Sword and Shadow (12 page)

“Perhaps—but they weren’t me. I’m rather talented at getting rid of those who need gotten rid of.”

“Nice to hear.”

“We’ll have to see how well
this
works.”

Something in the tone of his voice jerked Raven’s head around, though, honestly, there wasn’t much to see. Except…

…a pinpoint of light appearing some fifteen meters in front of him, swelling slowly. Then, with the force of a hurricane, the light exploded upon him in a massive wave of force that hurled him back against the nearest bulkhead. Fire that was not fire rained over him, searing him through his skin, scorching every single cell in his body.

But he rode the wave and came through it standing as the strange light faded away. “Again…nice try,” he gasped. “But that didn’t do it either.”

He heard Odin curse softly. “That’s impossible.”

“The metaverse is full of impossible things,” Raven replied. He grabbed a passing thread and snapped it outward, forming a transit tube back to where the others waited. “I’ll be seeing you. Soon.”

Val’s hand dove for the hilt of her rapier as a figure materialized in their midst. Goban took a step forward, his own blade rising. Blinking in shock as she regarded the figure, Val reached out and slapped the ex-mercenary’s sword aside. “No.”

Reaching out with her psychic gift she felt the kind of blankness she’d only felt around one person. She blinked as her eyes scraped across his frame. The black oilskin jacket looked like Raven’s, but stretched tight across the shoulders and rode high above the wrists.

Her gaze lifted to his face and felt her stomach clench. She couldn’t mistake that face, even though it had been somehow changed. Gone was 110

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the seemingly unfinished features of an adolescent boy—the eternal youth had been somehow burned away, leaving a face of sharp angles and radiant white planes that seemed to catch and intensify his violet gaze like a gem might direct a laser beam.

He’d been an attractive young man but now he was absolutely stunning.

What the fuck?

“Goban—what the hell is wrong with you?”

It was unmistakably Raven’s voice and the two men froze in place, staring at him in shock. “Raven?”

He frowned back at them. “You were expecting someone else?”

Val’s mouth moved but no sound emerged.

Raven’s brow furrowed as he glanced at each of them in turn.

“What?”

Bryon swallowed, his Adam’s apple jumping as he tried to get the words out. “You’re older. And bigger.” His eyes tracked up Raven’s frame, widening as they went. “A
lot
bigger.”

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Chapter Sixteen

Raven shucked his jacket and tossed it to Bryon. “Looks like this will fit you better than it fits me now,” he observed dryly. He’d been shocked at first by the change wrought by the immortal’s device, but he’d long ago learned to deal with things he couldn’t change.

Bryon glanced down at the bundle of oilskin in his hands and smiled hesitantly. “If you say so.”

Raven ignored his apparent indecision and turned back to Val. “Do you know how to use a pistol?”

She curled her lip and shook her head.

He snorted. It figured. He pulled out one of the pistols, jacked back the slide, and rotated it in his hand. “It’s pretty basic. Point the big black hole at the person you want to puncture and squeeze this curved thing here.” He ran the tip of one finger over the trigger. “Squeeze…don’t jerk.”

She shook her head. “I’m not going to use a gun, Raven.”

He ignored that. “This is the safety. Push this thing up and it won’t fire. Push it down and it will. Got it?”

“Didn’t you hear me? I’m not going to use a gun.”

“If you’re within about three meters of the target or so, you can pretty much point it like you’re pointing your finger. If you’re any farther away, line up the triangle at the front of the barrel with this little groove here.

This particular piece is fitted with a thirty-round clip. Keep squeezing the trigger until your target falls down. If thirty rounds won’t do it, nothing will.”

“I don’t want it,” she told him in a low growl.

“I don’t care. You’re going to do this one thing for me and carry the damned thing.” His tone brooked no argument. He glanced around and 112

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frowned. “Where’s Goban?” He didn’t like it that the big ex-mercenary had managed to slip away unnoticed.

“He went back to the room where you killed that tentacle-beast to empty his bladder,” Bryon replied.

It made sense. “Fine. He’d better hurry up about it. That lift is useless, so we’re going to have to risk another transit tube.” He pushed the pistol into Val’s hands. “Just put it in your belt. The safety’s on.”

She did so, though he could tell it was the last thing she wanted. She pulled her jacket over it and glared at him. “Happy now?”

“Ecstatic,” he said. “Can’t you tell?”

She didn’t bother to answer, turning instead to watch Goban as he came around the curve of the corridor and trotted up to them.

“Did I miss anything?” he asked.

“Nothing important,” Raven replied casually. “Let’s go.”

Morrigan strode out of the darkness, causing Odin to leap from the captain’s chair with an explosive oath and reach for his spear leaning against a nearby instrument panel. “Don’t,” she warned.

