would be fine, if it wasn’t for Elise. Gods, baby, miss you so much…

Firmly, he dragged his mind back to the business at hand—making a jump with the homemade wormhole generator and proving to Draven the machine actually worked. Then, once they were far from the bastard’s home planet—much too far to call for help—Merrick would flip the detonation switch and blow them all straight to the seven hells.

“This will do,” he heard Draven say as he looked at the instrument panel. “Let’s test it out and make a jump.”