He paused, fingers mere inches away from the butt of his spear.

“Morrigan?”

Her lip twitched up into what might have been considered a smile, though it had more in common with a dog’s warning grimace than any expression of friendliness. “Odin.”

“What are you doing here?” He didn’t sound happy to see her.

Not like that was anything new to her. Most immortals weren’t, for some inexplicable reason. Or maybe, not so inexplicable. She was an assassin, and had been such since long before becoming immortal. That made a lot of them uncomfortable.

Of course, she was semi-retired these days. Now she didn’t kill to fulfill a contract, but to serve what she thought to be a higher purpose.

She’d never killed for personal reasons. “I’m here to save your life,” she answered.

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“What?” He lowered himself back into the captain’s chair and stared at her. “I suppose the first question I should ask you is ‘why?’ I mean—“

“I know what you mean,” she interrupted. “And I don’t have an easy answer for that. By all rights I shouldn’t care if the kid rips you a new one, but I guess a part of me believes we immortals should stick together.”

“Bullshit.”

She raised a brow. “You don’t believe me? Why not?”

“There isn’t an altruistic bone in your body, Morrigan. If you want to keep this guy from killing me, it’s because you want to screw with
him,
not help
me.
”

She felt her jaw tighten. Odin was a bit more perceptive than she’d remembered. What he said wasn’t precisely true, but it came closer than she liked. “Fine. Let’s just say I have reason to want to keep you alive.”

He stroked his beard and nodded thoughtfully. “I can buy that.

Who—or
what—
is that boy?”

“A vampire.”

His brow furrowed. “That word sounds familiar, but…”

“It’s too complicated to get into right now and, frankly, we don’t have the time.”

“No,” cut in a third voice as someone strode from the shadows. “You don’t.”

Odin’s head snapped around and Morrigan whirled to confront the intruder, only to find herself unable to move as he stepped into the light.

The voice was familiar, but somehow deeper, thicker, and full of a kind of resonance she’d never heard in it before.

It took a moment for her eyes to catch up to what her brain had already told her. This was Raven, yes, but a very different Raven from the one she’d been expecting. He stopped and she studied him, noting the way his white shirt stretched tight across his chest, accented by the lines of his shoulder rig and the way his waist tapered down into his black pants. A single streak of white hung down one side of his face and he brushed it away from his eyes as his gaze seemed to bore into her skull.

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This was impossible. Vampires didn’t change. But somehow, this one had. He’d gone from an eternal youth to the figure of a man in his prime in a matter of days. And a particularly sexy man, a part of her realized as a low heat began to build in the depths of her abdomen.

Her gaze flicked to his feet, which she noticed were bare.

Raven let his eyes fall on the woman and sighed. “Why am I not surprised to find
you
here?” he asked her.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. You tell me.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. You—Odin…move one more centimeter toward that spear and I’ll gut you like a fish. I’ve had about as much of you and this place as I can take.”

“I don’t understand,” the bearded immortal murmured, with a quizzical glance at Morrigan. “My cellular accelerator should’ve killed him.”

“Your
what?
” She glanced back at him, shoulders stiffening.

He waved a hand. “Just one of my toys,” he explained. “The setting should have aged him into dust, not simply added a few years to him.”

Raven frowned, then his lips curved up into a slow, dangerous smile.

“That was a weapon?”

“Not precisely. I use it to mature my creations in as short a time as possible. But it
can
be used to kill mortals.”

“I’m not mortal,” Raven told him. “As you can plainly see now.” He took two long strides toward them, watching with some amusement as the woman’s eyes tracked him, an odd expression on her face. He couldn’t quite place it, but somehow he thought he should have recognized it. “Your name isn’t Cassie, is it?”

She opened her mouth and took a deep breath, her gaze still glued to him. As he drew closer he caught a scent on the air, a sweet, musky odor that triggered an unexpected response. The woman was aroused, he realized, and her arousal was having a similar effect on him.
Weird.
He tried to shake off the sudden, uncomfortable sensation that wound through his groin.

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This woman should not be turning me on,
he thought, viciously stamping down on the involuntary response. He crossed the rest of the distance between them in a blur, wrapping his fingers around her throat.

“I asked you a question,
bitch.
”

The scent of arousal faded, replaced with a sudden fierce tang he recognized as anger. Good. Anger he could deal with far better than he could deal with lust at this moment.

Odin threw himself over the arm of the captain’s seat and snatched up his spear. So Raven threw the woman at him.

They went down in a tangle of arms and legs, giving him plenty of time to draw his sword from the dimension pocket. He leveled it at them as they disengaged themselves from one another and glared up at him.

He smiled, deliberately drawing back his lips so they could see his fangs gleaming in the dim light. “I’m trying to think of reasons I shouldn’t just kill both of you here and now.” He jabbed the weapon at the woman.

“
You
lied to me.” He aimed a second jab at Odin. “And
you
tried to kill me. Twice. Usually I only give someone
one
chance at it before I permanently solve the problem.”

Val crouched in the darkness, wrapped in Raven’s summoned shadows, and shuddered slightly. Now she was seeing a hint of what he’d spoken of on the ship and it disturbed her to hear him remark so casually about his urge to simply execute the two. Killing in the heat of battle she could understand, but that’s not what this was.

Beside her in the ebon fog squatted Bryon and Goban, neither of whom looked too distressed by what they were hearing. Bryon had been struck by a virulent strain of hero-worship where the vampire was concerned, and Goban—well, Goban was an ex-mercenary. He’d simply consider it a practical matter to eliminate a threat.

“I’m not sure how you broke the war-lock,” Raven was telling the woman, “but rest assured I know of other ways of keeping you from your magic.” His voice slid across them like iced velvet, almost a purr, but 116

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carrying with it something that chilled Val to the bone. “I would prefer you alive, but we don’t always get what we want.

“You,” he told Odin, “are alive on my sufferance alone. It really pisses me off when people try to kill me.”

Then he did something that surprised Val. He tossed his sword away and it vanished into thin air scant inches from his hand. “But I’d rather talk than kill either of you, if you get right down to it.” He stepped back a pace. “Don’t get any bright ideas,” he warned them. “I can call that sword to hand anytime I want.”

The woman stood up, brushing herself off and, after a moment’s thought, extended a hand down to help Odin to his feet.

“Leave the spear there,” Raven instructed, as the immortal reached down for it. Odin slowly withdrew his hand and affixed the vampire with his one blazing eye as he straightened.

Odin returned to the captain’s chair and slid back into it with a deceptive air of calm. His single eye still roared with an internal flame, however, and, had he that much power, he would doubtlessly have sent Raven up in flames.

The vampire leaned against a nearby equipment console and folded his arms over his chest. “What’s with your church, Odin?”

“What church?”

Raven rolled his eyes. “Don’t try to play me for a fool. You know damn well what ‘church’ I’m talking about.”

“You mean that silly-ass Three-Fold God crap?” Odin asked with a frown. “Hell, Tyr and I set that up a long time ago to establish a way to get materials to us without us having to scour the damn planet for them ourselves.”

Raven closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Let me get this straight—you created a religion for no other reason than your
convenience?
”

Odin gave him an odd look. “Yeah. So what?”

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Raven returned the look. “So you haven’t been paying attention to what they’ve been doing?”

“Not really. For the first few hundred years we had offerings brought up and left at a shrine we’d had built in the early years—things we needed for the lab work. We gave the natives a few miracles to get them on board and let it go. Neither of us are micro-managers, after all.
Were
micro-managers,” he added, with a muttered curse and a shake of his head. “You didn’t have to kill him.”

“He was trying to kill me,” Raven remarked dryly. “That tends to get people dead.” He didn’t waste any time expressing regret, whether or not he acknowledged it within himself. He stuck to stating that simple truth.

“So this whole ‘anyone who uses magic who isn’t connected with the church is a blasphemer’ thing isn’t
your
idea, I take it?”

Odin glanced up at him, face reflecting puzzlement. “No. Of course not. What the hell would we care about that?”

“Good question. I guess now we should be asking why the
church
cares about it. Is it just a move to consolidate power, or are their reasons more sinister than that?”

“How do you mean?”

“I’m talking about your ancient enemy, Odin. The Cen—I think you’d refer to them as ‘Centians’—might be changing their tactics a little.”

“Crap—they’re still around?”

Raven nodded. What did he think, that they’d scurried away somewhere after conquering hundreds of worlds with no real opposition?

“Yes, they’re still around. They tried to conquer Earth Prime a couple hundred years ago, but we gave them a bit of a whooping, so they’ve retreated and regrouped. Now they seem to be working on the fringes, threatening less-developed worlds. Which, to be honest, is one of the reasons I’m here.”

The woman—he still didn’t know who the hell she was—glanced over at him. “You’re not here because of the weapons?”

“Lady, I couldn’t give two shits about the weapons. I’m not TAU.

That’s Val’s territory, not mine. My interest lies in whether the church is 118

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a homegrown problem or if it’s something sponsored from outside. By the Cen, for example.”

“But you have them, right?”

“The weapons? Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. I still want to know—

what’s it to you?”

She smiled thinly with the tiniest shake of her head. “I’m not willing to tell you that right now. Maybe later.”